Rachel Entrekin became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 outright on Wednesday, finishing all 254 miles of the Arizona course in 56 hours and 9 minutes. She broke her own women’s course record by close to eight hours and took down the men’s mark in the process.
For anyone who hasn’t been following the 200-plus-mile world, here’s a primer on the runner who just rewrote it. She is now widely considered one of the best ultrarunners in the world.
Entrekin, 34, was born in Madison, Alabama, and started running while pursuing a degree in exercise science in college. She finished her undergraduate degree in 2012 and her doctorate in physical therapy in 2016.
Her first half marathon came in 2010 and her first full marathon a year later. From there, she just kept going. “I figured out I was pretty good at the races and just gradually increased the mileage and soon made the descent into insanity,” she told her hometown paper, The Madison Record, in 2025.
The mountain years
A move to Washington State in 2016 reshaped her running. She started chasing Fastest Known Times in the Pacific Northwest, including on Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail, Mount Hood’s Timberline Trail, and Section J of the Washington Pacific Crest Trail. She now holds 15 records on established routes across the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, the Transverse ranges and Catalina Island.
Those long days in the mountains built the kind of base that 250-mile racing requires.
Cocodona changed everything
Entrekin entered the Cocodona 250 for the first time in 2024 and won the women’s race in 73:31:25, finishing 11th overall. She came back in 2025 and lopped close to 10 hours off her time, winning the women’s race again in 63:50:55 and finishing fourth overall, with the women’s course record. That run made her the only two-time winner of the race.
This year she made it three. Her 2026 win broke her own women’s record by nearly eight hours and took down Dan Green’s overall course record of 58:47:18, set in 2025. She is the first woman to win Cocodona outright, and now the only three-time winner of the race.
A breakout, on a budget
The on-course dominance has not always come with off-course support. As recently as 2024, Entrekin ran a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of racing Spartathlon and Cocodona, after a strong 2023 season failed to produce sponsor offers, according to Ultra Running Magazine.
She kept working full-time as a director of oncology rehabilitation while building out the rest of her career. Her partnership with Precision Fuel and Hydration came after a cold outreach she made the year of her first Cocodona win. “I reached out to Precision after Cocodona in 2024 as I felt that I needed to level up my nutrition game and performances,” she told the company. “I’d say they helped it make it all happen.”
In December 2025 she signed with Canadian shoe brand Norda, her first major footwear deal.
The rest of the trophy case
Cocodona is the headline, but it is not alone. In 2025 Entrekin also won the High Lonesome 100, the Aspen Backcountry Marathon, the Pass Mountain 50 and the Whiskey Basin 88K, and finished second overall at the Mammoth 200. She was named fourth in the 2025 UltraRunner of the Year vote.
She started 2026 by winning the Coldwater Hundred outright in January, then took third woman and 14th overall at the Chianti Ultra Trail by UTMB in March, heading into Cocodona in the form of her life.
Off the course
When she’s not racing, Entrekin lists cooking, playing piano, petting dogs and “hanging out with her cats” among her hobbies, per her sponsor profile with Precision Fuel. She lives in Conifer, Colorado.
She is, by all accounts, the rare front-runner who can lead the field at the Cocodona 250 and still stop to greet a stranger’s dog on the way.
