Living an Entire Lifetime in One Day

While some might unwind from the stress of practicing law and raising three teenagers with a book or a glass of wine, Katie S. Roth runs. And runs. And runs. More miles than you might imagine. Over the past decade, the 48-year-old appellate attorney with Pipes Miles Beckman in New Orleans has run the 26.2 miles of five conventional marathons, as well as more than a dozen longer events, ranging from 30 to 100 miles. 

It wasn’t always like this. Roth had run cross-country in high school. Then she’d gone to college and law school, passed the bar, got married. The longest run she’d done since high school was a 5-mile Turkey Trot in New Orleans. But once she did her first half-marathon in the early aughts, she was hooked on distance.

She kept adding miles. More half-marathons, then full marathons. Loads of training miles. Things really took off in 2016 after she watched The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, a documentary about the notoriously difficult ultramarathon in rural Tennessee that had been completed by only 20 runners in 30 years. She marveled at the vulnerability and bravery of the participants, what they were willing to endure, how much they pushed themselves despite the likelihood of never finishing. “It’s all about what each individual can achieve,” she says. “That documentary lit a fire under me.”

One quote in particular from the race director resonated: “You can’t really see how much you can do until you try to do something that’s more.”

She vowed to find out for herself. Her first test was The North Face Endurance Challenge, a 50K race in San Francisco. It’s a hard course, winding through the Marin Headlands and Muir Woods. It hurt. But it was also beautiful, with striking ocean views along the way and the Golden Gate Bridge at the finish. “I had a really fun day out in a beautiful place,” she says. “I discovered I could do more.”

So she kept signing up for longer and longer races, ultimately running the Rocky Raccoon 100 outside Houston in 2021. Covering 100 miles, she says, is like living an entire lifetime in one day. “It’s joy, despair, introspection, loneliness, fellowship, happiness, anxiety, confidence—a reflection of everything you live,” she says. 

All of which makes the endorphin rush of reaching the end especially sweet. “The first time you cross the finish line of a 100-mile race, it’s an incredible feeling,” she says. “I felt it no less the second time [at the Kettle Moraine 100 in Wisconsin].” All of these thoughts swirled through her mind: “I’m so relieved this is over. I wanted to quit so many times, but I didn’t. I’m glad I stuck it out. This is an enormous accomplishment. I’m proud of myself.”

Running long distances inevitably involves suffering. For Roth, there was the 100-mile race in which she started questioning all of her life choices at mile 13. There were the two “Baby Barkleys”—a fifth the distance of the big one—during which she cursed the documentary that had started all of this. Then there was the time she was about 20 hours into the R2R2R (rim to rim to rim) hike in the Grand Canyon when she was vomiting and felt completely defeated. She joked darkly to her husband, “I’ve had a good life. Just leave me here on the trail to die.”

He didn’t and she didn’t, and when they finished, she once again felt the satisfaction of her accomplishment. With time, the pain receded in her memory, and Roth was ready to sign up for another ultramarathon event. 

So many other times she’s been miserable during an event and told herself, Never again. “Maybe it’s like childbirth—or childrearing,” she says. “You forget the negative experiences. There are always positives, and those are what you remember.”

Those positives include the bond forged with kindred spirits met along the way, sharing so many hours and stories, and, of course, the feeling of redemption at the finish line. All those help Roth keep pushing through and draw her back to another starting line.

She knows pushing herself to these extremes falls outside the norm. “People assume there’s something wrong with me. They ask, ‘What are you running from?’” she says. “But I think I’m running toward a healthy and whole version of myself.”