Raise your hand if you tuned into the Mountain Outpost livestream of last week’s Cocodona 250 or found yourself squirreling away moments during your day to check your social media feed to see how Courtney Dauwalter, Dan Green, Rachel Entrekin, Ryan Sandes, and other runners were doing out on the course.
Yep, me, too!
Thanks to the captivating livestream production from the crew at Aravaipa Running, this year’s fifth annual Cocodona captured the attention of ultrarunners and trail runners around the world like never before — and probably plenty of marathoners, thru hikers, and couch potatoes, too — and will no doubt be looked at retrospectively as a seminal moment in trail running history.
Back when 100-milers were rising to prominence in the 1990s, old-school ultrarunners used to say that “any fool can run a marathon, but it takes a special kind of fool to run a 100-miler.” The self-effacing, tongue-in-cheek joke was on everyone who was trail running back then, of course, but that still holds true today. What kind of fool does it take to run a 250-miler? Obviously a courageous, committed, and inspired one.
Hats off to Green (58 hours, 47 minutes, 18 seconds) and Entrekin (63, hours, 50 minutes, 55 seconds) for pushing to their stunning course-record efforts that certainly raised the bar another notch or two, but the same adulation should also go to Jennifer Parrish, David Toms, and Elizabeth Russ — the final three of the event’s 191 finishers after 124 hours, 26 minutes and change of running — and really to everyone who had the interest, courage and determination to toe the starting line on May 5.
But, of course, huge props should also go to visionary race founder Jamil Coury (and the entire Aravaipa crew) for dreaming up the idea several years ago and launching the groundbreaking event in 2021. The 200-plus mile race buzz had already gained traction following the inaugural Tahoe 200 in 2014, Dauwalter’s outright win at the first Moab 240, the ensuing Triple Crown of 200s, but Coury’s creativity and relentless side hustle to up-level livestream production in the trail running world has quickly helped make Cocodona one of the most compelling ultra-distance races in the world.
Aside from Cocodona, there are plenty of 200-mile-plus races to whet your appetite, including notable races from Destination Trail, Canebrake, Cowboy 200, The Summit 200, hundreds of fixed time events and backyards, and the Southern States 200, the only known point-to-point 200-miler in the East.
However, Aravaipa didn’t just create another 200-plus-mile race, but instead it developed an event with a profound and purposeful point-to-point aesthetic that links historic towns and trails off through Central Arizona while also paying respect to the Indigenous communities and cultures that are still vibrant along the route. This year’s edition proved that Cocodona 250 is next level. Or, as the cool kids like to say, it has captured the cultural zeitgeist of ultrarunning and pursuit of human endurance.
How did we get here? It’s the culmination of trail running and ultrarunning evolving on a global scale over the past 20 years or so. It’s the adventure of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and its UTMB World Series, but it’s also ultrarunning gaining a bigger foothold among the mainstream and why races like the Hardrock 100 and Western States 100 have gained much more widespread appeal. It’s more shoe brands going deeper into the trail running shoe game, sponsoring more events, supporting more athletes.
“It shows how much the sport has evolved that we’re getting to the point where even a 200 is competitive,” says Jeff Browning, second-place finisher at last year’s Cocodona 250. “Also, I think we have a lot of sport science that’s finally catching up with our sport. Plus, it’s become more of a professional sport, so we have younger athletes coming into the sport earlier. When I got into it, I was a young guy at 29. Now we have runners getting into it at 21, 20, and 19 and racing hard or coming out of a collegiate program and going straight into trail running, as opposed to trying to do the road scene for a while. It’s changed quite a bit since I started in the sport 20 years ago.”
It’s crazy to think about it, but the 200-mile race distance — or in this case 250 miles — has become the new tip of the spear buzz for regular runners to aspire to.
It’s crazy to think about it, but the 200-mile race distance — or in this case 250 miles — has become the new tip of the spear buzz for regular runners to aspire to. It’s not that the 100-mile distance has jumped the shark, but this year’s Cocodona 250 certainly helped stretch the imagination of what’s possible, not only for elite runners, but for regular Joes and Janes, too.
In the 1980s, the marathon was the thing everyone aspired to do. Then in the 1990s and early 2000s, Ironman triathlons became one of the next big personal challenges to chase. Ultrarunning has been growing for decades and has long been the next frontier of personal challenges, but I have a feeling the exposure from the Cocodona 250 has already sparked a new level of excitement and growth. Truth be told, the 100-mile distance is still the benchmark for most aspiring ultrarunners, but 200-plus-mile races have surely created an enticing buzz.
(And, I don’t want to overplay this, but had Dauwalter not withdrawn from the race after 108 miles while in the lead and won the race outright, it would have been one the biggest stories of the year in the sports world and poured gas on the already hot fire of interest.)
“Seeing where Cocodona is three or four years later is just awesome,” says Joe McConaughy, who was fourth at last year’s Cocodona 250 and is entered in this summer’s Western States 100. “It feels like such a spectacle and just a fun thing to be a part of, no matter if you’re running, or crewing or even watching the livestream. They do a great job of really creating interest and getting people involved.”
Here’s the thing, though. The more we push everything and everyone to the far side of the trail running spectrum, I am concerned that we’re devaluing fast-action, short-distance trail running and perhaps even limiting its growth. I understand that the thing almost all recreational runners relate to from a participatory point of view is not all-out speed but an innate interest in pushing the perceived limits of their own endurance.
However, I’ve thought for years that one of the biggest challenges to growth and exposure in trail running is that it’s almost entirely ultra-focused and the vast population of runners might find the barrier to entry overwhelming or perhaps not find running ungodly distances appealing at all.
Maybe they’re mutually exclusive and perhaps the thrill of running as fast as possible for relatively short distances on mountain trails just isn’t enticing to most runners. But there is such an emphasis on always going longer and always making things insanely harder, that I sometimes fear we’re pushing everyone deeper to our own peril.
But the siren call is alluring and authentic. I’ve run three 100-milers and a bunch of 100K races and, after following this year’s Cocodona and watching “The Chase” film about last year’s race, I’m now seriously thinking about signing up for a 200. If you haven’t watched the evocative feature-length film about last year’s race from Dylan Harris and SOD Studios, I’d recommend watching it as soon as you have two uninterrupted hours of free time. It might inspire you to update your bucket list.
