Top Moments from Co-Directing an All-Women's Trail Race

Jun 24, 2025

*Adds race director to resume* (Just kidding, I don’t have a resume.)

Wild Woman Trail Runs is the newest bucket of my work, and I think it’ll be sticking around for a long time.

This past weekend, we hosted 310 runners from as far as New York in Hawaii in little Trout Lake, WA, population 800.

Turns out, directing a marathon and 50k is more tiring than running it. 😉

As I climb my way out of my inbox and exhaustion, I thought it’d be fun to give you a recap in the form of LISTS!

But first, a bit of background:

Wild Woman was the first all-women’s marathon and 50k in the US. This was the 12th event in 14 years, and we maxed out on registration.
One study shows that 23% of ultrarunning participants are female, compared to just 14% 23 years ago. (Our stat is 100%, hehe.)
On Friday, we host a potluck and speaker panel. I got to moderate a panel with Rachel Entrekin (who just set a new record at Cocodona 250 with a back-to-back win) and Sarah Allaben (whose Wild Woman 50k record stands and who recently set the Gorge Waterfalls 50k record).
On Saturday, we held a trail 50k, marathon, half marathon, and marathon-length team relay, covering 310 runners. Runners and their families can camp out all weekend!

Eat more carbs. Rachel, Sarah, myself, and countless other runners had to learn the hard way that fueling enough = better running.

Sarah said: “I’ve had to switch the narrative of ‘Wow, why am I still hungry? I’ve been eating so much, how can I possibly eat more?’ to the narrative of ‘I am hungry. I need to eat more.’”

And Rachel tells herself: “Feed your legs!”

If you’re into the food-endurance talk, listen to this episode of me on the Eat for Endurance Podcast.
Set goals that don’t have to do with time. Rachel said: “Time and performance based goals are good sometimes, but not every race or you’ll get exhausted.”

Sarah shared her love of process goals, and that at Gorge Waterfalls two of her goals were to fuel really well and to smile at every aid station.

(I added that in the future, we should make a bingo board of non time-based goals to gameify the race experience.)
You belong on the trail. Rachel likes to remind herself that she deserves to be at a start line; it’s not a fluke. Sarah feels like her most confident self when she’s running on trail. And I’ll never be the fastest or go the furthest, but being enthusiastic sure gets me far!

Seeing a woman cross the finish line at 8 weeks postpartum, holding her infant.
Watching the other members of a relay team jump in to cross the finish with their anchor.
The ridiculous kindness of our volunteers, from folks helping set up tents to leading yoga sessions to my partner being a road crossing guard to my friends mountain biking the course to take down flagging the next day. (Which was apparently a brutal ride.)

Put garbage bags and stirring spoons into aid station supplies. My bad.
Be ready for rain! June is typically perfect summer weather here, but somehow the one drizzly day was race day. Thank goodness we had plenty of tents and even propane heaters.
Pitch brands early! I’m so thankful for the support of GOREWEAR (sweet shirts), Waka coffee, and Arc’teryx on this event. I know we’ll get more support if we work well in advance of budget season.

You don’t need to train anywhere near perfectly. And if you trained for a marathon, you can do the 50k.
No race will ever go flawlessly, but that’s part of the fun.
Eat more carbs. 🥯

A big thank you to my co-directors, Steph Irving and Susan Elliott! You can learn more about Wild Woman Trail Runs on the website or the infrequently used Instagram.

Registration for the 2026 camping/running weekend will likely open New Year’s Day, but stay tuned for pop-up events and future programs!

And a few FYIs for the rest of June:

THIS EVENING I’ll be hosting a free Trail Talk on how to leverage your outdoor adventures for your career goals.
The See Her Outside Podcast that I host is taking submissions for personal essays to be read on the show!
If you’re close to The Dalles, Oregon, don’t miss this live event! Be an audience member watching people on blind dates!
With the race wrapping up, I’ll soon have space to collab on new projects! Check out my services to ideate together on creative consulting (launch that thing you can’t stop thinking about), women’s events (more of this!), and, of course, menstrual equity work in the outdoor industry.
And I’ll also have time to return to guesting on podcasts! If you have recs for shows that want to chat about the importance of getting women outdoors, adventure as advocacy, and everything Blood, Sweat + Fear related, will ya hit me up?