Courtney Dauwalter: blind perseverance at Run Rabbit Run 100

Courtney Dauwalter arrived at Run Rabbit Run in September 2017 in the middle of a run of form that had already reset expectations for what an American woman could do over distance. She held the 24-hour record at 155 miles, she had taken the outright win at Javelina Jundred the previous year, and she had won Run Rabbit Run itself in 2016. Eighteen months of results had made her the runner everyone else in the field planned around.

The 2017 field gave her plenty to plan around in return. Michele Yates, Sabrina Stanley, Emma Roca and Kerrie Bruxvoort were all chasing the same prize purse over the same course above Steamboat Springs, and the race’s money has always drawn a deeper women’s field than its profile suggests.

What happened after mile 90

The race went to plan for most of its distance. Dauwalter moved into the lead, felt physically sound, and was running the sort of race that ends in a comfortable win. Then her vision began to go. Over the closing miles it deteriorated until she was, for practical purposes, running blind — roughly the last twelve miles, on a technical descent with rocks, switchbacks and loose footing, none of which she could see.

She finished. She also fell repeatedly on the way, cutting her face and hands and taking the kind of damage that comes from going down hard on rock without being able to brace for it. Her sight returned within a few hours of the finish.

Not the first time on that course

The episode was released alongside an obvious comparison: Chuck Radford had lost his vision on the same course the year before, in strikingly similar circumstances, and had also finished. Two cases on one course in two years is small enough to be coincidence and strange enough to be worth asking about, and the interview spends time on the practical question — what a runner actually does when sight goes and there is still a descent to get down.

The condition is generally understood to be a corneal problem brought on by altitude, cold air and long exposure rather than anything neurological, and it usually resolves on its own. That is reassuring in retrospect and no help at all at mile 92 in the dark.

Where it sat in her season

The conversation closes forward-looking: Moab 240 is on her calendar for next month, a 240-mile race across the Utah desert, entered a matter of weeks after finishing a hundred-miler blind. Nothing in the interview suggests she considers this unusual.