photo by: Contributed

Kodi Crofoot runs an ultra marathon in 2014.

As ultra marathoners prepare for a grueling 100-mile trail race at Douglas County’s Clinton Lake, one runner is hoping for a bit of redemption after her big dream was dramatically upended almost a decade ago.

The annual Hawk Hundred on Sept. 7-8 will take runners on a 25-mile loop on Clinton Lake’s north shore from Sanders Mound to Land’s End and back again, but an elite group of 25 runners this year will do the loop four times in a race to the century mark — with no sleep for a whole day.

The trail is fraught with rocks, roots, spiders, snakes and mud. The race begins at 8 a.m., and runners must endure the elements both day and night with hopes of finishing first come morning light.

For one of those runners, Kodi Crofoot, 43, of Marion, this year’s race isn’t just about testing her endurance; it’s about vindication after she had to drop out of the race nine years ago at around 60 miles in when her little toe met a not so little rock.

“It was early on, mile eight, I kicked a rock and broke my foot. At the time I didn’t know it was broken, but I knew it was bad because of the pain,” Crofoot said.

She ran about 44 miles more before taking a break at an aid station to change her shoes, and despite her foot clearly starting to swell, she carried on until the pain was unbearable.

“That’s when it took me forever to get to an aid station because I could barely put any weight on my foot. I had to tap out and drop, which was really frustrating, but my foot wouldn’t let me go any longer,” Crofoot said.

X-rays later revealed that Crofoot had broken a bone in her foot that left a fragment floating next to her pinky toe.

photo by: Contributed

An X-ray of Kodi Crofoot’s foot shows a break after she struck a rock in the Hawk Hundred in 2015.

“I kicked (the rock) so stinkin’ hard that there was a crack down in the metatarsal where the pinky meets the foot,” Crofoot said.

Crofoot had entered the Hawk Hundred that year as the third race in part of a “grand slam” effort in which within the course of a year ultra runners attempt to complete four 100-mile runs. Crofoot said that “it was crushing” at the time that she would not be able to add the “grand slam” to her list of accomplishments. However, just six weeks later she finished another 100-mile race despite her injured foot.

“It wasn’t my best 100, but I wasn’t going to quit even though I had to quit the Hawk,” Crofoot said.

Crofoot’s training and thirst for glory had mostly waned in the following years, in which she completed a few 50-milers but nothing so extreme as the Hawk. When the pandemic hit and races were canceled altogether, Crofoot said she continued to run for fun and exercise but thought she was mostly finished with ultra marathons.

Crofoot is a chiropractor and owns a gym in Marion, Diamond C Fitness. She said it was when she filled in for a chiropractor in Lawrence for several weeks in 2023 that her love of trail running resurfaced. She connected with a local running group, the Lawrence Trail Hawks, and started running area trails with a group of women.

photo by: Contributed

Kodi Crofoot, right, and family friend Westen Smith, at the Trucker Trot on June 1, 2024, in Marion, Kansas.

“I got to live in Lawrence, and oh, I just loved it there. I would meet up with a group of girls and run the trails with them when I could,” Crofoot said.

She said she returned to Lawrence again for a two-week stay in March to cover for a local chiropractor, and when she joined the Trail Hawks for a run at Sanders Mound another runner encouraged her to sign up for the Hawk.

“I was talking to her about it and said, ‘You know what, I’m going to sign up. I’m going to come back and finish this,'” Crofoot said.

A week later, Crofoot put her name on the dotted line.

In September she will join two dozen others in the 100-mile race, but the Hawk is also host to runners who aren’t quite ready for such a long trek, said race director and Trail Hawk Cara Combs. In total, at least 86 runners will be on hand, with 34 runners looking to finish a standard 26.2-mile marathon, 25 competing in the 50-mile race and two runners planning to finish 75 miles.

About 50 volunteers have signed up to help out with the event. The Hawk Hundred is “very near and dear to our hearts,” said Combs, who took over as one of the race directors in 2022 along with Jordan Shrack.

Volunteers have critical roles at the event, including recording times, staffing aid stations and cooking meals. Paramedics and other health workers are also on hand to tend to injuries and other medical issues that may arise.

Crofoot said that another vital volunteer role is pacer. Pacers are runners who join the race for several miles at a time to keep racers on track and, at night, awake.

“When it turns dark I want to have a pacer with me. You just love those friends who are willing to give up their time to come and run with you in the dark in the middle of the night. They are the ones who keep you going, somebody to talk to,” Crofoot said.

Between standard nighttime fatigue and the physical exhaustion from running hours on end, Crofoot said that in past overnight runs she has experienced hallucinations and the urge to simply stop and sleep on the trail.

“I usually get visual hallucinations, and I’ll start seeing stuff. So, it’s always good to have another runner with you to kind of talk you down from that,” Crofoot laughed.

Crofoot has increased her average weekly running mileage in preparation for the race. She usually gets up around 4 a.m. to finish a 10-mile run before it starts to get hot on the country roads around Marion, and on some days she will add another 8 miles in the afternoon. She has added weight training to her regimen to be stronger for the long race.

photo by: Contributed

Kodi Crofoot trains for the Hawk Hundred ultra marathon.

Running such long distances is more about the mental struggle than the physical one, she said, and this time around she hopes the weight training will give her the extra kick to climb the hills and bound over the rocks that stopped her before.

“I’m not going to get the fastest time. My goal is that I just want to finish,” Crofoot said.

In her view, an ultra marathon is something of a metaphor for the trials and tribulations of life.

“When you are ultra running, you hit those lows when you want to quit, but when you dig deep and look at the positives versus the negatives, it keeps you going,” Crofoot said.

When she and her husband, Brian Crofoot, recently purchased their gym in Marion, she was faced with the daunting task of learning how to use financial software and other business tools, and she initially thought the venture was maybe a mistake. She soon realized that every obstacle was an opportunity to learn and connect with other people who have faced similar challenges.

“So, I didn’t quit. I turned a negative, where I’m trying to quit and say ‘this is stupid,’ into a positive by figuring it out. It’s the same with ultra running. You hit those lows and want to quit, but you have to get over that hump, and you know if you just keep going, that negative is going to go away,” Crofoot said.

She hopes to finish the race in 25 to 26 hours, but if it takes longer that’s OK too so long as she can put the Hawk behind her and mark it “finished.” She plans to take plenty of time to rest after the race as she and her husband plan to get on a plane the very next day for a weeklong vacation in the Dominican Republic.

photo by: Contributed

Brian Crofoot, from left, Kodi Crofoot and Dave Meeth are pictured after a race. Meeth will pace for Crofoot in this year’s Hawk Hundred.

“I should look really awesome walking through the airport because I am not very good at walking after a race for two days,” Crofoot said.

In 2023, the Hawk Hundred winner in the women’s category, Michele Jacoby, finished the race in 26 hours and 19 seconds while in the men’s category, Huntter Hufferd finished the race in 25 hours and 47 minutes. In that 100-mile race, there were 13 competitors, and only nine finished, according to race records.

There is still time to sign up for the Hawk Hundred, and all runners will receive a long-sleeve race shirt, a race bag and a distance-specific HAWK car sticker if you register by Aug. 15, according to the race signup website.

Crofoot and other 100-mile runners will receive a custom belt buckle if they finish; 75-milers will receive a custom Hawk cooler; 50-milers get a handcrafted beer mug, and marathon finishers receive handcrafted medals.