[Note: Dower completed her epic hike mere days before the destruction unleashed by Hurricane Helene forced the closure of large sections of the Appalachian Trail.]
The first time Tara Dower set out to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, in 2017 shortly after graduating from East Carolina University, she made it eighty miles before quitting. She returned in 2019 with her husband and completed the 2,197-mile thru-hike in a fairly typical five months and ten days, during which a fondness for sugary snacks earned her the trail name “Candy Mama.”
Dower soon got into endurance ultra-running, a grueling sport that can involve distances longer than one hundred miles, and became a star on that scene. Even so, when the thirty-one-year-old resident of Virginia Beach set her sights on besting the AT’s fastest-known time for a thru-hike (a blazing forty-one days, seven hours, and thirty-nine minutes, set by a Belgian runner in 2018), no one thought it would be a walk in the park. Though the goal is to finish as quickly as possible, using a small support crew to stage meals and campsites, forty days is still a punishingly long time to push one’s body to its absolute limits.
Spoiler alert—she did it! On September 21 at 11:53 p.m., with thirteen hours to spare, a bedraggled, exhausted, and emotional Dower emerged from dark Georgia woods to touch the bronze plaque marking the AT’s southern terminus atop Springer Mountain. (It’s worth noting that her record isn’t specific to gender; it’s the fastest time for anyone.)
For those of us who can hardly wrap our minds around such a feat, Dower described her geographic, physical, and mental status at key points of the journey.
Day One (August 12, 2024), Maine
I started off from Mount Katahdin at 5:47 a.m. For the record attempt, I chose to travel the AT north to south because the trail through Maine and New Hampshire is wet, rocky, and unrelenting. I sometimes experience anxiety, fear of the future, so I wanted to get those sections out of the way early rather than worry about them for weeks of a northbound hike. I moved pretty smooth and quick through Baxter State Park, where I passed some thru-hikers going the other direction—you can tell because thru-hikers have a certain look and smell. When I stopped after a few hours to eat, my crew chief, Megan “Rascal” Wilmarth, gave me a lot of food, like pierogies, and a little later I realized I’d eaten too much because I had some gastrointestinal distress. I ended up calling it a day at 7:30 p.m., the earliest for the entire trip.
Dower starts her journey at Mount Katahdin in Maine.
Day Ten, New Hampshire
I’d just finished going over Franconia Notch and the Kinsmans, and that had not been great. Those notorious sections require a lot of climbing and don’t allow for a pace much faster than two miles an hour. The weather in New Hampshire was really bad. I was wearing every layer I had and fell into some mud pits. Demoralizing for sure, sitting there in the rain, realizing this is just how it is and I’ve got to get on with it. Falling was a constant worry. I’m known in the ultra-marathon world for having accidents, like falling into a cactus and getting bloody head to toe. From the start, I assumed I’d break a kneecap or something. But almost as soon as I exited the White Mountains, the weather changed for the better and I was back on smoother trail. It was the most exciting thing, even if I still made only thirty miles that day. It also was the first day I got a shower, which involves stripping and using a shower rigged up in the crew van. The next day I felt much more recovered.
Day 20, Pennsylvania
That day was really fun. It was hot, but a couple of pacers came out to hike with me, and I hit one thousand miles. I had been behind the pace needed to break the record, but ramped up through New York and New Jersey. I was still apprehensive, not really sure of my abilities, but my crew was unrelenting in their encouragement, and Pennsylvania has more runnable trail. The thing about running is that you might finish the day earlier, but the impact on your knees and entire body is much greater. I got new Altra Olympus shoes for that section, which have more cushion, and that was invaluable. Sometimes I would chat with day hikers for a moment. Some knew what I was doing, others just thought I was out for a run. On the AT you never know exactly who you’re passing and what they’re doing.
Day 30, Virginia
The days were blurring together. That was a very hot day. I cried a lot and didn’t sleep well because I don’t do well in heat. A nice thing was that a hiker named Iceman, who is an AT legend, came out on the trail and gave me two pieces of his wife Barb’s sheet cake right before I had to run up a mountain. As it was, I was eating a five-hundred-calorie breakfast, a three-hundred-calorie second breakfast on the trail, protein shakes four times a day, and fifteen hundred calories at the end of the day. The thing about this kind of attempt is that you have to leave the daily logistics to your crew, and by this point I’d lost all autonomy. I didn’t have much say in what I was eating or how many miles I was going. I’m just the race car.
Day 40, Georgia
Dower (seated at center) takes a break with her support crew.
The day before had been a big push, starting at 3:30 a.m. and running fifty-nine miles to reach the van, sleep deprived and crying the last five miles. I caught a twenty-three-minute nap, then my mom gave me a game-time speech and kicked me out of the van. My pacer had to keep me awake. In the afternoon at Neel Gap, there was a big group waiting to film me, which was a bit overwhelming. Blood Mountain is the last big one before the end on Spring Mountain. I was hallucinating and took a bad fall. I just needed to get this done. The final eight-mile section in the dark was really weird. I felt on the verge of a panic attack. I had time to spare, but my sleep-deprived brain was thinking about what the record would mean for my life, because I’m not used to this kind of attention. With a mile left, I let everything release and felt a lot of feelings. Then I saw the finish in my headlamp and all the people there who had helped me so much, and there was a celebration. It was strange to be done, because I’d gotten used to the lifestyle. But I was happy to sleep in the next day.
Dower at the finish on Georgia’s Springer Mountain, just before midnight on September 21.
