In a 250-Mile Race, She Beat the Boys by Miles

Rachel Entrekin didn't just defend her nickname at Arizona's Cocodona 250—she rewrote what "Queen of Cocodona" means. The 34-year-old ultrarunner from Colorado, already a two-time women's champ, surged past the men's leaders around mile 60, then never gave the spot back. As Jason Nark reports in the Washington Post, she finished the 250-mile race in 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds—shattering the course record by seven hours and beating the top man, Kilian Korth, by more than an hour. Her run adds to a growing list of multi-day events where women don't just keep up with men; they win outright. "One of my pacers has determined that I must be from another planet," Entrekin said afterward.

Nark details how Entrekin went from college runner to full-time ultra star, why she thinks women are particularly suited to multi-day suffer-fests, and how Cocodona's brutal 38,000-plus feet of climbing has become a proving ground for that shift. For Entrekin, this involved mashed potatoes, 19 total minutes of sleep, and a quiet challenge to the idea that men should be the standard in endurance sports. "If she wants to do something, accomplish something, whatever, she's determined to get to the end of it," her dad, Robin Entrekin, tells Outside Online. For the full deep dive into Entrekin's race and what it signals for ultrarunning, read the piece at the Washington Post.