Magdalena Boulet has found meaning and success through running in ways that few other runners have. Boulet has been competing at the highest levels of running for over twenty years across a variety of disciplines including collegiate track and field, road marathons, and trail/mountain/ultra and adventure racing. Her secret is not as much about talent as it is to maintain curiosity—even in the face of adversity and life’s sudden changes. Boulet’s passion for running and commitment to overcome the lows in her career have taken her far beyond where she ever expected a professional running career might lead.
Magdalena Boulet began her running career in college and earned NCAA Division I All-American honor at the University of California Berkeley. She had a successful road running career with a 2:26:22 road marathon personal record and a second place at the Boston Marathon (second to arguably the greatest American marathoner of all-time Deana Kastor) which earned her place on the 2008 US Olympic Marathon Team. She’s also had success in the trail/adventure racing scene with the following results: 2017 Marathon Des Sables champion, 5th place 2016 UTMB, 2019 Leadville Trail 100 champion, and 2015 Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run champion. She was also the top US finisher (11th overall) at the 2013 World Mountain Running Championships in Krynica-Zdrój, Poland.
Where one journey ends, another begins. Where one rough patch threatens to end her career, perseverance and an optimistic curiosity about what’s on the other side gets her through. These are the attitudes that led to Magdalena Boulet’s success in all disciplines of running, including what she calls, “my most memorable race” …The Western States 100.
Boulet at the 2014 USATF 50K Trail Championships. Photo: Richard Bolt.
From Low On Roads To High Of The Western States
In 2012, Magdalena Boulet hit a crossroads in her running career. It was a time that she’d later reflect on as an end to her first running career and the start of her second. After hitting her personal best time in the marathon in 2010, her road running success began to plateau. At the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials, Boulet fell short of her goals and failed to make the Olympic Team. From her perspective, this wasn’t just a race gone poorly but rather a realization that it might be time for something new. The phase in her running career as one of the best marathoners in the country was over, but she had more to give to the sport of running. As it calls to many runners, the historic and mythical Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run, a 100-mile point-to-point foot race held annually since 1977 from Olympic Valley to Auburn, CA, would also call to Boulet. In 2012, she was not yet a trail runner, but without a commitment to the road running scene, she was free to learn and train in new ways on trails. Running trails was the beginning of her second running career.
Magdalena Boulet first heard about the Western States 100 when she worked as a research assistant for GU Energy Labs in the mid-2000s. The company was a prominent sponsor of the event and had a background in ultrarunning since its inception in 1994. Founder Bill Vaughan, a biophysicist at the University of California Berkeley, founded the company to help his daughter reach her potential in ultrarunning at a time when there were few sports nutrition products on the market. The available dry energy bars or sugary electrolyte drinks caused her to have stomach issues, a symptom of ultrarunning that many thought inevitable, but which Vaughan hoped to change with his new product “GU.”
GU Energy Labs sponsored several prominent ultrarunners and worked closely with them to further develop their product and dial it to meet their racing needs and nutrition strategies. One such athlete was ultrarunning legend Ann Trason who was inducted into the Ultrarunning Hall of Fame in 2020, and had set records in the 100-kilometer, 12-hour and 100-mile distances, won the Leadville Trail 100 three times and an astonishing fourteen Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run wins. Trason was the queen of the Western States 100 and her unprecedented success sparked Boulet’s interest in trail running. Boulet describes meeting Trason for the first time while working at GU Energy Labs, “Trason was in her prime and I was fresh out of college. My world was all about 5K to marathon distance racing. Trail and ultrarunning was new to me, but with such a wealth of knowledge about the sport around me at GU, I felt intrigued to learn more about it. I was a sponge, on the sideline, watching the collaboration between athletes like Trason and GU and learning what I could. I remember asking myself, how did she become such an amazing ultrarunner capable of winning Western States fourteen times? What was her background?”
Photo: Andy Cochrane.
PRO TIP: Read about the story of Trason’s 1994 Leadville Trail 100 win here in my article: Top Five Greatest Achievements in American Trail Running History)
Magdalena Boulet discovered that she and Trason had much in common, including speedy road running backgrounds, “I learned she was an incredible marathoner and that was something I could relate to. That made it possible for me to think that maybe I could try trail running as well. Her commitment to the sport and understanding the nitty gritty of nutrition, running a 2:30 marathon, were all things I could relate to. I found it inspiring and it made me want to try to run Western States one day too.”
Inspired by Trason, Boulet stepped off the roads and dipped her toes in trail running. She attended group trail runs around the Oakland, CA, area and she couldn’t have asked for a better training environment or trail running mentors. Accomplished ultrarunners and coaches Ian Sharman, Matt Laye, and Topher Gaylord were a few among several of her earliest trail running mentors who nurtured her potential on trails. Boulet shares how she found success on trails through her training group runs, “I’m a big believer in mentorship and there’s always a person that knows more than you in any given area. I surrounded myself with those people who knew more about trail running than me and that was critical. I was very fortunate where I lived because there was no shortage of people with experience. I was hungry, my eyes were big, I was curious and these folks not only served as mentors but instilled an excitement about what trail running could be. They painted a clear future that was attractive for me to explore.”
Magdalena Boulet also notes how areas she ran in frequently as a road runner took on new meaning when she explored the trails in these same places, “I spent a decade or two running through my home in Oakland and all of a sudden spending more time on trails showed me how much more there was in my backyard. It was new and exciting and it brought a sense of freshness to my second career as a runner. I set big goals and felt lucky to meet all these people with passion and knowledge for trail running. Some of these trails around Mt Diablo, Marin Headlands, and Mt. Tam are still my preferred training grounds to this day.”
Magdalena Boulet’s first experience of the Western States 100 was not racing it, but working the event for GU in 2013. She describes experiencing the start and finish of the race as unlike anything she’d known in her already extensive running career, “That was when everything changed for me. Western States went from being a powerful story I’d heard about from my trail running friends to wanting to experience it for myself. The atmosphere was electric. Showing up at 5AM and watching runners arrive in the dark and watching the 24-hour and Golden Hour finishers changes you. Even if you’ve never done the race, it changes you. I walked away knowing without a doubt that finishing this race was something I wanted to experience.”
Photo: Equator Coffee.
Magdalena Boulet returned to the Western States 100 in 2014 to crew and pace her good friend and sponsored trail runner, Alex Varner. Varner finished seventh and Boulet describes the incredible challenge of not only racing Western States but being involved with the event crewing and pacing, “It was an awesome experience to pace a top ten finisher. I gained so much knowledge that year and I got to bring him to the finish. Still to this day it is the most exhausting thing I’ve done in my life to crew and pace. I recommend that most people just pick one, not both!”
It was no surprise that Boulet would return to Western States for the third year in a row in 2015. This time not to spectate, crew, or pace, but to race. Boulet made a smashing debut at the 100-mile distance winning the race in 19:05 and besting second and third place Kaci Lickteig and Stephanie Howe (Howe had won the race the year prior and Lickteig would win it the following year in 2016). Boulet describes how her experiences as a supporter and pacer/crewer for Western States made her victory even much more special, “I had such appreciation and thankfulness for my team and pacers. I was thoughtful about how I treated people on course because I knew how hard the job was. I aim to always have appreciation for people who go out of their way to make your dreams come true.”
After several years of trail running and her first major win, her career as a trail runner was still just getting started. Boulet would go on to win 2017 Marathon Des Sables, place 5th at the 2016 UTMB, win the 2019 Leadville 100, place third at the 2015 Speedgoat 50K, win the 2016 Canyons 100K, place second at the 2017 Tarawera 100K, and summit Ojos del Salado, the world’s highest active volcano (22,615 feet). And that’s just a brief list of her many extensive accomplishments. Despite all of her success on the trails, there always remained a part of herself that felt nostalgic towards her road running career.
Boulet (#3805) at the 2013 USATF Mountain Running Championships. Photo: Richard Bolt.
Once A Roadie…Tears of Joy At Her Second Boston Marathon
In 2016, at the prime of her ultrarunning career, Boulet returned to the roads to run the Boston Marathon—the race which qualified her for the 2008 US Olympic Team. This time, she would not be running for herself but to pace her friend Caitlin Smith to an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying time. Or so she thought.
At mile 18, Smith, unfortunately, had to drop out of the race, but Boulet still felt good and decided to continue to see if she could hit the Olympic Standard time herself. She would have to work for it. By mile twenty-three she rediscovered the familiar type of road running “pain cave.” At that moment, she didn’t know if she could hold the pace, but then something magic happened. Her good friend Meb Keflezghi passed her. At the Boston Marathon, the elite women start ahead of the elite men. Keflezghi was the first man to pass Boulet, which meant he was in the lead. Boulet became ecstatic for her friend who would go on to win the race and become the first American man to do so since 1983. Even now in 2023, Keflezighi remains the last American man to do so. Boulet describes her emotions in that moment and how seeing her friend run to victory turned her race around, “With three miles left, wondering if I would get the qualifying time, I started to remember all the discomfort road running can make you feel—it’s a different kind of paincave than trail running. Meb went by me and I started to cry. Someone I’d known and been friends with went by me in the lead. I was crying for the next three miles into the finish. I was so happy for him. It was then that I realized that my road running chapter would never be fully closed. I would be honored to run another road race in the future and I know I’d make the most of the experience just like this moment at Boston.” Boulet hit the qualifying time, but did not go on to race at the Olympic Trials that year because of other life commitments.
Even after leaving the roads for trails, Boulet returned to that previous chapter of her life, as a new person, but with appreciation for the experiences road running could still give her. Her road running, like a favorite book, would take on new meaning each time she read it.
Magdalena Boulet is currently rehabbing the greatest injury of her running career, and her attitudes of perseverance and positivity that she’d displayed throughout both of her running careers on roads and trails are tested now more than ever.
Boulet (#4575) at the 2014 USATF Mountain Running Championships. Photo: Richard Bolt.
Rebuilding To Run, Running To Inspire
“The doctor said that a record has been broken today for the fastest known hospital discharge. I don’t like to brag about any accolades that have been assigned to my name, but this one means a lot.”
In November 2022, Boulet received surgery to fix the most serious injury of her running career: a hip replacement surgery. The operation would involve fixing the deterioration of her left hip joint and bone spur formation as a result of friction between her hip socket and femoral head. She began noticing pains that impacted her running back in 2018, but like many of us in the running community, she found ways to move forward in spite of the pain. After living in denial about her injury for too long, Boulet decided to go in for surgery. As fate would have it, former Western States 100 Medical Research Director, Dr. John Diana, performed the surgery. If anyone would understand Boulet’s desire to keep performing at the highest level and help make that happen, it would be him.
Competitive running was and is a large part of Boulet’s identity, and how her body responds to surgery is still in question. However, one thing was certain after the operation, Boulet would continue to bring an attitude of positivity to her greatest challenges, “I’m an optimistic person. In a realistic way, recovery has been better than anticipated and I’ve been able to enjoy my trails at a slower pace while I’m hiking. I’m currently a month away from running again. When something you love is taken away from you, you wonder if you can come back and run like before. Despite what goals I have, independent of what trail and road races I run, my true foundation is getting back to running and being outside. It is essential to find my way back to nature and enjoy it.”
Magdalena Boulet shares her excitement to overcome this injury and regain fitness, “I’ve been enjoying getting back on my bike and pool for cross training workouts. The true test will be how my hip responds to running. I’m looking forward to it but also scared. I don’t know how it will respond, even if my doctor and I are both optimistic. I’m excited to go on this journey to regain my fitness and strength. I’ve had to rebuild after major injuries before and it’s almost fun. It’s enjoyable to be at a place where you rebuild everything and you have a clear sense of purpose and journey to go after something new. It won’t be easy but I’m looking forward to going after it.”
Photo: Andy Cochrane.
Magdalena Boulet is no stranger to starting over in her running career and allowing new parts of herself to flourish. From track to roads to trails and now this injury, she has another chance to take her running career in new directions. Boulet says when she returns to the sport, she’d like to spend more time adventuring on trails and completing longer stage races. She has a desire to see new trails more than ever before, “Stage racing is certainly something in the cards for me when I return to running. I also want to take a step back and look at how I would like to explore this planet earth. There are still projects in the back of my mind in terms of learning about historical trails and looking globally where I’d like to go and learn about the places and peoples that maintain those trails. I’d love to see what I can learn by simply running and exploring.”
Through this injury, Boulet finds herself on a new mission to inspire runners. The passionate trail community of the Oakland area helped Boulet rediscover her home and herself as a trail runner, and now she hopes to do the same for other runners, “Something instilled passion in me to explore and I want to do the same for others. Whether that’s local or global trails I want to help them find their magical places. My goal is being what other people have been for me and ultimately getting people excited to be outdoors, hiking, running road marathons or 100-mile races and making that accessible to everyone. You don’t have to be an elite runner to do these things. How can I inspire others and what is my role in their journey? These are the questions I’m asking myself as I make my first steps to return to running.”
Whether on the biggest stages in the running world such as the Boston Marathon and Western States 100, or setting an FKT (Fastest Known Time) for postoperative hip surgery discharge, Magdalena Boulet remains resilient and brings positivity towards her greatest challenges. She will follow her journey as a runner wherever that takes her. With an attitude of curious optimism, she continues to inspire others and find success along the way.
