For over four decades, the Appalachian Trail’s record for quickest hiking was held solely by males, usually ultra runners who trekked thirty to fifty miles a day in closely controlled eleven to thirteen-hour periods. That pattern had held so strongly that when a person from outside the running community set out to disrupt it in the summer of 2011, few onlookers gave the attempt any credence. The result shattered decades of assumptions about who could dominate the toughest long-distance trail in the United States and how such a feat should be undertaken.
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