McDougall explains that Leadville is “hunkered in a valley two miles up in the Colorado Rockies” and is the “highest city in North America and, many days, the coldest” (57). The Leadville Trail 100 was created in 1982 by Ken Chlouber, an out-of-work miner, despite being advised against it by the town’s leading physician. Following the closure of the mine that employed the majority of the men in town in the early-1980s, Chlouber attempted to boost the town’s tourism by highlighting its reputation for toughness and grit. According to McDougall, the Leadville Trail 100 boils down to “nearly four full marathons, half of them in the dark, with twin twenty-six-hundred-foot climbs smack in the middle. Leadville’s starting line is twice as high as the altitude where planes pressurize their cabins, and from there you only go up” (60). McDougall also points out that because less than half of the field of runners finish the race each year, it “tends to attract a rare breed of athlete” (60).

In August of 1992, Fisher’s Tarahumara friend rounded up five runners from his village who agreed to travel to Colorado with Fisher and compete in his race in exchange for corn. Along with 290 other competitors, the Tarahumara runners started the Leadville Trail 100 at 4 a.m., but each one had dropped out of the race even before the halfway point. Fisher saw their poor performance as his fault because he had given them basketball sneakers to wear and failed to instruct them on the particulars of the race, such as the fact that they could eat at the aid stations and how to correctly use flashlights, which they had never seen before (63). On the trip back to Mexico, however, Fisher ultimately determined that “just because you’re a Tarahumara runner doesn’t mean you’re a great Tarahumara runner” (63). In fact, he was partially correct because his friend had purposely gathered five runners who were more easily accessible and more comfortable with outsiders.

Fisher asked his friend to try again, and a new team of Tarahumara runners headed back to Colorado the following year. The new team, consisting of a 55-year-old grandfather, a man in his forties, and two young runners, immediately scavenged old tires at the town dump to cut and mold into running sandals. The Tarahumara runners once again started at the back of the pack, but by mile 40 the two older runners began passing everyone as they climbed the mountain, and by mile 60 they were flying past the aid stations (64-65). The two older runners finished first and second, and Manuel Luna finished fifth despite losing his sandals at mile 83. McDougall explains that “the Tarahumara hadn’t just gone from last to first; they’d done serious damage to the record book in the process” (65). A Tarahumara runner was now not only the oldest winner in race history but also its youngest finisher and “Team Tarahumara” was the only squad to ever grab three of the top five spots” (65).

McDougall begins Chapter 11 explaining that “Fisher promised that Team Tarahumara would be back next year, and that was the magic wand that transformed Leadville from a little-known gruelathon into a major media event” (67). Soon sports media outlets across America were contacting Ken Chlouber for information on the Tarahumara and wondering if anyone could beat them. His response was that yes, “Annie can” (66). He was speaking of Ann Trason, a 33-year-old community college teacher from California, who took up trail running because she hated running on an oval track and soon found that she could run incredible distances by relaxing into the run.

Rather than entering marathons, Trason began searching for interesting trail ultramarathons and ended up winning the Western States 100, “the Super Bowl of trail-running,” 14 times (70). McDougall points out that she had won races on three different continents, had smashed records at three different distances, and once won the World Ultra Title, the Western States, and Leadville all in the same month (71). However, according to McDougall, one prize kept alluding Trason: “for years, Ann could never win a major ultra outright. She’d beaten every man and woman in the field in plenty of smaller races, but when it came to the top showdowns, at least one man had always beaten her by a few minutes” (71).

The 1994 the Leadville race was accompanied by a swirl of media attention not only because of the amazing performance of Team Tarahumara the previous year but also because Trason had committed to competing as well. Another reason for media attention was that a perceived “Battle of the Sexes” in ultrarunning was taking shape thanks to Fisher’s brash style and some of his controversial statements. According to McDougall, “the Tarahumara are actually an extraordinarily egalitarian society,” but Fisher made the comment that “they don’t lose to women” and “don’t plan to start now” (73). In addition to the controversy he caused, Fisher was also missing his two top finishers from the previous year and added unnecessary pressure on his runners by alienating the ultra community. Fisher also angered the executives at Rockport Shoes, who had paid to sponsor Team Tarahumara, because he had promised that his runners would promote the company. A Rockport executive commented that “you had these really gentle people being managed by the worst of American culture” (76).

In Chapter 13, McDougall introduces readers to Dr. Joe Vigil, a track coach at Adams State College who had won 26 NCAA titles and who he describes as “the greatest distance-running mind America has ever seen” (78). Vigil was at the 1994 Leadville race because he could not figure out why women could compete with men in ultras but not in shorter distances, such as the mile or even a marathon, and why ultrarunners did not seem to have the injuries common to runners of shorter distances. Vigil knew that something out of the ordinary was happening in ultramarathons like Leadville, and because he had recently been named the long-distance running coach of the U.S. Olympic Team he needed to witness it. McDougall argues that he knew it was not about speed, rather “what Vigil was dying for was a look inside their heads” (80).

As the race began, spectators were shocked to see that the Tarahumara team came with a new strategy this year—surging to the front instead of hanging in the back. At mile 40, Trason had taken the lead, not only more than an hour ahead of last year’s pace but also marking the first time a woman had ever led by this point of the race. Two Tarahumara runners, Martimano Cervantes and Juan Herrera, were only a minute behind her when all three runners checked in to the mandatory medical exam station. At the medical station, Fisher’s controversial comments came into play psychologically as Trason was clearly focused and even resorted to some trash talk, a tactic that rarely, if ever, happened in ultras. In closing the chapter, McDougall compares Trason’s risky strategy of staying in front to a chess match, writing that she was letting the Tarahumara be the predator rather than the prey. He argues that “ultrarunning was about to see its first Queen’s Gambit” (84).

McDougall begins Chapter 14 discussing Coach Vigil’s thoughts on what he was witnessing between the Tarahumara and Trason. According to the author, Vigil liked that “ultrarunning had no science, no playbook, no training manual, no conventional wisdom” (85). He argues that “Vigil knew that if he could understand Ann Trason, he’d grasp what one amazing person can do. But if he could understand the Tarahumara, he’d know what everyone could do” (86). When Trason reached Hope Pass, the 12,600-foot peak and centerpiece of the race, she was still leading but could see at least three Tarahumara runners gaining on her. When the Tarahumara reached Hope Pass, they were startled to find a giant herd of people with llamas there to offer them aid and hot soup. The herd is known as the Hopeless Crew, “an army of eighty-some strong llama owners and friends” who camp there and party for two days every year in the case that injured runners need help (87).

McDougall explains that at the 50-mile point of the race, runners are allowed to pick up a “mule” to run alongside them the rest of the way, acting as a personal pit crew (88). Trason’s mule would be her husband Carl, but the Tarahumara had to depend on a few locals Fisher was able to recruit before the race. Martimano Cervantes and Juan Herrera, the strongest Tarahumara runners, were depending on a character McDougall refers to only as “Shaggy” to not only show up but also to be able to actually run (88). At the 60-mile mark, Trason had opened a 12-minute lead. Although much of the amazement of other runners was her record-shattering pace, Chlouber was instead struck by the fact that Martimano and Juan were not grimacing in agony at this point, rather they were laughing “like kids playing in a leaf pile” (90).

As Coach Vigil continued to watch the race, he began to notice the Tarahumara were revealing the secret he came there to discover—love. McDougall argues “that was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running” (92). However, Vigil believed that the contemporary American approach to running had become artificial because everyone seemed to do it to get something out of it. McDougall points out that it was not always like that, suggesting that American marathoners in the 1970s were like the Tarahumara, running for joy and not relying on modern equipment. According to McDougall, “American distance running went into a death spiral precisely when cash entered the equation” (94).

Vigil wanted to find a natural born runner to study and then transplant the way they trained, lived, and thought back into American running culture (94-95). The perfect prototype for Vigil was Emil Zatopek, the famed Czech Olympic champion (95). Zatopek’s love of running was evident not only in how he trained but also in how he competed. McDougall explains that “instead of tapering and peaking, he jumped into as many meets as he could find” (96). At the 1952 Helsinki Summer Games, Zatopek won gold in record breaking time in the 5,000 meters, won gold in record breaking time in the 10,000 meters, and won gold in the marathon despite never having competed in the event before. He remains as the only athlete in history to win all three events at a single Olympic Games. 

At mile 70, Martimano developed pain in his knee, so Shaggy told Juan and his pacer to go ahead and leave the mentor back with him. By this time, Trason’s lead had increased to 22 minutes with only 28 miles remaining (102). To overtake Trason, Juan would need to take nearly a minute from her on every mile, and he would also be doing so on a seven-mile stretch of asphalt, a surface that he had never touched before (102). Just as Juan was closing the gap, he had to stop to repair a sandal, but eventually rebounded to pass Trason and win in 17 hours and 30 minutes, a new course record by 25 minutes (104). Trason finished second in 18 hours and six minutes, a still-standing female course record; Martimano finished third; Manuel Luna finished fourth; and the remaining Tarahumara runners finished fifth, seventh, tenth, and eleventh, respectively (104).

McDougall argues that this should have been the Tarahumara’s moment, “they had proven themselves, indisputably, the greatest ultrarunners on earth” (104). Instead, however, “they’d stepped off of the racecourse and into a shit storm” (104). Immediately after the race, Fisher demanded that Rockport executives pay more money to use pictures of the Tarahumara. He then started making wild accusations that the race directors had attempted to fix the race to favor Trason and that one of his runners had been drugged. McDougall writes that “faced with anger and hostility, the world’s greatest underground athletes reacted as they always had; they headed back home to their canyons, fading like a dream and taking their secrets with them” (106). In closing the chapter, he divulges that the Tarahumara’s new friend Shaggy followed them home and later became known as Caballo Blanco (106).