Courtney Dauwalter, the Ultrarunner Who Won Three 100-Milers in One Summer

In 2023, Courtney Dauwalter became the first person to win the Western States 100, Hardrock 100 and UTMB in the same year. Across one summer, the American ultrarunner covered more than 300 race miles and repeatedly entered what she calls her “pain cave,” a mental space where suffering becomes a problem to work through.

The historic triple was not produced by mindset alone. It required years of physical training, careful fueling, recovery, problem-solving and crew support. What made Dauwalter unusual was the way she treated discomfort as information rather than immediate defeat.

From science teacher to ultrarunning specialist

Dauwalter was born in Minnesota in 1985, competed in cross-country and Nordic skiing, and later worked as a science teacher. She eventually left teaching to run professionally and settled in Leadville, Colorado, a high-altitude town surrounded by mountain trails.

By 2023, she was already one of the most accomplished athletes in ultrarunning. She had won races ranging from 100-mile mountain events to the 240-mile Moab endurance race. Her Salomon athlete profile describes her 2023 sweep as the first time anyone had won Western States, Hardrock and UTMB in one year.

Her career belongs to the same demanding world as Scott Jurek’s era of 100-mile endurance racing. The decisive difference in 2023 was not one victory. It was how quickly Dauwalter recovered and competed again.

Three 100-mile wins in ten weeks

The project began at Western States in June. The race crosses California’s Sierra Nevada before descending toward Auburn, exposing runners to mountain terrain, heat and long hours on their feet.

Dauwalter finished in 15 hours, 29 minutes and 33 seconds. The official Western States race report says she broke Ellie Greenwood’s 11-year-old women’s course record by more than an hour, became the first woman to finish in under 16 hours and placed sixth overall. She also negotiated roughly 20 miles of snow early in the course.

“The day was so fun, it was beautiful and also very difficult, so I’m happy to be here at the track with all of you!”

Source: Dauwalter’s Western States finish-line comments published by Salomon

Three weeks later, she started Hardrock 100 in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The high-altitude course was a different test, built around steep climbs, technical descents and extended time above 12,000 feet.

She won in 26 hours, 14 minutes and 12 seconds. Hardrock’s official record list identifies that performance as the women’s counter-clockwise course record at the time.

The third race was UTMB, starting and finishing in Chamonix while circling Mont Blanc. The official 2023 results list a 171-kilometre course with 9,963 metres of elevation gain. Dauwalter won the women’s race in 23 hours, 29 minutes and 14 seconds, placing 25th overall.

That victory completed the unprecedented triple. It also came closest to ending it.

Inside Courtney Dauwalter’s “pain cave”

Dauwalter uses the pain cave as a visualization for the point when continuing feels physically impossible. In her mind, she puts on a hard hat, picks up a chisel and makes the cave larger. The image turns an overwhelming moment into work she can perform one strike at a time.

“For me the pain cave is the place I go to in my head when it physically feels like I can’t take another step forward.”

Source: Courtney Dauwalter discussing intuitive training with Experience Life

The metaphor does not make the discomfort disappear. It gives her a way to remain present, search for solutions and avoid mentally projecting the current problem across every mile still ahead.

That same problem-solving quality appears in Jasmin Paris’s preparation for the Barkley Marathons, where exhaustion had to be managed alongside navigation, time limits and lessons from previous attempts.

Her training is built around listening, not constant punishment

Dauwalter describes her training as intuitive. Instead of following the same rigid schedule regardless of how she feels, she checks her physical, mental and emotional condition each day. Sometimes she presses harder. At other times, she reduces the effort.

That distinction matters because her obsession is often simplified into a willingness to suffer more than everyone else. Her own explanation is more balanced. The process includes recognizing signals, adapting training and learning what her body can tolerate over years of experimentation.

Fueling is another piece of the puzzle. She has described using liquid nutrition, chews, waffles and gels during shorter ultras, then adding foods such as pancakes, fries, pizza or cheeseburgers when races extend beyond a day. A crew helps manage food, equipment, pacing information and problems that become harder to solve when fatigue has accumulated.

The approach is not a shortcut. It is a system for making decisions when clear thinking becomes difficult.

The summer did not make her physically invulnerable

Hardrock showed the difference between winning comfortably and continuing through a bad day. Dauwalter said her body felt tired from the beginning and that every mile demanded attention.

“It was full effort the whole time.”

Source: Dauwalter’s post-race Hardrock interview with iRunFar

At UTMB, the limits became even clearer. Around the Grand Col Ferret, more than halfway through the race, she said her muscles felt empty. The mental chiseling that normally helped her body respond no longer produced the same movement. She shortened her stride and focused on reaching Chamonix.

This is the necessary reality check behind the pain-cave story. A mental technique can help an experienced athlete manage discomfort, uncertainty and negative thoughts. It does not make every pain signal safe to ignore, replace recovery or guarantee that the body will continue cooperating.

Ultramarathons also depend on volunteers, aid stations, race officials and personal crews. Dauwalter ran every step, but the triple was not a solitary experiment conducted without support.

Why the triple changed ultrarunning

Western States, Hardrock and UTMB reward different strengths. Western States combines runnable trail with heat and rapid pacing. Hardrock adds high altitude and technical mountain terrain. UTMB demands another long sequence of climbing and descending around Mont Blanc.

Winning all three in one summer meant recovering quickly enough to meet three different problems without treating any race as a controlled training effort. At UTMB, Dauwalter said she approached each event as though it were her only race of the summer, without holding effort back to protect the next result.

Her achievement also gave the pain cave a meaning beyond toughness. The metaphor is useful because it frames mental endurance as something that can be practiced. Each difficult stretch becomes another opportunity to learn how attention, self-talk and problem-solving behave under stress.

The experiment continued after 2023

Dauwalter did not treat the triple as the end of the investigation. In 2024, she returned to Hardrock and completed the clockwise course in 26:11:49. In 2026, she won there again in 26:03:10, according to her current UTMB Index results.

Those results sit beside less perfect days, including a tenth-place UTMB finish in 2025 and a withdrawal from UTMB in 2026. That contrast strengthens the story rather than weakening it. The pain cave is not a machine that always produces victory.

Dauwalter’s lasting obsession is the puzzle itself: how to prepare, listen, adapt and discover what remains when a familiar limit appears. Her 2023 summer supplied a remarkable answer, but it did not close the cave. It gave her more room to explore.