If you’re anything like me, running 300 miles doesn’t sound like much fun. For ultra runner and R.A.D. athlete Lucy Scholtz, however, it’s the epitome of a good time.
In March 2023, when she ran in an elusive 340-mile race called The Speed Project, it looked more like a party across the desert than entering the pain cave. The Speed Project is an unsanctioned, unsupported race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas that takes runners through Death Valley National Park, which as you probably know is frequently the hottest place on earth.
“My number one goal was to have the most fun of anyone out there,” says the 34-year-old speaking to me from her home in New Orleans.
To say that The Speed Project isn’t like other races would be an understatement. The race, which has been described by the BBC as “the Fight Club of the running world,” was devised by runner Nils Arend, who relied on his previous experience organizing raves in Hamburg. It has no website where you can sign up, no rules, no official route and the start date is announced just days before it strats. Needless to say then, there are no crowds of spectators cheering on the competitors.
But there are competitors, they’re dogged, and last year when Scholtz put herself forward to run the race solo, she pulled off a major upset among them, completing the race in just 84 hours and 45 minutes.
“It was one of those races where everything went right,” she recalls.
“We just kept getting more and more ahead.”
Going into the race, Sholz says, she had hoped to shave one minute off the men’s solo record, which at the time was around 93 hours. In the end, she destroyed that record, cutting nearly 10 hours off the previous fastest time.
"Something just felt really magical about it"
Of course, it wasn’t exactly her first rodeo. She ran her first marathon in 2008, during her freshman year of college, and had been running ultras (though nothing more than 100 miles) since 2017. Then in 2021, she completed her first Speed Project Relay, running the race in 5k sections with a team.
“There was something that just felt really magical about the chance to spend 48 hours in an RV with a bunch of people doing this really hard thing,” she recalls.
“It felt like this sort of indescribable experience that not a lot of adults get to have where you're just on an adventure and you're in this landscape that is really unforgiving.”
It was also extremely hot. Though the temperatures in Death Valley can be perfect running in March, last year saw the mercury rise to the mid-80s on several days. Luckily, Sholz is used to training in swampy conditions in Mississippi, where she lives in a cabin without air conditioning during the summer for her job at a kids' sleepaway camp, and she says she likes running in hot weather.
During the relay, Scholz started to wonder if she could solo race The Speed Project. While she was at the Vegas pool party which makes up the finish line celebration, another runner who had just completed it solo convinced her to give it a go.
“I think I've always been attracted to races that seem really challenging at first glance, or maybe seem impossible and then you sort of get into them and realize you can do a lot more than you think you’re capable of at the beginning.”
“I’m a person who really likes hard things"
And so from August 2022 to March 2023, Sholz trained. There was a lot of mileage, obviously – nearly a thousand miles in those months alone according to her Strava profile, not including the race itself.
“At a certain point it's all the same. You're just running on tired legs and less sleep and you just keep on doing it,” Sholz reflects.
She took breaks at the first sign of discomfort to ward off running injuries and in general she says she enjoys a really healthy diet and gets “a good amount of sleep.” But honestly, that’s the boring stuff. What makes Sholz’s approach so entertaining to talk about is how much fun she chooses to have when she’s racing. In fact, running in The Speed Project for Sholz sounds in some ways a bit more like a bachelorette party than it does a grueling race.
For starters, last year she ran with a crew of nine friends supporting her, a number she describes as “absurd.” Many of us might struggle to find that many friends to go out for a drink with never mind spend four days racing across the desert, but for friend Lindsey Puderer, it wasn't a difficult choice.
"Supporting someone’s goal is the most human thing we can do. Life is hard, supporting people isn’t. I also am inspired by not only what she is doing, but how she is doing it. Lucy approaches every race with such respect and intention," says Puderer, who describes Sholz's approach as "truly inspiring."
That said, Sholz also recognizes when an incentive is needed and for that, she says, she wanted her friends to have a lot of fun which meant there needed to be enough of them to get some sleep.
Over the four days, Sholz, Puderer and the rest of the crew livened things up by belting out Taylor Swift songs and holding theme days.
"While she wants to be competitive and try her very best, she wants to do it with a smile and with grace and fun," says Puderer, who believes that the festive vibe is really what keeps Sholz going and makes the experience about more than just crewing.
"It makes it about doing fun things and being outside with our friends."
There was a Mardi Gras theme on Tuesday and on Wednesday they wore pink in a nod to the Tina Fey movie Mean Girls. One evening the crew surprised her by greeting her with sparklers.
“One of the things I hoped that they would do is make me laugh as much as possible and I think they just delivered,” Sholz says.
"The best strategy is just to be positive"
Besides having a blast, it should come as no surprise that underpinning Sholz’s success is a natural competitive streak. To this day, the runner has never DNFd, which, if you’ve read my article on the top reasons runners DNF, you’ll know places her in a tiny minority. Though she knows a DNF at some point is all but inevitable, holding onto that distinction like a badge of honor is another driving force that keeps her moving forward.
The final tool in her success kit is her ethos, which she describes as “delusional positivity” and has earned her a reputation for smiling even when she’s puking on the course.
“There’s just so many things that can go wrong and what I’ve found is the best strategy is just to be positive about it. It’s a pretty normal thing for me to have stomach issues when I'm running these long distances so there's a lot of races where I where I puke and I'm just kind of like, ‘well it happened and now I can eat a whole cup of ramen because I like feel better,’” she laughs.
“You're certainly going to be miserable for portions of these runs and it doesn't serve me very well to sit in that.”
“It's just a lot of running when you're really tired"
Now only days away from her second solo attempt at the race from LA to Vegas, she’s hoping for a similar finish time to last year and once again wants to have the best time possible with her friends, outside. She’s also putting in the miles, running between 50 and 70 miles a week.
“It's just a lot of time running when you're really tired, so it's back-to-back long runs, getting up when you're feeling sore. It's not necessarily doing a ton of speed work or anything, it's just lots of long, steady miles and just getting used to running when you're really exhausted.”
Her efforts so far have earned her a bout of shin splints back in January, but otherwise, her strategy seems to be working for her. She’ll be racing once again wearing Portland-based R.A.D.’s R1 shoe, a road running shoe she reveals she wore for another 300-mile desert race by The Speed Project that took place in Atacama, Chile in November. The eco-friendly running brand supported her and another female runner to take part in the race, something she says aligns with her personal values of increasing the visibility of female runners.
“Because of R.A.D. there were two female runners in a field that would have been exclusively men and I think that is something that speaks volumes about what they care about as a company.”
"I want to run for many more years"
Some things are different, though. For starters, she’s narrowed her crew ever so slightly from nine down to six. She has more experience under her belt. She’s also been running in other races as part of her training, including setting a personal record in the 2023 Revel Big Cottonwood Marathon in Salt Lake City in September and running in the Huntsville, TX Rocky Racoon 100 in early February, all of which she muses result in a very different build up compared to last year’s concentrated effort.
And what will she do to recover, you ask? When the big race is over, Sholz knows she should follow coaching advice and spend some time in recovery, but of course, the concept of rest days takes on a whole new meaning when you’ve just run 340 miles.
“I probably should be better about recovery,” she laughs, before admitting she’s squeezing in the Boston Marathon on April 15.
“It's two weeks after The Speed Project and so I'm not going to be breaking any records. We're gonna have the most fun on the course and run around and say hi to people and be with friends.”
After that, she does have two-month break scheduled, during which she promises there will be lots of sleep, Epsom salt baths and maybe a massage, but then it’s time to get back to work, training for the Moab 240 in October. But if she feels any tweaks along the way, she’ll take a break.
“I'm not someone who's like, ‘oh it's on the calendar, I need to go do this run’ because if my leg hurts, I'm gonna modify it so that I can run for many more years.”
