Colorado resident Annie Hughes is a professional ultrarunner — with a chosen distance of 200 miles — who also works as a run coach and part-time in a bakery. She told iRunFar, jovially, “For my crew at races, I make a big batch of these muffins. They’re called superhero muffins.”
That’s an appropriately named trademark snack for the youngest woman to win the Leadville 100 Mile and the Moab 240 Mile, who excels in the hardest of races and doesn’t yet have a DNF (did not finish) to her name. We caught up with her to hear about her path into the sport, her last year of working through a major injury, and to gain insight into the tough mindset that gets her to the finish line.
Annie Hughes sharing some home baking. Photo courtesy of Annie Hughes.
Annie Hughes grew up in Wisconsin. At school, it took a while for her to find her sporting niche, and she said: “I was pretty horrible at any sport that involved a ball. And so, I was always the last one picked in gym class.”
Now known for racing 200-mile ultramarathons, Hughes’s journey with running started with a single mile. She shared, “In fifth grade, we had to run the mile fitness test, and I found myself up at the front with the most athletic boys in the class, and I had this weird feeling inside where I felt like I could run faster, but then I thought I probably shouldn’t, because I shouldn’t even be up with these guys.” She went on, “So I ended up in the last stretch passing them because I was like, I guess I’ll go for it. And that surprised everyone.”
The following year, when she was in sixth grade, Hughes’s dad encouraged her to try track and cross country — something she ended up doing until sophomore year of college when she heeded the call of the mountains.
This was when she started to experiment with trail running and ultrarunning, but her immediate focus was on climbing all 58 fourteeners in Colorado — the state’s peaks over 14,000 feet. She said, “I became pretty obsessed with that goal for a while, quit the [track] team, finished all the 14ers, and dabbled in some ultramarathons.”
After college, Hughes moved to Leadville, Colorado, and had secured a spot in the 2020 Leadville 100 Mile, which unfortunately didn’t materialize due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hughes made the best of things while racing was halted, and said: “I ended up just doing my own ultras that year. I did an FKT [fastest known time] that was 160 miles around the Collegiate Loop in Colorado. And that was kind of my first multi-day experience.” She added, lightheartedly, “It’s since been broken by Courtney Dauwalter by a day.”
The FKT gave Hughes the confidence to shoot for bigger distances. She said, “I was like, if I can be on my feet for 61 hours, I can probably do a 200 miler.” When racing resumed in 2021, she was ready to take the ultrarunning world by storm. She finally had the opportunity to run the Leadville 100 Mile and won, and also took on the Moab 240 Mile, winning that too, and securing a sponsorship deal along the way.
Leadville’s Annie Hughes celebrates at the finish after winning her hometown race, the 2021 Leadville Trail 100 Mile. Photo: Leadville Race Series
About the Moab 240 Mile, Hughes shared, “I ended up winning it, but I didn’t pace myself super well. I think I might have gone out a little hard and then that first night was really difficult for me … At the halfway mark, the next female behind me was only two miles away, which isn’t much in a 240-mile race, especially with 120 miles left to go. A lot can happen.”
However, when the race went into its second night, Hughes had a surge of energy. She explained: “I just started feeling really good that night. I didn’t sleep at all and was able to run a really good chunk where I put quite a bit of time on [the second female.] And so, by the next morning, I think I had almost 20 miles on her, which was crazy.”
Despite some ups and downs during the race, Hughes’s strong finish proved that her strengths lay in extra-long distances, and the following year she signed up to race the 2022 Cocodona 250 Mile.
She approached the race with valuable experience, and said: “With a really dialed plan and crew I was able to run more to my full potential than at the Moab 240 Mile.” She secured another win, but added, “I don’t think I’ll ever run a 200-mile race perfectly. There are always things that come up, and that looking back on I would change. But I think that’s part of the fun of it — not knowing exactly how it’s going to go, and not being able to plan for everything that’s going to come up.”
Annie Hughes, crossing the line as 2022 Cocodona 250 Mile champion. Photo: Alex Potter
Hughes secured the win at the Cocodona 250 Mile, and also won the Coldwater Rumble 100 Mile, the Run Rabbit Run 100 Mile, and the High Lonesome 100 Mile in 2022 alone, and was no doubt making a name for herself in ultrarunning.
So far, she has an enviable track record in that she has finished every race she started, but recalled the closest she has come to a DNF (did not finish), which was at the 2023 Canyons 100 Mile. Having come out the other side, it’s a story that Hughes now laughs about.
The race took place during a heat wave in California, and after a hot day during which she struggled to stay ahead of salt intake, when temperatures dropped a little at night, Hughes decided to press on to try to catch the runners in front of her. This plan backfired, as she explained, “It was a perfect storm of pushing too hard and being behind on salt. I was running down the trail 70 miles in, and I just felt this really intense tingling in my hands, almost to the point where I couldn’t really bend my fingers.”
Easing off the pace didn’t help, and Hughes continued to deteriorate. Her breathing became labored and she started to feel dizzy, and said, “I drank some electrolyte drink, and then as soon as I drank that, I could barely see the trail and I got super nauseous. So, I sat down, and then as soon as I sat down, I threw up. And then right after I threw up, my hands and my forearms seized and so I could not move my hands or do anything with them.”
With all the symptoms of hyponatremia — which occurs when the concentration of salt in the blood becomes abnormally low — Hughes was effectively frozen in position until some other runners came along and could offer help. As Hughes was still unable to use her hands, the next passers-by removed her phone from her backpack for her, and held it to her face to unlock it with Face ID, in order to contact her crew. Laughing she recalls: “Face ID wouldn’t even recognize me. And inside I was like, I must be really messed up if the Face ID wouldn’t even recognize me!”
After her crew had been contacted and the decision made to drop from the race, still unable to use her hands, Hughes was fed a salt tablet by one of the runners who had come to her aid, and as quickly as her symptoms had arrived, they disappeared. She said: “I was like, My gosh, that worked. In an instant Hughes decided to contact her crew to call off the DNF, and she told her fellow runner who had given her the salt tablet that she was staying in the race. She recalls: “Then I turned around and started running. And he was like, ‘Wait. I thought you were dying!’” Incredibly, she finished the race in third place.
Later in 2023, Hughes had secured a place in the Hardrock 100, which also took place amidst unusually warm conditions. With heat being her Achilles heel, she again struggled greatly, but managed to persevere and take third place. She recalled: “It was just really hot, I think hotter than the Western States 100 that year, which is crazy. And I just don’t do well in the heat, so I just kind of fell off from the very beginning.”
She went on, “I was 15 minutes behind my scheduled time to come into the first aid station … and I was going all out trying to make it on the time. So, I was like, Man, something’s just kind of off. I was in fourth place at that point, and then I passed Claire [Bannwarth] on the next climb, and then just sort of held third place after that.
Hughes doggedly held position, but the race didn’t get any easier going into the night. She remembers: “My stomach was really messed up. I was puking the whole way out of Ouray,” around the halfway point of the massive mountain race. Despite struggling right to the end, Hughes held on for a podium in one of the most prestigious 100 milers in the world.
Claire Bannwarth (left) and Annie Hughes (right) in the early miles of the 2023 Hardrock 100. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
After two incredibly tough 100 milers, Hughes next took a step back into her comfort zone — distance-wise at least — with the 360-kilometer Swiss Peaks Trail in Switzerland, in September 2023, where she took fourth. She said, “That went really well. It was cool to do a race that was just a totally new experience. I’ve never done anything with that much climbing. Even compared to the Hardrock 100 it was much steeper, with 40,000 feet of elevation gain per 100-mile section [which is 10,000 feet more than the Hardrock 100 course.]”
After a strong 2023 racing season, Hughes was busy mapping out her 2024 season, with plans to do the triple crown of 200 milers — the Tahoe 200 Mile in June, Bigfoot 200 Mile in August, and Moab 240 Mile in early October as well as heading to Hong Kong for the 300k Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge. But injury called halt to her plans.
Annie Hughes during the 2023 Swiss Peaks Trail. Photo courtesy of Annie Hughes.
She said, “Every winter the side of my foot kind of flares up a little bit, but it’s nothing I can’t run through, and I’ve done all these crazy races on it the last two years. So, I just didn’t really think much of it … but I went to a physical therapist, and he did an ultrasound on it and found a tear in one of my peroneal tendons … This was the week before I was supposed to leave for Hong Kong.”
Now taking the injury seriously, Hughes cancelled her plans for Hong Kong and quickly sought an MRI — a more detailed scan than an ultrasound — which confirmed that she needed surgery for her ankle. She said, “It was a really long recovery process, because tendons take so long to heal. They cleared out a lot of scar tissue, and I had torn ligaments, so they had to tighten the ligaments. I had no idea how messed up my ankle was.”
Hughes underwent surgery in February 2024 and spent a lot of the year focusing on rehabbing the injury. Her patience paid off, and now almost a year on, she said: “I finally have been able to put in a really solid training block where I feel ready to race.”
Next up, she will be racing the 2024 Black Canyon 100k — a Golden Ticket race for the 2025 Western States 100, although she modestly claims to not see herself as a contender for a ticket. She hopes a recent move from Leadville to Buena Vista, Colorado — which tends to have warmer weather — along with some new heat-training practices she has adapted — will help her from falling victim to the notorious heat at Black Canyon.
Later on in the year, she hopes to return to race the Canyons 100 Mile, and has also signed up for the Tahoe 200 Mile. No doubt she will meet whatever challenges these races throw at her head on, and embrace them as all part of the adventure.
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Annie Hughes recovering from surgery at home in Colorado. Photo courtesy of Annie Hughes.
