The Cocodona 250 is an ultramarathon that winds through the heart of Arizona, beginning near Black Canyon City and finishing in downtown Flagstaff. With 38,791 feet of elevation gain and 33,884 feet of descent over 250 miles, the desert race is demanding, even by ultrarunner standards. Runners must meet the 125-hour cut-off time, which might seem generous until you realize they still need to take breaks to eat, rest, and use the bathroom.
On Monday, May 4, ultrarunner Rachel Entrekin crossed the starting line and headed into the Arizona desert. This was not her first time running the Cocodona 250, as she had won the women’s division in 2024 and 2025. With nearly 15 years of ultramarathon experience, Rachel was also no stranger to the challenges and dangers that lay ahead.
Training for an ultramarathon, as one might imagine, is not for the faint of heart. Most training programs require significant dedication to building an aerobic base before adding substantial mileage. This can take anywhere from months to years, depending on your current fitness level. Once you have a solid base, you need to increase distance and intensity over several months to avoid injury and build endurance. Those new to the sport might start with a 25K or 50K to get the hang of things before advancing to longer distances.
Beyond physical fitness, nutrition and mental preparation matter. If you’ve ever participated in a fun run, you are probably familiar with the “aid station,” typically stocked with water, electrolyte drinks, and gels. For long distances, however, runners must eat calorie-dense foods to sustain energy for hours at a time. Aid stations are more like pit crews, staffed with folks who support runners with fresh gear, meals, and even massage tables.
It cannot be overstated that to run a race like the Cocodona 250, you have to commit to embracing the suck. Training will suck. Eating will suck. Your mental health will probably have days when it sucks. Your body will probably feel like it sucks, even when you’re doing everything right. But to not suck, to go out and absolutely crush 250 brutal miles, you have to slog through a whole lotta suck.
56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds after she began, Rachel crossed the finish line of the 2026 Cocodona 250, beating her own time and every other contestant, and becoming the first woman to win the race outright.
On a recent episode of the Welcome to the Party show, hosted by Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy, and Billie Jean King, Rachel shared something that really stuck with me.
“I’m doing runs like the Cocodona to see if I like the person that emerges when things get hard.”
…to see if I like the person that emerges when things get hard.
Until the spring of 2012, I had never run a race longer than a 200-meter dash in middle school track. I wasn’t an athlete in high school or college. I didn’t see myself as athletically driven; I preferred to read, study long hours, earn good grades, and participate in speech competitions.
In college, I never set foot in the university gym. To this day, I still have no idea what it looked like. Instead, I preferred long walks and yoga at home. I didn’t fancy myself a runner. Then, during my senior year, I ran a 5K at my then-boyfriend’s encouragement. I was slow, finishing last in the race, somewhere around 45 minutes. I don’t recall being disappointed, just excited that I had pushed through and finished.
I graduated and started to settle into my first job. But after years of excelling in the classroom and seeing academics as my primary challenge, I quickly realized there was a void to fill. That was when I turned to running, signing up for every 5K fun run I could find. For two years, from the spring of 2013 to the spring of 2015, I ran 20 races, most of them 5Ks, with some 10Ks and a half-marathon. I wasn’t fast, but my race times were usually well under 9 minutes per mile.
When I was training for my first half-marathon in 2013, I woke up early and did a long training run on Saturday. I often ran to the outskirts of town, traversing roads and trails I didn’t normally drive. The hardest part wasn’t the run itself; it was getting out the door. But once outside, that’s when the magic happened. I could observe the world at a different pace and on a different level than most people. It was liberating, challenging, and incredibly inspiring. I never regretted a run, even when it felt difficult in the moment.
In 2015, I got a new job and moved to Pullman, Washington. Adjusting to life in a new town and a new job became my focus. I didn’t return to running until a few years later, when I trained for my second half-marathon. Again, this came at a time when I felt I needed a new challenge. Then new opportunities came knocking: a master’s degree, a new job, a chance to relocate, buying a house, a doctoral degree, and another new job. Running was put on the back burner as I poured my energy into these new challenges.
As this fall began, I found myself needing a new challenge once again. After years of focusing on academics, writing, and my career, I had not always made my health a priority. I needed to refocus. But I also wanted to push myself in a new way, one I could control (and with a tasty banana at the finish line). So I signed up for nine races, and on Sunday, May 17, I crossed the finish line for race number six, running a 10K in 1:07:09.
While writing this piece, I came across Rachel’s personal blog, and I can’t say how much I miss this kind of raw, authentic writing. No shilling for products or over-the-top social media clickbait. Just good old-fashioned thoughts on virtual paper, old-school blog style. It feels like a thing of the past.
Anyway, in a recent post, she writes about how she was framing her goal for another race, just prior to the Cocodona 250.
Right now, the most meaningful goal for me isn’t tied to a specific placement. It’s this: Run smart. Read effort well. Make good decisions. Finish strong.
A bit later, she writes:
There’s a version of this race where I get caught up in the early pace. Where I respond to moves I didn’t plan to cover. Where I try to prove something too soon. I’ve had that race. I’m sure I’ll have it again. I’d prefer it not be this one.
And there’s another version where simply I let the race happen. Where I trust that patience isn’t passivity. Where I stay close enough, long enough, without paying too high a cost. Where I give myself the chance to actually race in the second half. That’s the version I’d like to become real.
The hardest part of training for a race isn’t the running. That’s actually pretty manageable.
Instead, the hardest part of training for a race is confronting yourself when things get tough or ignoring the energy of those around you. Running smart requires self-knowledge, reflection, and the courage to listen to your intuition and trust your training, while staying focused on your journey. It’s the part people don’t often think about because it doesn’t immediately seem obvious.
Simply running the race as it happens can seem like an approach completely devoid of strategy. But here’s the thing: that is the strategy. The training, the practice, and the constant encounter with yourself at every step of the journey mean you arrive precisely where you need to be, when you need to be there. It’s hard to embrace this mindset. In a world of constant striving, forward momentum, and a perpetual fear of being left behind, the mental training required to ignore all external input and simply focus is immense.
There’s a phenomenon I experienced when I trained for my last two half-marathons. My mind would start to wander, and thoughts would get stuck in a loop. Sometimes fear would creep in; I was far from my house. If something bad happened, how would I ever make it back home? The internal dialogue required to move beyond that space of fear took both practice and practice.
When things get tough, do I like the person who emerges?
Rachel’s question sits in my head.
The past nine or so months have been particularly difficult for me professionally. Without delving into details, I’ve reflected on how I’ve approached this chapter differently than I might have in the past. It’s required a lot of intentionality and significant peer coaching, but I feel stronger, more at ease, and better equipped than I did a year ago.
Becoming a better runner and a better leader is not easy. It requires mental toughness, the ability to confront ourselves during the most difficult parts of the journey and still arrive at the finish line with a smile on our faces. It requires practice and training; no one goes out and successfully runs a marathon without at least a few weeks of training (and probably much, much more). It requires failure, shitty weather, and probably a lot of people who think you are crazy but love you anyway.
None of this is glamorous, by the way. The practice, the training, the constant second-guessing. It doesn’t make for great LinkedIn or Instagram fodder, but it is the very real work that has to happen to stay open, curious, and strong. It’s the kind of work that requires one to be proud of the person who emerges when things get difficult, no matter where the journey takes you.