Courtney Dauwalter Wins A Fourth Hardrock 100, Then Admits She Nearly Quit

Courtney Dauwalter won the Hardrock 100 for the fourth time on Saturday, led the women’s race from start to finish, broke her own course record, and spent much of the night throwing up on one of the hardest trails in the world. All of that is true at once, which is very Courtney Dauwalter.

The 41-year-old finished the notoriously brutal loop through Colorado’s San Juan Mountains in 26 hours, 3 minutes, and 10 seconds, good for fifth place overall against a field of men and women. It beat the clockwise course record of 26:11:49 she set in 2024. It missed the outright women’s record of 25:50:23 that Katie Schide ran counterclockwise last year, but because the loop reverses direction annually, Hardrock keeps a record for each way, and Dauwalter now owns the clockwise mark.

The Last 30 Miles Were Misery

The story wasn’t the winning. It was what she pushed through to do it. Dauwalter was all smiles early, first woman over Grant-Swamp Pass, 42 minutes clear at mile 44 and climbing the overall standings. Then came 14,048-foot Handies Peak.

“Handies was beautiful, but it was kind of the beginning of the end for me,” she told Runner’s World at the finish, laughing. “Going down Handies just made my stomach turn, so then I spent the night fertilizing the course quite a bit… There were times I thought I was just going to lay down on the trail and stay there forever.”

Here’s the maddening part: it happens every time. “All three times I have run Hardrock in the clockwise direction, my stomach always goes and I wind up puking before I get to the Sherman aid station,” she said. “I have planned for it and trained for it and changed my nutrition, but it still happens every time.”

A Comeback From A Rare Rough Year

The dominance is easy to take for granted, so it’s worth noting she is coming off an uncharacteristically rough 2025, when stomach trouble forced her out of the Cocodona 250 and she faded from the lead of UTMB to a distant 10th. She answered it by running Hardrock just 65 days after finishing sixth overall at this year’s Cocodona 250.

She also stripped things back on purpose, running Hardrock for the first time without a pacer, with only her husband Kevin crewing her. No woman has ever won this race more than Dauwalter, and the only time she failed to win was her 2021 debut, when, fittingly, stomach issues pulled her out at mile 62.

A Big Day For The Favorites

The pre-race picks held at the sharp end. On the men’s side, 50-year-old Frenchman Ludovic Pommeret won his third straight Hardrock in a record 21:11:36, with Utah’s Jimmy Elam second. Behind Dauwalter, Colorado’s Careth Arnold sat second in the women’s race, still hours from the finish, with Tara Dower, the Appalachian Trail record holder who ran Western States just two weeks ago, also in the mix.

For Dauwalter, the takeaway was simple, and delivered with the grin that had survived the worst of it: “I’m really happy to be here.”