Sarah Barker
Deadspin
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Past articles by Sarah:
Real Cross Country Delivers Real Redemption
Jakob Larsen, director of Danish Athletics, revealed at the pre-race press conference that the guiding concept behind the design of the 2019 World Cross Country Championships course was a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee. “That’s not a knife; this is a knife,” says our man of the outback in the film’s most memorable scene. Thus, this is not a cross country course: → Read More
Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Takes On The World's Most Sadistic Endurance Race
Gary Cantrell clanged a bell at 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, signaling 70 runners to jog off into the woods on his farm in Tennessee. They had an hour to complete a 4.1667-mile loop trail. Easy. Most of the group finished with 15 minutes to spare. The bell clanged again at 7:40 a.m., and they ran it again. And at 8:40 a.m., and 9:40 a.m., and every hour after that until, one by one, they… → Read More
Yuki Kawauchi, The World's Most Famous Amateur Runner, Explains Why He's Finally Going Pro
As soon as they’d had a chance to mop the sweat or rinse the vomit out of their mouth, the top finishers of the Chicago Marathon stiffly climbed to the stage in the media center to answer reporters’ questions that generally elicited thanks to the Chicago Marathon for putting on such a great race and magnanimous credit to the competition and the crowds for their victory. → Read More
"You Can Come Back From The Dead": How An Average Guy Runs 200 Miles
Travis McCathie is an average 37-year-old, and yet, on August 13, he finished the Bigfoot 200 Endurance Run. On foot. At one go. It took him 82 hours and three minutes. Bigfoot is actually 206.5 miles (ultras are almost always longer than the stated number) of punishing trail with 42,000 feet of ascent (Everest is 29,000 feet) in the outback of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Maybe he can’t be… → Read More
Gwen Jorgensen Wants To Be The Best In The World. Again.
Endurance athletes, triathletes and distance runners, are a humble lot—hardworking, long suffering, and taught to endure not only punishing workouts, but years of incremental improvements with little, if any, monetary reward or recognition. Humility, patience, and persistence are the hallmarks of the endurance athlete. Predictably, there are rafts of pro runners and triathletes grinding away… → Read More
Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Explains Why She Runs Through Blindness And Hallucinations
Courtney Dauwalter is a real nice girl, but competitive. She’s 33 now and married, and living in Golden, Colo., but she grew up in Hopkins, Minn. where she was one heck of an athlete—ran track and cross country, did nordic skiing, went to state a few times. One thing led to another, and now she’s into ultra running, crazy long distances: 100 miles, 200 miles. → Read More
How An Inner-City Minnesota High School Built a Girls’ Badminton Dynasty
Bao Nhia Thao is maybe 5-foot-2, with an enigmatic smile—smooth and benign. → Read More
Boston's Weather Broke Scores Of Elite Runners, But Not Old Man Abdi Abdirahman
Despite miserable weather, 95 percent of of the 27,042 common folk who started Monday’s Boston Marathon eventually crossed the finish line. The whippets up front proved less stalwart: two-thirds of the elite men’s field dropped out. One who didn’t was 41-year-old Tucson resident, Abdi Abdirahman. He finished 15th, first in the Master’s category, in 2:28:18. → Read More
A Decade In Kenya Turned Two Teens From New Zealand Into World-Class Runners
The plan had seemed so simple when it was hatched in their mom’s basement. But as the plane was landing in Nairobi, the scabby ground growing closer, 18-year-old Zane leaned over to his twin brother and said, “Jake, what are we going to do?” → Read More
Yuki Kawauchi Can Teach You How To Run
At just 30 years old, Yuki Kawauchi is in a distance running category of his own. As of January 1, he has run the most sub-2:20 marathons of anyone, ever—76. He’s also run the most sub-2:12 marathons of anyone, ever—25. Kawauchi—one guy—has run more sub-2:10 marathons since 2011 than the whole United States put together. Kawauchi’s best time for 2017—2:09:18—was two seconds faster than the… → Read More
Diane Nukuri's Long Run To Freedom
“My brother used to cover for me, and tell my mom I was visiting my grandma when I was out running,” says Diane Nukuri. “But people in the village would tell on me—‘I saw your daughter running. Such a shame.’” → Read More
How A Small-Time Training Group And An Army Program Changed American Distance Running
Warmed up and stripped down, 15 blade-thin runners milled on the track, game-faced, gathering themselves. A few words between them, Swahili and English—“20 seconds ... 10 …”—and the amorphous group coalesced into a single-file line, shuffling. Scott Simmons had not finished saying, “Go!” when the first in line clicked his watch, ducked his head, and sprang forward, the same sudden animation… → Read More
How Up-And-Coming Runner Hannah Fields Found Her Groove
Carolyn Helker’s daughter, Hannah, is quite competitive. She gets that from her father, Eddy. When Hannah was young, her dad coached her soccer team and challenged the kids to juggle a soccer ball 100 times. Knob-kneed and determined, Hannah did it. Then he sweetened the deal, saying he’d pay anyone who could juggle the ball 1,000 times $100. “He should have known better,” Carolyn says now. → Read More
The Curious Case Of Ajee Wilson's Positive Drug Test
Indoor American 800-meter record holder Ajee Wilson was stripped of that record for testing positive for zeranol, a prohibited substance that’s listed under Anabolic Agents. But according to USADA, Wilson will not serve a suspension because it was determined the source of the zeranol was beef that had been raised with the growth-promoting hormone which she ate “without fault or negligence.” → Read More
Lack Of Testosterone Limits Leads To Debate Over Transgender High School Athlete
Fifteen-year-old Cromwell High School freshman Andraya Yearwood won the girls’ 100-meter and 200-meter races at the Connecticut Class M track meet. In middle school, Yearwood competed as a boy. The transgender athlete intends to pursue hormonal treatment and sex reassignment surgery, but was able to compete without suppression of testosterone, in accordance with Connecticut’s high school rules. → Read More
The Full-Court Pressure Of The Somali-American Sportswoman
Most Twin Cities high school cross country and track teams have Somali students on the roster. Some of these prep runners have gone on to successful college and even professional running careers, like former Minneapolis South runner Hassan Mead, who represented the U.S. at the Rio Olympics. → Read More
Edna Kiplagat Is Incredible
It was about 4 p.m. in Iten, Kenya when Edna Kiplagat got hold of me on Skype. The connection was poor, so she tried different locations—the front porch, outside her farmhouse, before settling in the living room, comfortable and pretty with tiles on the walls, and pictures. Two of her five children, Carlos, 13, and Wendy, 9, had gotten home from school and were supposed to be doing their… → Read More
The Case For Being A Selfish Bastard Runner
“One selfless London Marathon runner sacrificed his own race to help a physically exhausted fellow runner across the finishing line,” wrote The Telegraph. → Read More
Nike's Two-Hour-Long Eliud Kipchoge Documentary Was Beautiful
Nike’s Breaking2 campaign was unsuccessful. → Read More
The Brutality Of The Barkley Marathons
Canadian endurance runner Gary Robbins had been running—which is to say, sliding, clawing, and bushwhacking, with a bit of sleep-deprived hallucination thrown in—through the unforgiving outback of Frozen Head State Park for more than 59 hours straight. With all 13 book pages in his pack and only maybe twenty minutes of running left, he calculated he’d make it, he’d actually finish the infamous… → Read More