Leadville runner Courtney Dauwalter wins fourth Hardrock 100 title, sets course record
The 41-year-old — who has won Western States, UTMB and Hardrock multiple times — finished 4 1/2 hours ahead of second
Verde Brand Communications/Courtesy photo
Leadville ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter secured her fourth Hardrock 100 title on Saturday with another magical stroll through the San Juan Mountains. The 41-year-old — who was a collegiate Nordic skier and worked as a high school science teacher in Denver before emerging as a long-distance star in her mid-30s — broke her own clockwise course record by just over eight minutes.
“I love this race. I love how hard the course is. I love that I’ve gotten the opportunity to come back so many times,” Dauwalter told iRunFar after finishing in 26 hours, 3 minutes and 10 seconds.
“But I also really dislike that all of those loops have left like, a little bit of an unsatisfied feeling after all of them,” she continued. “So, even today’s, like the initial thought is, for sure, gratitude and like, ‘What an adventure. That was so cool.’ But also, ‘Dang it, Hardrock beat us again.'”
Dauwalter placed fifth in the overall field as Ludovic Pommeret, 50, won his third title in a row. The ageless Frenchman also set a course record in 21:11:36.
The 102.5-mile loop, which starts and ends in Silverton, Colorado, climbs 33,000 feet and contains an average elevation of over 11,000 feet. The course high point is the 14,048-foot summit of Handies Peak. Each year, the race alternates direction. Dauwalter didn’t finish in 2021 but roared back for victories in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
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In 2023, Dauwalter achieved an unprecedented ultra-trail triple crown. The Minnesota-born athlete won the race just three weeks after shaving 78 minutes off the Western States 100 course record. She capped that summer off by winning the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) 100 — perhaps the toughest and most prestigious ultra in the world. Only Kilian Jornet has ever won all three races, though he did it over the span of his entire career.
Last fall, Dauwalter focused on her road marathon speed. She ran 2:49:54 at the Twin Cities Marathon in October and lowered her personal best to 2:38:55 at the California International Marathon two months later. Her trail season opened with a runner-up finish at Cocodona 250 in Arizona on May 4.
On Saturday, she led wire-to-wire and finished 4 1/2 hours ahead of runner-up Careth Arnold and about seven hours up on Tara Dower in third. Despite the lead, Dauwalter dug her way down to the ‘pain cave,’ a phrase synonymous with the Salomon-sponsored runner. She said her stomach started acting up on the Handies descent around mile 70 and got worse coming out of Maggie’s Gulch shortly after.
“I thought I might just live on the climb out of Maggie’s,” she said. But Dauwalter pushed through for another record-breaking performance, tying Diana Finkel for second on the all-time Hard Rock 100 wins list (Jornet, Karl Meltzer and Betsy Kalmeyer have each won the event five times). The time and titles, however, seemed less important than the principle of finding her personal limit.
“It’s for sure one of the reasons I sign up for these things. I want to know what’s possible for me on that day, on that course,” Dauwalter said. “So to do anything less than pour it out the whole way through would be against one of those key pieces of signing up for these things.”
