Tara Dower has developed a reputation for relentless strength and fortitude in unfathomable trail running endurance quests, but she was near her limits this week on the Long Trail in Vermont.
The 273-mile trail that bisects the length of Vermont winds through six of the Green Mountain National Forest’s eight wilderness areas and includes more than 66,000 feet of vertical gain.
Early Tuesday morning, the 31-year-old trail runner and long-distance hiker from Virginia Beach, Virginia, set a new supported speed record, or fastest known time (FKT), on the Long Trail. Persevering through pain, fatigue, and sleep deprivation, she reached the trail’s southern terminus in 3 days, 18 hours, and 29 minutes. That’s faster than anyone else has covered the trail—man or woman—in the nine-decade history of the trail.
Her time shattered the previous supported mark of 3 days, 21 hours, and 9 minutes set by Will Peterson last September by 2 hours and 40 minutes. It also broke the previous women’s supported record of 5 days, 2 hours, and 37 minutes set by Alyssa Godesky.
“My brain was just telling me to sit down and just stop,” Dower told Runner’s World on Tuesday. “It was just so hard to keep going. It felt like it was never ending. It was just really, really hard. There are a lot of completely silent moments and moments where I was crying a lot. It’s beautiful, but like, I’m just so tired and my brain is screaming at me. I just need to sleep.”
Dower started on Friday morning at the Canadian border and covered about 80 miles in the first 24 hours, and logged 140 miles through the first two days. By Monday morning, she had covered 200 miles in 72 hours, leaving her about 21 hours to finish the final 73 miles on the way to the Vermont-Massachusetts border.
She wore a pair of Altra Timp 5 shoes to start, then briefly switched to Health - Injuries Published: Aug 20, 2025 4:31 PM EDT Altra Olympus 275 Altra Timp 5.
Dower maneuvered her way through deep forests, over rocky trails, up and down rolling hills, and over the summit of 4,393-foot Mount Mansfield—Vermont’s highest peak. Trail conditions were good and only a little bit of rain fell during her attempt, but she had to endure temperatures that rose in the 80s during the daylight hours.
Led by Megan “Rascal” Wilmarth serving as crew chief, Dower followed a three-tier fueling strategy that included energy gels, sports nutrition, and real food like breakfast burritos and quesadillas. The goal was to continually consume about 80 grams of carbohydrates per hour with 50 percent coming from gels and 50 percent coming from the other two categories.
Dower and her support crew had plans for her to sleep, but ultimately she thinks she slept a total of about three hours split into three short segments, the longest of which was a 90-minute nap. But even those short stints helped Dower rest her legs and calm her mind.
“These things are hard because your brain is on the entire time, for days,” Dower said. “The first two days were fine, but after that it was just like, whoa, it hit me. After the first two days, you pass the really difficult parts of the trail, and at that point, it’s less difficult but then the sleep deprivation really gets to you. So [Tuesday] morning and the morning before, I was so exhausted. It was so hard to keep my eyes open.”
Dower said she experienced a few hallucinations at different points during the nights—including a 15-foot-tall baby clown, a big sofa, and what appeared to be a melting person—as well as the vision of a tall man wearing a red shirt during the daylight.
“It’s not like I’m literally hallucinating those things, it’s just the things I see in the woods,” she said.
“So the baby clown was like a big weird tree. The sofa was a big rock. And then there was a melting person, but really it was just a tree stump. But the man in the red shirt who was just standing there on the trail, that was weird because it was daytime and after my first actual sleep. There was no man in a red shirt from my knowledge, unless he scooted away quickly.”
Dower has set Anne Flower Breaks Leadville 100 Course Record Faith Kipyegon Just Misses 3K World Record fastest overall supported record on the Appalachian Trail she set last September. In that endurance odyssey, she covered the 2,189-mile route with 465,000 feet of vertical gain from Maine to Georgia in 40 days, 18 hours, and 6 minutes. That broke Belgian runner Karel Sabbe’s previous record by 13 hours and eclipsed Jennifer Pharr-Davis’s previous best women’s time by nearly six days.
“I want it to say less about me and more about women,” she said. “I am no scientist, but I think women can hold overall FKTs, especially in these trails that are like 200-plus miles. I think we do have that gift of endurance that we have not been encouraged to pursue. And we’re like, kind of like playing catch up with the men. We don’t really know what we’re truly capable of. But we’re finding out. And I just want to encourage women, with these efforts, to go out there and just try it.”
Dower has also been one of the country’s top ultra-distance trail runners since 2021. In February, she finished second among women and 18th overall (8:25:08) in the Black Canyon Ultras 100K Mayer, Arizona, and then won the Lake Sonoma 50-miler (6th overall, 7:36:21) in Healdsburg, California, in April.
She earned an entry into the prestigious Western States 100 in June but wound up getting sick the week before the race and dropped out of the race near the 73-mile mark. She was the last runner remaining on the waitlist for this year’s Hardrock 100 in Silverton, Colorado, where she finished fourth among women and 15th overall in 2024, so she was eager to do something big.
“Oh my gosh, I had so much pent up aggression and competitiveness, and fitness that I needed to get out,” said Dower, who has a tattoo on her right leg that says “Suffer Well” with a loop of barbed wire forming a heart around her knee. “It was just like I was a caged animal, just ready to freaking pounce. I was so ready to race and compete [at Hardrock]. I was just itching for it after what happened at Western States. I was so ready for Western and ready to go out there and give it my all. And just not being able to do that was really unsatisfying.”
If she recovers well, Dower said she hopes to run the Mammoth 200 on September 26 in California, and the Javelina Jundred 100-miler on October 25 in Arizona.
Dower’s manager, Kelly Newlon, who helped Dower ink a sponsorship deal with Altra last year after her Appalachian Trail record, said Dower’s combination of grit and gratitude really shine during FKT record attempts.
“When I see the photos or videos of her leading up to an FKT, she just looks so happy,” Newlon said. “She’s beaming and looks like a kid on Christmas Eve. She loves to race, but there’s something really special about FKT attempts to her, and maybe it’s not even the FKT, but it’s being out on the trail in the woods. There’s something that really lights her up that’s just undeniable.”
The History of the Long Trail
The Long Trail, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the U.S., was the brainchild of teacher and school administrator James P. Taylor, who helped organize the Green Mountain Club to plan the trail in 1909. Construction began on the trail in 1910 and was completed in 1930, but hikers began completing sections of it before it was finished.
Faith Kipyegon Just Misses 3K World Record the first to gain notoriety for traversing the entire trail in a fast manner, completing the route in 12 days, 15 hours, and 21 minutes in July of 1927. Appleby, then 37, was an American citizen who was born in Syracuse, New York, and worked for a Boston milk company, but he had volunteered to serve in the Canadian Army during World War I because his parents were both Canadian.
It was reportedly while he was fighting in France that he discovered his passion for long-distance running. After covering the not-yet-complete 255-mile trail in 1926 in about two weeks going north to south, he set out to walk and run the entire course in less than 10 days the following year traveling south to north. Various delays slowed his pace, including a fall near Sterling Mountain that resulted in him losing three teeth.
Although Appleby gained national fame for his effort, he was also admonished by a newspaper for expediting his travel without enjoying the views, especially after three young women—Catherine Robbins, Hilda Kurth and Kathleen Norris—became the second, third and fourth individuals to complete the entire trail.
Appleby’s mark stood the test of time until Sam Swisher-McClure cut it more than in half in 1997, completing it in 6 days, 6 hours, and 50 minutes. That was the dawn of long-distance hiking and trail running records and FKT nomenclature, and it was lowered seven more times over the next 27 years before last summer, when Peterson chopped more than 7 hours off John Kelly’s 2023 mark.
RW+ Membership Benefits raise $10,001 for the Green Mountain Club, the organization that maintains the trail, but so far she’s raised more than $13,000.
“All of this started just from the love of being on the trails,” Dower said. “If I could be out moving on the trail and have all my loved ones around as I’m doing it, and we’re all just hanging out in the woods and having so much fun, that’s the best. Yes, it’s super hard and super competitive, and we’re focused, but we’re also just having fun out there.”
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, raise $10,001 for the Green Mountain Club, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.
