After conquering one of the toughest races on the planet, Kiwi trail running queen Ruth Croft reveals what helps keep her going: the joy in being able to run.
Just before Ruth Croft headed out on a 17-hour, 161km pilgrimage on foot through blistering Californian heat, two messages from home reminded her why she was running this … for a second time.
The messages arrived the day before the Western States Endurance Run – a race dubbed one of the ‘undisputed crown jewels of human endurance’ - from Kerry Suter and his partner, Ali Pottinger, in Rotorua.
Suter, a champion ultramarathon runner and coach, is going through a long and painful rehabilitation from a mountain bike crash in February that left him paralysed. He’s been told not to expect to walk again.
“I was really pretty thankful they had both reached out,” Croft, the West Coast trail-running phenomenon, told the Dirt Church Radio podcast. “It was just a good reminder to go out there and make the most of the ability to do what I can do.
“What they’ve gone through, and are still going through, is massive. So part of it was to go out and make the most of that opportunity.
“To actually have the body and the ability to run 100 miles is pretty insane.”
Croft has no qualms her sport is seen as crazy; she says it herself.
“I think it’s important to step back and say it’s pretty crazy what we do, but pretty awesome at the same time,” she says. “A big part of it is not taking it too seriously.”
That’s why Croft ran to the finish-line of Western States a fortnight ago - the first woman across the line, in the third-fastest time in the race’s almost 50-year history - chased by three men in blow-up dinosaur suits.
It’s why she’s flying to Greenland soon to run 100 miles along the Arctic Circle Trail with friends, battling swarms of ferocious mosquitos as she goes. (That’s not a deterrent when you’ve lived with West Coast sandflies all your life).
And it’s also why Croft is always searching for the “fun element” in the thousands of hours of training high up on mountains and deep in canyons, and the gruelling effort she puts herself through in an ultradistance race. Otherwise, she might no longer do it.
No matter which exotic corners of the world the trails lead her, Croft is happiest taking the path home. Each New Zealand summer she and her French partner, Martin Gaffuri, head back to the South Island, to her hometown of Stillwater, and to Wānaka. It is, she says, the most important time in her year.
“I feel when I’m overseas, I’m living in a running bubble,” she says. “I feel very one-dimensional sometimes.
“Coming back to New Zealand and spending time with friends and family, I feel more balanced as a person.”
New Zealand is starting to appreciate what a worldwide ultrarunning phenomenon Croft is. Last year she made headlines winning the 102km Tarawera Ultra outright – the top man or woman – and then finishing second woman at Western States in her first attempt at running 100 miles - or 161km.
Now that she’s conquered that massive challenge (no, she’s not tempted by a third crack at Western States), she’s moving on to the next. Croft has the UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc) in her sights - a 171km overnight race through the Alps, crossing the borders of France, Italy and Switzerland, and gaining around 10,000m of elevation.
She won’t attempt this year’s edition, taking place next month. Switching from the sapping heat of Western States to the chilly altitude of UTMB makes attempting back-to-back 100-milers almost impossible, Croft says, so she’s looking to next year’s event.
But in the meantime, she’s signed up for this year’s CCC - the 100km “little sister of the UTMB” - during Europe’s famous week-long festival of trail-running in late August. She won that race in 2015 - the year she truly arrived on the international trail-running scene.
Croft will spend a month in Chamonix - at the base of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps - training with her Adidas Terrex team-mates, and see how well she’s recovered from her incredible feat in California.
For now, she’s soaking up the sun in Mexico and learning how to surf; simply switching off running for a while.
It’s been a good time, she says, to step back and realise the enormous efforts of her crew and family on that race day a fortnight ago.
Having her mum, dad and aunt at the Western States start-line at Olympic Valley and the finish-line at Auburn, a small town in the heart of California’s historic gold rush country, made a world of difference to Croft this year.
“I was so grateful they’d come over; they don’t see me race very often,” she says.
While Croft’s dad, Frank, is one of her biggest fans, he had no idea of the massive scale of the race: “I think he thought it was more like a 5km Turkey Trot.”
Her family followed Croft, driving between the race’s 16 aid stations with Gaffuri at the wheel.
“My dad doesn’t know much about trail running except you should take salt tablets. He got in a bit of a panic state when he saw only one salt tablet in my ziplock bag for one aid station,” Croft laughs. “Martin had to put him in his place.”
Her race crew – Gaffuri and Americans Alex Varner and David Thompson – also guided her through Western States last year. (That's when they came up with the idea to dress as dinosaurs if she was winning this year's race). Croft calls them her “absolute rock stars”.
“Especially Martin,” she says. “He crews me for the day, but it’s also the days leading up to the race he’s helping. And I’m obviously a poor excuse for a human after the race, so once the crewing stops it’s not over for him.
“He’s brought a lot more purpose to my running as well. I do it for myself, but knowing he’s there and how invested he is in it, brings me more purpose.”
With heat in the canyons almost hitting 40 degrees Celsius, Croft’s crew made sure she had plenty of ice in her neck bandana, arm sleeves and backpack to cool her spinal cord, her arm sleeves and neck whenever she left an aid station.
Varner ran for 30km alongside her as a pacer during the race, keeping her entertained with talk of his dating life and vasectomies, Croft says. She later found out the stretch of race from Foresthill – at the 100km point of the race - down to the crossing of the American River at Rucky Chucky was the fastest any female has run in race history.
“He must have had some pretty good chats to get me that quick,” Croft says.
Going into her second attempt at Western States, she didn’t want to think about what time she might do.
“It can throw you off your race,” she says. She learned a lesson earlier this year when she unsuccessfully tried to break the race record in the 60km Kepler Challenge in Te Anau. “I wasn’t able to get into a good rhythm, I was always looking at my watch. It was really stressful and I didn’t enjoy it,” she says.
“At Western States, you have to go out there and run the course, run your own race, and not get caught up in what anyone else is doing.”
It worked. Her time of 17hr 21m 30s was 12 minutes faster than the time she set in 2021. And this time she finished 25 minutes ahead of her nearest rival.
It was a superb performance considering Croft’s troubled build-up to the race – she hurt her Achilles eight weeks before the start, then suffered two ankle sprains, and spent two days in bed with Covid.
Her coach, Kiwi mountain running legend Jonathan Wyatt, told her not to tell people she’d had the virus: “Because if you’re always telling people about it, it becomes something in your head,” Croft explains. “It’s a way of talking yourself out of the possibility of having a good race.”
Croft has put a lot of work into her mental skills this year, helping her to realise what she does has “got to be fun”.
It’s far removed from her years on a US college track and field scholarship, where running became something no longer enjoyed. It was then she moved to Taiwan to teach English, discovered trail running and became intrigued by a crazy race called Western States.
“It's taken a long time to get to where I am with the sport,” she says. “But again, it comes back to not taking anything too seriously about it.”
* Dirt Church Radio is a Kiwi trail running podcast hosted by Eugene Bingham and Matt Rayment. Learn more at dirtchurchradio.com
