In 2024, American Megan Eckert raced more than 2,100 miles. Indeed, the miles Eckert racked up during her races alone is a number many endurance runners would be pleased with for their entire annual mileage.
During all those miles, Eckert set a new women’s backyard ultra record at the Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra with a distance of 362 miles, or 87 yards (laps), and won each of the Snowdrop Ultra 55 Hour, the Saguaro Showdown Backyard Ultra, and Six Days in the Dome outright. She also worked as a middle school special education teacher in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and coached high school track and cross country.
This would be an extraordinary year for anyone, but maybe even more impressive for someone who in 2008 had signed up to run a five-kilometer race with a friend, did all of her training on a treadmill, and then didn’t show up to the start line because she was nervous about running outside.
Eckert’s ascension to the top of multiday running events was rapid, especially considering that after her DNS (did not start) at the 5k in 2008, she didn’t pick up running again until about 2016 when she was in her 30s. Things happened quickly after that. She raced a road half marathon in late 2016, followed it up by another half marathon three months later, and then made the leap to a trail marathon in May 2017. Since then, she’s competed in events ranging from shorter trail races to Six Days in the Dome, where in 2024, she ran some 526 miles to take the overall win.
Eckert’s story is far from the standard one of a high school and collegiate runner, but once she picked up running as an adult, an unceasing curiosity about what her body could do has, and continues, to drive her to see exactly how far she can go.
Megan Eckert at the 2024 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra. Photo: Alyssa Justice
Early Days of Running
Eckert grew up in Houston, Texas, and decidedly did not love running as a kid. While she played basketball and volleyball, which involved running for training, she readily admits, “Running wasn’t my favorite part of it.” She had a good reason for her dislike of running, and she explains, “I did track in junior high, and I had injured myself in the very first meet of the season. I tore a ligament in the back of my knee, and had eight weeks of physical therapy. So I always feared running.” She added, “My life was basketball. I didn’t want to do anything that could hurt that.”
Then there was the 5k in 2008 that her friend had talked her into training for and racing with her. After training on the treadmill in the gym for six months, Eckert was too intimidated to run the race. She says, “My friend and her boyfriend at the time, they went and did it. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m good with the treadmill in the gym, doing my two or three miles.’” She says, “I was too afraid to go outside,” and admits, “I think I was afraid of failure.”
She didn’t think about running again until 2016. Her return to running stemmed from a desire to get her life back on track after hitting a rough patch. “I wasn’t making healthy choices; I had gained quite a bit of weight and was a heavy drinker. I was trying to get down the right path again. Running was a stress outlet for a while.”
Megan Eckert running the 2024 Six Days in the Dome multiday race. All photos courtesy of Megan Eckert unless otherwise noted.
She started by running a couple of miles a day — outside this time. She’d met her now-husband in the same time period, and accepted his invitation to tag along for the 2016 Rock and Roll Half Marathon, which he was running with a friend in San Antonio, Texas. It was love at first run despite, or maybe because of, the course conditions. “I loved it. It was cold. It was raining. I think it was 37 or 38 degrees Fahrenheit in San Antonio. It was windy. It was not the most ideal running day.”
When Eckert reached the split where the marathon distance went in one direction and the half marathon turned toward home, she wanted to continue on the longer course. “I had no business doing the whole, but I really did want to keep going.” That half marathon was her first running race, and she was hooked. Wanting to improve her performance, she signed up for another half marathon three months later.
Discovering the Trails
In the three months between running her first half marathon and her second, Eckert got a pair of trail shoes and fell in with the local trail group, the Rockhoppers, based in San Antonio. Eckert explains that the group invited her to their group runs in the area. “They took me under their wing early on in my running.”
Eckert and her husband volunteered at a local race, and she immediately felt at home in the community. She says, “I loved the people. The race director was awesome. The volunteers were great. The runners were great.” Earning race credits for her volunteer work, Eckert signed up for a trail marathon in May 2017, her first marathon-distance event. She won the women’s category. She explains, “I felt so good that whole race. I was having so much fun out there. I was loving the course.”
Megan Eckert atop Mount Whitney in California.
Finishing the trail marathon in May, Eckert quickly signed up for her first 60k race in August of the same year. When Eckert says, “It escalated very quickly,” one could say that she’s making a bit of an understatement.
Her confidence and curiosity of how far she could go grew quickly. She explains, “I bailed on the 5k because I didn’t think I could do it, and then to see that I could do this half, and then I could do another, and then I could do a marathon … that’s when the questions started coming in of how far, and what can my body hold up to, and what is my body capable of.”
Coaching
In 2019, Eckert and her husband relocated to Santa Fe after falling in love with the trails there during a race. She continued work as a middle school teacher and started coaching cross country in 2022, and track in the spring of 2024.
She run commutes to school whenever possible, a distance of three miles each way. She says, “I try to minimize the number of days I drive in a month. I’m a special education teacher, so occasionally I’ll have to drive to bring some extra stuff for crafts or a laptop, but most days, I run commute.” There’s a striking similarity to Harvey Lewis, the 2023 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra winner, who is also a teacher and run commutes to school every day. Eckert is quick to say, “I am not Harvey. I don’t have a backpack with a laptop and all the stuff he hauls.”
Eckert’s school community supports her running, and her students take notice. She says, “The kids are like, ‘You’re that teacher that runs to work.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I also coach over at the high school, so when you’re old enough, you’ve got to come join.’”
Now at a bigger school than she coached at in Texas, and with far more running experience, Eckert’s coaching style has evolved to become more personalized for each of her student athletes. She says, “Some need the tough love; some need a more compassionate side.”
Eckert isn’t one to talk about herself much, and for several years, she kept her running achievements on the down-low around her school life. She says, “I was quiet about what I did outside of coaching. I didn’t talk too much about running. Then last year, a friend said, ‘Why are you not bringing this up to them? Why are you not talking to them about this?’ When the kids ask now, we discuss it.”
Eckert continues, “It’s an open-ended conversation. I’m not a fast person, and they’re running these 5ks, and they’re quick. Some of my kids are very fast, so it’s interesting to hear their perspectives on their running experience and their running development, because they are not the same as mine. I think we all find running uniquely and develop into a runner in our own way.”
Escalating to World Records
While Eckert hadn’t raced a backyard ultra-style event before 2024, she wasn’t a stranger to running long distances. Over the new year’s holiday as the year changed from 2022 to 2023, she raced the Snowdrop Ultra 55 Hour and was the first woman. She loved the event, and the fact that it was a fundraiser for pediatric cancer research and college scholarships for childhood cancer survivors. She returned to the next edition hoping to improve her performance, and that time, she was the overall winner.
Megan Eckert being crowned overall winner at the 2023 Snowdrop Ultra 55 Hour, which concluded on January 1, 2024.
Shortly after the event, someone mentioned that she might enjoy the backyard ultra format of racing, where racers have to line up every hour, on the hour, to complete a 4.167-mile loop. The last person to line up and complete a lap is the winner. It’s a format that’s as much of a mental game as a physical one.
The 2024 Saguaro Showdown Backyard Ultra in Mesa, Arizona, was a qualifier for the 2024 Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, the world championships of the backyard ultra format. The Saguaro Showdown would be just over a month after Eckert had run nearly 219 miles at Snowdrop. Nursing “a bit of an overuse injury” after Snowdrop, Eckert didn’t sign up immediately. She says, “I babied [the injury] for a few weeks. And then a week before the Sagauaro Showdown, right before registration closed, I was like, ‘I think I’m feeling a little better. I can do this.’”
She signed up for the event about eight days beforehand and then won overall with 65 laps and 270.8 miles.
She says, “I felt good early on in that race — just good energy. I loved everything about the course and the people, so I rode that. I hung on to the good vibes for almost the entirety of the race.” The run qualified her for Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in October.
Just nine months after completing her first backyard ultra, Eckert completed 87 laps at Big Dog’s, earning her the position of Assist, or the last person to drop before the winner completes their final lap. A seized calf on lap 88 was her ultimate downfall, and she was forced to turn back after the first half mile. But the distance broke the prior women’s backyard ultra record, held by Jennifer Russo, by 51 miles, or 13 laps.
Eckert is convinced she can go further, and says she was surprised by her injury, “I was feeling great. I had even told my crew a few yards [laps] before my calves seized, ‘If I can get to the night, I know I can make it to the next morning … I was feeling good.” She goes on to say, “It was very unexpected for me to not complete lap 88 and to walk back.”
Megan Eckert at the 2024 Saguaro Showdown Backyard Ultra.
Looking Forward
Eckert’s student athletes were racing back in New Mexico the same weekend as the Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra, and knew their coach couldn’t be there with them because she was running her own race. Eckert says, “When I got back, [the students said,] ‘You ran multiple of our races in a row!’ I think they do grasp what an ultra is. And they ask questions. They’re inquisitive. They want to know.”
It’s hard to imagine that Eckert isn’t planting the seeds that will sprout lifetime runners by sharing her experiences with her students. And while she coaches others, Eckert isn’t one to follow a structured training plan, saying, “I don’t work with a coach. I don’t even follow a plan. Everything is very loose.” Continuing, she says, I’ve always just gone out and run what I feel like. The more experienced I become, the less I follow any structure. Early on, I remember I got Bryon Powell’s book, ‘Relentless Forward Progress.’”
Whatever Eckert’s running plan is, or isn’t, it seems to be working. Once again, she started 2025 at the Snowdrop Ultra 55 Hour and hopes to return to Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra again in 2025. She’s on the at-large list for the event this year with her 87 laps, which means she’s qualified unless enough people run farther during qualifying events throughout the year.
She says, “If somebody bumps me off, I understand, but I hope that it is enough because to get there on the at-large list, to be a part of that 75-person event, would be a dream.”
When asked about her goal if she gets the opportunity to return, she says, “I would like to see if I could hold the overall [record] at some point.”
She finishes by saying, “I think a lot of it would be taking what I learned on the course last year and my strengths and then catering to them, because there were some errors I made in attacking the course that I think led to being forced to stop at lap 88. So, if I tweak a few things … It would be a challenge, but I think I could get there.”
Call for Comments
- Have you followed Megan Eckert’s career?
- What part of it has been most impressive to you?
