In 2020, I paced a stranger for 100 miles on the course to kind of get a feel of ultra running to see if I liked it.

Last year there were some medical things that I had to work out, and this year it finally happened. Now of course, I'm already thinking about the next one.

I don't know if I would want to go further than 240 miles without sleeping, because you really don't sleep. Maybe you sleep an hour a night during these races because you don't have time.

The clock doesn't stop. For the 240 miles race, the cutoff was 113 hours, which is faster than 30 minute miles for the whole thing, so that includes anytime you stop and use the bathroom, eat, or nap.

I slept like an hour to an hour and a half each night. Sometimes you absolutely can't keep moving or you're falling over on the trail because you're tired. You might lay down on the side of the trail for like 15-20 minutes, but you do not have time to like roll up in a tent or something and sleep the whole night.

What I really like about ultra running in particular is that as you go up in these distances, it really starts to equalize in terms of gender, physical abilities and so on.

Several of the course records for these 200 miles are held by women. It seems like they’re more tuned towards endurance and so you start to see this equalization.

There are more cisgender men in general participating because of access, money, family support, so there's more of them. But the women who participate -- they're tough, they're tenacious, they're not in the back of the pack.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]