Sarah Lavender Smith

Our once-fringe-now-mainstream sport used to be its own cozy niche, but over the decades, it has split into many niches loosely defined by geography, age, distance of trail routes, clubs …

Success at ultras depends in part on striking an appropriate mental balance between ambivalence and obsession, between not caring enough and too much. You should feel invested in the race …

Training independently—doing things your way, free of charge—is appealing. You can train more intuitively, like Courtney Dauwalter (who isn’t coached), less beholden to a coach’s workouts that might not fit …

Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, the end of the calendar year brings colder temps, shorter days, rain and perhaps snow. Between Thanksgiving and January, I tend to run less …

While running the 40-mile Telluride Mountain Run in late August—an extremely tough high-altitude ultra that circumnavigates the town and crosses four mountain passes—I felt a bit glum that I didn’t …

Around mile 28 of the High Lonesome 100, when thunder rumbled overhead from slate-gray clouds to the west, a man ahead of me turned back to ask, “What do you …

“I’m just going to run it for fun.” I hear that phrase all the time, and I understand the sentiment behind it. It’s expressed partly to lower expectations and self-pressure, …

“Anything can happen in the mountains,” I tell my 19-year-old son, Kyle, as I show him how to use the SOS button on my GPS tracking device. When I hand …

When the pandemic erased the motivator of ultras from our calendars, we had to reconnect with deeper reasons why we run long. Personally, I desperately needed to re-establish and fortify …

Ultrarunner Jared Campbell started the Running Up for Air timed event at Grandeur Peak (Outside of Salt Lake City) to raise awareness and money to fight air pollution in his …

When my son, Kyle, proudly grasped his diploma and pumped his fist in triumph during his high school graduation this past June, I cheered loudly while infused with feelings of …

As I considered the apples-to-oranges comparison between road marathons and mountain ultras, I wondered. What if, instead of trying to be the marathon runner I used to be, I embraced …

A decade ago, at 42, Kami Semick reached the pinnacle of ultrarunning. She won every race she entered in 2009, including two world championship events in the 100K and 50K, …

In this era of 200-is-the-new-100, it feels almost inevitable that many runners and race directors will super-size perfectly good and satisfying ultra routes, and we ultrarunners will feel compelled to …

The sound of a helicopter circling over our property near Telluride, Colorado, filled my ears for several days straight. The sight of teams of volunteers dressed in hiking gear, fanning …

Barely past the halfway point of Run Rabbit Run 100 last September, my legs and feet rebelled. Stiff muscles, achy joints and soles so tender that I winced with each …