One of the things that Tara Dower emphasized in her interview about her overall supported fastest known time (FKT) on the 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail (AT) was the importance of her crew and how her crew chief, Megan Wilmarth, more commonly known by her trail name, Rascal, was so pivotal in her success. In this phone interview, Rascal gives her side of the story of this effort and what it was like to support her friend, emotionally and physically, in such a massive undertaking.
For 40 days, Rascal, Dower’s mom, Debbie Komlo, and a handful of dedicated friends chased Dower along the AT, waking up at 3 a.m., meeting her upward of six times a day to make sure she had everything she needed, switching out pacers, handling logistics, and troubleshooting any issues that came up.
In what can only be described as a team effort, Team Chump Change, as they called themselves, made history by keeping Dower fed, healthy, motivated, and moving down the trail. The run is a testament to the power of teamwork, friendship, and the importance of having people in your corner who believe in you.
In addition to touching on how she and Dower became friends while hiking the AT in 2019, Rascal talks about how she rearranged her life to crew Dower’s FKT, how she set mileage goals that got Dower back from a 100-plus-mile deficit on the record pace, how she had to play the bad cop, and how Dower’s mom ultimately stepped in on the final night to provide the pep talk of a lifetime. In a sport where everything seems increasingly professionalized, Rascal tells a story of friends and family achieving great things together.
This interview has been gently edited for readability and length.
Tara Dower (right) and Megan Wilmarth aka Rascal (left) at the northern end of the Appalachian Trail ready to start the FKT attempt. All photos courtesy of Rascal and Tara Dower unless otherwise noted.
iRunFar: Hey, Rascal! First of all, I’d love to know your background with the Appalachian Trail. Tara said that you and she met in Pennsylvania when you were both thru-hiking, and I’d love to know the origin of the name Rascal.
Megan Wilmarth (aka Rascal): I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2019. It was my second backpacking trip ever, and I just got the idea in my head. I saw someone else do it that I knew via the internet and was like, “Oh, that looks kind of cool,” I like to spend time outside. I went to wilderness camp as a kid, so I said, “It’s the same thing.” It’s not the same thing. But I quickly learned and adapted, which was pivotal for my life. It’s only been six years, but I cannot foresee myself changing how I live.
And so we met, yes, it was the middle of Pennsylvania, just south of Lehigh Gap. And I remember I was already camped at the shelter for the evening, just hanging out with all these other hikers, and Tara comes — I like to over-dramatize it; she says it wasn’t this dramatic — but she comes running down the hill, and she’s like, “Does anyone know where the water is? I need to get water.”
I was intrigued by this other female on the trail because the trail’s demographic is mostly men. It’s really hard to find a niche as a female hiker who likes to do a lot of miles, and that’s how I enjoy the trail. I was like, “Huh, I wonder what her story is. What’s going on?”
I hiked on and off with Tara and her trail family through New Hampshire and then Maine. I settled on, I’m finishing the trail with these people. I’m not just going to hike with them every other day. I’m going to be with them every day. And so we summited [Mount] Katahdin together. It was a really special moment; we’ve been best friends ever since.
This is what happens: She calls me up, and she says, “I want to do this crazy thing.” And I’m like, “Sure, why not?” And then I call her up, and I’m like, “I’m thinking about doing this crazy thing.” And she’s like, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Rascal (left) and Tara (right) enjoying miles together on the AT.
iRunFar: So crewing somebody for a 40-day effort like this one is a more serious commitment than some relationships. [laughs] How did you come to occupy your August and September with this?
Rascal: [laughs] I guess it goes back to 2020. I helped Tara crew her first FKT on the Mountains to Sea Trail.
I am a seasonal person. I work seasonally. I live in places seasonally. I always find myself with gaps in time. For the Mountains to Sea Trail, I had decided I would move to Vermont and get a job and all this stuff. And she calls me up, and she’s like, “I’m going to run this 1,000-plus-mile trail, and I need help.” The more I thought about it, the more I thought, Well, I guess I could just pause the move and help her.
I showed up for the Mountains to Sea Trail about 10 days into the effort, and I just really enjoyed pushing her and pushing myself and figuring out the logistics on the fly. We were both so brand new to everything. Things went so wrong every day, and we had to fight to figure it out. In the end, we were both like, “Okay, it was hard, but we had a lot of fun. We made a lot of memories and learned a lot about ourselves and each other, so it was worth it.”
About a year and a half ago, Tara said, “Rascal, I’m going to run the AT. What are you doing?” And I was like, “Oh, absolutely not.” My plan was, in the summer of 2023, to only hike the Colorado Trail, and then in the summer of 2024, I was going to do the Continental Divide Trail. Somehow, the trail and my life and everything just rearranged itself, and then three and a half weeks later, I left to hike the Continental Divide Trail.
Once the attempt started, initially, I was only going to stay for about 28 or 29 days out of the attempt because I had a wedding to attend. I just got this feeling: Rascal, you need to stay. Rascal, you need to finish this out. Do you really want to not be at Springer [Mountain] when this whole thing ends?
That’s how I got roped into it, and that’s how I ended up staying the whole time.
Tara (top right), Rascal (bottom left), and the rest of the crew.
iRunFar: It’s super cool to hear you talk about how you rearranged your whole life for Tara. There’s something unique about the relationships people develop through long-trail hiking that is hard to replicate in mainstream society. Do you have anything to say about that?
Rascal: I have millions. You’re not wrong. It’s tough to take those first steps away from society and away from the social norms and the way that everyone wants you to settle down in one spot, get a job, whatever. But when you keep stepping away, you realize how easy it is to get away. And then when you realize the benefit you get out of it, from the experience of specifically being out on the trail and traveling by foot, and the people you meet out there.
Thru-hiking has this beautiful communal aspect. You can meet a stranger out there and hike with them for five miles and know more about them than you know about someone back home in the city you’ve known for three years. The vulnerability out there is so easy to tap into. That’s why people like me have decided to rearrange their lives so that they can have more experiences and meet more people like that.
iRunFar: What you just said about relationships and vulnerability, and just the separateness that you have when you’re on the trail with people thru-hiking, I think that will resonate with iRunFar readers who are trail runners and ultrarunners and used to being out on the trail with others for a long run or race. But then you multiply that by 40 days in this case or five or six months in the case of a traditional thru-hike. Is that an okay thing to say?
Rascal: Yeah. Thinking about the group runs I go on here in Salt Lake City [Utah, where I live] with the Women of the Wasatch running group, it’s so cool to see all these women from different walks of life coming together for an evening trail run. It’s the same deal, amplified to a whole new extreme.
The whole crew was pivotal in keeping Dower healthy, happy, and moving.
iRunFar: iRunFar readers are familiar with the crew scene of the ultramarathon or the long trail race. Compare that to what you just did for 40 days if you can. Is it as “Looney Tunes” for 40 days as crewing, pacing, and following somebody for a 100-mile race? Or do you settle into a routine or vibe?
Rascal: I would say it’s amplified. It took myself and Tara’s mom, Debbie, at least a week to get into more of a groove.
There was this huge learning curve in the beginning. The sleep deprivation was the hardest thing to adapt to. It was so intense in weeks one and two that I could barely function. We were supposed not only to function but also to ensure that everything was taken care of at the same time by having around six crew stops every day, getting up at 3:00 a.m., and ensuring we were getting there and getting everything she needed. I’m also a pacer, so I get out there and run with her. Then, the evening routine is like a whole shebang. It’s an entire song and dance as well.
The pressure we all felt was so intense the entire time. And I think that’s why, the first week, even into the second week, I mean, I’ve said this a few times, I wanted to quit every single day. I was crying my eyes out every day. It wasn’t until we all adapted, once we got out of New Hampshire that it was like, “Oh wait, maybe this isn’t as bad as we all thought.”
iRunFar: You started with the hardest terrain and some of the most difficult-to-access parts of the trail, didn’t you?
Rascal: Yeah. And if we didn’t have Iceman [David Martin] there, who’s an FKT god, he’s been with Kristian Morgan, he’s been with Karel Sabbe, he knows those roads like the inside of his eyelids.
From left to right, Sharon Mullen (mom of Kristian Morgan, men’s supported southbound AT record holder) joined Debbie Komlo (Tara’s mom), Will Eastman aka Flipper, and JP Giblin for some crewing.
iRunFar: I want to hear this about this part of the record from your perspective. Tara described getting out of the Northeast and onto some smoother trail behind record pace. She said you bumped up the daily mileage to get back on record pace. She said it was all you, that she probably would’ve been like, “Well, I gave it a good shot, and now I’m just going to keep giving it a good shot.” You said, “This is the number that you said we’re shooting for, so we’re going to get back to it.” What’s your version of that story?
Rascal: In the beginning, we just had to do what we could. Maine and New Hampshire were like, “Whatever mileage we get is whatever we get,” because it was exceptionally hard in terms of terrain. We had awful weather in New Hampshire, too. Once we left New Hampshire, Mom and I did some math, and we were like, “We are far behind Karel’s record.” I forget the exact number. We were between 100 and 150 miles behind Karel, if not more. So it was like, “Okay, we need to bump up the mileage.”
We bumped it up, and then I had a pivotal moment where I needed to separate my emotions from the record because I was letting myself talk myself into giving Tara a break every day in terms of mileage. I saw how much pain she was in. There came this moment of, Okay, but this is what she wants. This is what she’s good at. She’s good at doing hard things, and we are here to try for the overall record. We have to try for that. I always told her, “If I can see that you’re okay, you’re not in danger of being hurt, then I’m going to keep pushing you.”
That’s kind of where it started. Then Mom and I did more math and said, “Okay, we have to average X miles every day until the end just to make it under the wire.” I was like, “Cool, I’ll take that number, and then I’ll add two miles to that every day.” So we have those extra nickels and dimes, we called it.
The crew took care of everything. Photo: Pete Schreiner/@schreinertrailphotography
iRunFar: She said she would beg back from you, “Can I please do one less mile, two less miles?” That you were in negotiations all the time through that section.
Rascal: Every single time. I had to have my guard up. I was like, Rascal, pull it together. You have to be a bad cop. She’s going to beg and plead. She will look at her phone and say, ‘What about this camp spot? What about this mileage?’
But in the last two weeks, she stopped fighting me about it. She would accept it, “Okay, I’m going to get in late, but okay.” And then she would just do it. And that’s when I knew. I was like, “We got this in the bag now.”
iRunFar: The final push is the other part of the experience that I’d love to hear a little more about from your perspective. This final push has become a regular part of these long-trail speed record attempts where people parse out the last 100 miles into a non-stop effort. I guess it was about 130 in your team’s case.
Tara said that during that final push, she hoped that she was going to make the record, but she didn’t let herself actually believe it until she was about three miles from the finish. She was so afraid of falling, getting sick, or something happening. What was it like from your perspective for that final push?
Rascal: I didn’t want to push her that far at the end. I had talked to Iceman and a lot of people prior to having to do this push. A week out, two weeks out, I was already thinking about it, and I was like, “I don’t want her body to snap. I don’t want her to break.”
But it was walking on eggshells around Tara, talking about the future. She didn’t let herself believe she was going to do it. She’s also very superstitious. We were never allowed to say, “When you get to Springer…” It was always, “Barring any incident or injury, if we make it to the end…”
iRunFar: Insert a large qualifying phrase of superstition. [laughs]
Rascal: [laughs] Literally. And I had to give a spiel to every new pacer. I was like, “Don’t talk about the end. Don’t even ask her what she thinks about it.”
iRunFar: That’s amazing. “Excuse me, here’s your contract of things you can and can’t discuss on the trail.” [laughs]
Tara Dower had a slew of pacers from her Appalachian Trail community accompany her on her run.
Rascal: The final push was her idea, honestly. When you look at Tara’s races, she’s good at finishing strong. She’s really good at just kicking ass at the very end of whatever endeavor she’s at. And so she had talked about this final push. We didn’t even talk about mileage. We just talked about how many days out from the end we wanted to start pushing, and the mileage lined up where Friday morning we woke up, and it was like, “Okay, well, we might as well just push until we’re done.”
We had 129 miles left to go. The cutoff time for the overall FKT was Sunday afternoon. But when you did the math, I said, “Honestly, Tara, we could finish before midnight on Saturday.” And we did. We finished at 11:53 p.m.
So the last push we started on Friday morning, and we got about 59 miles and change into it, and it’s like 10:30 or 11 p.m. I had done those last five miles, and she was a mess. She was falling left and right. She was bawling her eyes out. She was intimidated by the next two sections coming up because they were long. There was a 16-mile section and then a 14-mile section overnight. And I only had one pacer lined up for the 16 so far.
I said, “We’re getting to the van after this 59 miles and change, and you’re going to sleep. You’re going to sleep for 20 minutes, and then you’re going to get up. You’re going to eat like you normally do, and then you’re just going to go. We’re just going to go until the end.”
So she did the 20 minutes. I walked into the van and said, “Okay, it’s time to go.” And she looked like death and said, “I need 10 more minutes.” And I was like, “Okay, you can have three more minutes.”
She woke up from that three-minute nap in such a state that I was nervous that she wouldn’t get back out there. Her mom walked into the van and shut the door, and Debbie gave her the pep talk of a lifetime. I was crying and felt honored to be there for this pivotal moment. Then Mom walked her to the trail and said, “All right, this is it.”
Tara took off, and those next two sections were hard for her. But when the sun came up, she got that new revival and motivation.
iRunFar: The story about her mom giving her a pep talk is beautiful. I hope that’s something you can hold onto because there aren’t a lot of moments like that in life, are there?
Rascal: It was really special.
Tara’s overall supported Appalachian Trail FKT was truly a team effort.
iRunFar: My last question. At this point, Tara has many strong performances to her name, but she’s pretty young in the grand scheme of a lifetime. Why do you think she, among so many, is so tough? What is it about her that was able to do this?
Rascal: Tara’s stubborn, so wildly stubborn.
She’s been obsessed with the AT for a long, long time. She’s from North Carolina, so she’s always been near it. I think she first learned about it back in 2011 and became obsessed. She tried to thru-hike the trail in 2017 and only made it 80 miles. She had a panic attack and had to get off the trail. Then she went back in 2019, and she completed a thru-hike. And I think that was huge in pushing her toward realizing that she has these capabilities. That’s when she became a runner, and she started doing all these hard things and doing well at them.
She’s worked her ass off to get sponsorships and train as hard as she can.
But in the end, she just doesn’t give up. I knew the whole time that she would never give up, even when we were in a dark black hole of whatever was going on. Like I said, I just didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I knew that we would. I think that just gives her this edge.
She just wants to inspire. She wants so many people to feel what she’s felt in terms of being able to accomplish big things and having this new self-confidence once they accomplish a big goal in their lives.
iRunFar: Rascal, I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years, but I’ve never interviewed a member of someone’s crew. This was a treasure, thank you.
