On the Longest Hiking Trails, a Woman Finds Equal Footing

[DaNGeROuS KiLLeR]

From left, Lori Barkley, 43, of Portland, Ore., William Young, 69, of Hanover, N.H., Tom Buononato, 22, of Wayne, N.J. and Tom Kidder, 67, of West Newbury, Vt., summit Mount Katahdin on the final segment of the Appalachian Trail in Maine’s Baxter State Park in August.

 

 

It was a busy summer on the Appalachian Trail. The movie “A Walk in the Woods” made its debut, the path received national attention for a perceived party culture and the well-known endurance athlete Scott Jurek set an overall record on the trail.

 

Then, quietly and relatively unnoticed, a woman named Heather Anderson hiked the trail by herself, averaging more than 40 miles a day. In doing so, she set the trail’s self-supported speed record.

 

There are two types of Appalachian Trail speed records: supported and self-supported. A supported record allows an athlete to travel with companions and resupply at road crossings using a crew. The self-supported endeavor demands that the individual walk unassisted, without emotional support on the trail or physical support at blacktop intersections and towns.

 

Records on long-distance trails are akin to cougar sightings on the East Coast: rare, controversial and hard to verify. Although these endurance records, recently titled Fastest Known Times, or F.K.T.s, have been recorded on paths like the Appalachian Trail since the 1970s, there is no governing body to officiate or authenticate them. They are based on an honor system in which one’s word is generally accepted even if the feat itself is criticized. There seem to be just as many people who will belittle and berate an F.K.T. for being too fast as who will be in awe of such a raw display of endurance.

 

Jennifer Pharr Davis hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2011. She finished in 46 days, knocking 26 hours off the endurance record and topping the men's mark.

 

 

On July 31, 2011, I climbed Springer Mountain in Georgia with my husband, Brew, having hiked the Appalachian Trail from Maine. At the summit, we walked straight to a large rock where a trail plaque was firmly secured. I put both hands on it and stopped my wristwatch. It was unofficially official: I had hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 46 days, beating the previous endurance record by 26 hours. For the first time on an American long-distance trail, a woman had surpassed the endurance mark of a man.

 

In the wake of my record, I received numerous questions and even more comments. Some of the feedback suggested I must be either an exceptional woman — or an androgynous one — to be able to hike the trail so quickly. In my own mind I started to doubt my ability and my accomplishment. I wondered: What was different — or wrong — with me?

 

In 2012, the process of conceiving, birthing and nursing my daughter served as an abrupt reminder that I was fully female, genetically and hormonally. As a result, I recognized not only that I was all right, but also that I was specifically and spectacularly engineered to carry the approximate weight of a backpack for several months and endure excruciating pain.

 

The next summer, I was focused on weaning my child when Anderson, a newcomer to the F.K.T. scene, set the unsupported record on the Pacific Crest Trail. Suddenly, there were female record holders for the two best-known trails in America.

 

In 2014, Karl Meltzer, a highly accomplished ultradistance runner, tried and failed to set the Appalachian Trail record — for a second time. Meltzer had a compelling running résumé, but his best finish on the Appalachian Trail was a full five days behind the record. Then, on May 27, 2015, Jurek, the most decorated ultrarunner in the United States, set out to tackle the feat.

 

Jurek’s exploits have been woven into best-selling books like “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall and Jurek’s own “Eat and Run.” Perhaps his best-known accomplishments are seven straight wins at the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run coupled with multiple victories at the 135-mile Badwater race across Death Valley and his United States record for distance running in 24 hours — 165.7 miles.

 

The only place where I would come close to Jurek at an ultramarathon is at the starting line. When I learned that he was going after the Appalachian Trail record, I thought: Oh, man. I hope he doesn’t blow it out of the water.

 

Then 46 days passed.

Scott Jurek running along the McAfee Knob trail, part of the Appalachian Trail, near Catawba, Va., in June. Jurek was attempting to break Pharr Davis's record. He did, by three hours.

 

 

A Record Falls, Gently

 

July 12, 2015, was an idyllic day at Baxter State Park near Millinocket, Me. Under bluebird skies, a cool breeze kept the biting black flies away. That afternoon, Jurek ascended the sun-kissed rocks of Mount Katahdin with his wife, Jenny, and support crew. And when he touched the worn brown sign that marks the summit, he became the supported record-holder.

 

I was not shocked that Jurek broke my record; I was surprised that he beat it by only three hours. And after rethinking every five-minute pause that I could have eliminated on my hike, I was left with a larger question: How could I — a woman who has never won an ultrarace — compete with Scott Jurek? So I asked him.

 

Jurek did not appear to be surprised at the 0.3 percent difference in our finish times. “The gender gap diminishes and disappears over distance,” he told me. “When you’re traveling over 2,000 miles, it doesn’t matter if you are male or female. Superhuman powers are superhuman powers; they know no gender, no age.”

 

Jurek did say, however, that in traditional ultrarunning distances of 50 kilometers, 50 miles or 100 miles, he believed men still had a physical advantage.

 

Yet even in those shorter long-distance races, there are occasionally women who can compete for the podium. Ann Trason is an example of a woman who has competed equally with the top men in the sport. As a competitive ultrarunner in the 1990s, she was peerless in the women’s field and regularly threatened the top-ranked men. She won 14 women’s titles at the Western States 100-mile championship, and there were two years when she placed second over all. She also finished a close second at the grueling and notorious Leadville Trail 100-miler in 1994. Yet she never embraced the mentality of competing for women or against men.

 

When I asked her about these gender issues, Trason said: “Why would I compete against anyone except myself? I think people should be the best they can be. Ultimately, it comes down to the individual.”

 

But even Trason struggled to block out gender entirely, saying that she “never wanted a man to determine or hinder my performance.” In the same conversation, she acknowledged second-guessing herself at times if she came up too quickly behind a man who was supposed to be faster than she was.

 

Baxter State Park in Maine, on the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Maine to Georgia. Jurek's record-breaking hike, and a rule-breaking celebration at the summit of Mount Katahdin in the park, had Maine officials considering moving the terminus of the approximately 2,200-mile trail to a different location to minimize the human impact on the fragile wilderness there.

 

 

Jurek and Trason emphasized that when you are pushing your body to the brink of endurance, mental fortitude is likely to be a bigger factor than gender. Which raises the question: Does gender impact mental fortitude?

 

Robert Deaner of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., has spent the past 10 years studying the psychological differences in distance running between the sexes. In an email, he said, “There is now strong evidence that in distance running (standard marathons and shorter), men are generally more competitive.”

 

But he acknowledged that men’s competitiveness might not always be beneficial. In a study that consisted of 92,000 marathon runners, he writes: Men “begin at a pace that could lead to a superb performance, given their own talent and training, but one that also increases their chance of crashing or hitting the wall. The longer the race, the more crucial it is to be conservative with pacing, since fatigue in longer races reflects slowly cumulating processes, such as glycogen depletion and tissue damage.”

 

Although data on longer distances is lacking, Deaner acknowledges, “since males generally have trouble making conservative decisions, they might be less likely to perform well in an ultrarun or hike.” In contrast, all three times a woman has attempted to set the overall supported or unsupported record on the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail, she has been successful.

 

 

Does One Sex Have Edge?

 

On Aug. 1, 17 days after Jurek reached Katahdin’s summit with an entourage of friends and support crew, Anderson climbed the same peak alone. In the early morning hours, she touched the iconic wooden sign that crowns the mountain, and then started her journey southbound.

 

While Anderson is understated and under the radar, she is far from underqualified. Even before starting the Appalachian Trail, she had logged 15,000 miles in long-distance hiking. She had conquered hiking’s triple crown — the Appalachian, the Pacific Crest and the Continental Divide Trails — and in 2013 she hiked the 2,663-mile Pacific Crest Trail for a second time, setting the self-supported record on it.

 

When she completed that hike, in 60 days 17 hours 12 minutes, an average of 44 miles a day, she dethroned Scott Williamson, who had completed the Pacific Crest Trail 13 times and set numerous records on it. Williamson had logged more than 47,000 miles in long-distance hiking. Most F.K.T. followers assumed that Williamson’s trail knowledge, athletic prowess and determination were insurmountable. Then Anderson broke his record by four days.

 

Over the summer, when Anderson tackled the self-supported record on the Appalachian Trail, she was once again taking on a titan in the F.K.T. field. Matt Kirk had set numerous trail records in the Southeast, and when he broke the Appalachian Trail’s self-supported record in 2013, it was the first time the mark had been lowered in 20 years. Then Anderson broke his relatively new record by four days. Four days.

 

Anderson said that part of her confidence in going after the record stemmed from her personal observation of male and female hikers at the end of a long-distance trail. “Women appear to be better suited for walking long distances because it doesn’t seem to take the same physical toll on their bodies,” she said. “The women I see at the end of a long-distance hike look fit and badass, but the guys look emaciated.”

 

Still, Anderson hesitated to speculate whether women truly have an advantage over men in ultra-endurance events. “I believe that endurance is most likely genderless,” she said. “As a species we evolved by traveling long distances and carrying what we needed. It’s a human trait.”

 

Samuel Cheuvront, a research physiologist for the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, agreed. “I can’t think of any reason why men would have an advantage over women at these lengths,” he said. “At distances over 2,000 miles, you are negating the benefit that males have due to increased muscle mass and aerobic capacity.”

 

Cheuvront was quick to point out that in long-distance swimming events measuring more than 20 kilometers, women consistently outperform men. In part, this is based on the increased buoyancy that women have, which comes from a higher body fat percentage.

 

This would not be an asset on land as it is in water, but Cheuvront sees two competitive advantages that women may have, especially in a self-supported effort where water may be scarce and where the athlete is constantly at a caloric deficit. First, they generally have smaller frames, which decrease heat production and produce less water loss. The second reason is that women have higher estrogen levels, which give them the potential for greater use of more abundant body fat stores.

In other words, those extra 10 pounds most women would love to shed coupled with the frustrating fact that our recommended daily caloric intake is less than what it is for men could make all the difference in an F.K.T.

 

Certainly, anecdotal evidence like Anderson’s self-supported records on the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail and my former supported record on the Appalachian Trail cannot lead to conclusions that a gender gap at ultradistances no longer exists. But the results are significant and offer a snapshot that supersedes speculation.

 

Timothy Noakes, a professor at the University of Cape Town who has dedicated his career to exercise and sports science research, is also an ultrarunner and the author of “Lore of Running.” When I presented him with the current F.K.T. facts and figures on the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, he said: “I believe in single events indicating truth. Obviously, you and Heather are the extreme of the distribution of this ability in women but you are the equal of the male outliers. If men were better, then there should be more and better outliers amongst men than amongst women. You indicate to me that this is not the case. If Scott Jurek could not do it appreciably faster then that means to me that men and women are equal on this type of event.”

 

Despite my interviews and my own personal experiences, I am still not convinced that men and women are equal at these distances. There are times when the historic dominance of men combined with their physiological advantages in strength and speed lead me to believe that they will continue to outshine women in the longer F.K.T. distances. At other times, when I talk to Heather Anderson and we discuss a similar and seemingly unique ability to pace ourselves, recover quickly and maintain body weight, I start to suspect that maybe women have a genetic and evolutionary advantage when it comes to enduring physical pain and stress.

 

Regardless, the one thought that remains apparent to me is that athletes who are pushing the boundaries of human endurance have more in common mentally than what separates us physically.