In early May, the Cocodona 250, an extremely challenging 250-mile ultra marathon was won by a woman, Rachel Entrekin. She beat the first man by over an hour, broke the race record by about 2 hours, and became the first ever woman to even cross the finish line.

Ultra marathons are extremely challenging. Most of them are around 30 to 125 miles (50 to 200 kilometers) long, or longer, often held in challenging environments for people to run in, such as forests, deserts and mountains. Cocodona 250 is one of the hardest and most challenging ultra-marathons in the world. This 250-mile (400 kilometer) race is held across the mountains, forests and deserts of Arizona. The competitors constantly go up and down in elevation. In all, they go up as much as if they were climbing a 7.35 mile (11.8 kilometer) mountain. The race goes on for days and nights, with the tired and exhausted runners never stopping.

Entrekin started running in 2009, when she was only 17 years old. Over time, she started challenging herself to run longer and longer distances, and discovered that she likes running up mountains. She has run many ultra marathons and has won many of them.
She finished in 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds. That was nearly eight hours faster than her time last year. Her time broke the course record by almost two hours. And it was 1 hour and 18 minutes faster than this year’s fastest man.

Winning the race was not easy. She spent about 2 days and a half without stopping, and only slept for 19 minutes total on the ground.

To make sure her body had enough fuel for the run, she had to eat and drink regularly. But she had to do this while she was running, or during a very quick stop. Entrekin ate a whole lot of mashed potatoes, which were perfect for her situation where she “got tired of chewing”.

Entrekin said that everyone should stop measuring women’s success by comparing them to men and believes that women shouldn’t talk themselves out of trying things just because they aren’t sure of success.