BALTIMORE — The distance of a full marathon is 26.2 miles and an ultra marathon is defined as anything longer than that.
Ashley Woods just ran 200 miles in something known as the Speed Project.
This event, known as one of the hardest relay events in the world, is a 340-mile race that starts at a pier in Santa Monica and ends at the Las Vegas welcome sign.
Woods didn't make it the entire 300, but 200 miles is still a crazy feat.
"[I'm] proud of the fact that I made it 200 miles. I know a lot of people with long ultra careers who haven't even done that, so it's pretty crazy that for my very first one I did it," Woods said.
Her first two days on the course, she ran over 100 miles. Impressive right?
"After day two I was really, really sore and in a lot of pain in ways that I had never felt before. I remember the next morning just like starting with tears."
Throughout her experience, she was getting a lot of messages from home and videos that kept her going. She had the support from all of Baltimore.
"Sometimes they were happy tears, sometimes I had read something really nice and that made me cry."
By day five, she decided to call the race early and recorded a DNF, or did not finish.
"The pain I was having and just the unknown feeling this that I've never felt before. It was frustrating, it felt sad, like you train for all these months and you raise all this money and bring all this awareness and then thinking I'm not gonna finish."
She didn't finish, but she left a mark.
Baltimore native aims to be a symbol of hope for women in ultra running
Woods proved that women who look like her can start to break barriers in races like these.
"Running is a sport where you don't see a ton of folks that look like me unless you're in the Olympics. I toe a lot of race lines and you look around and as a person of color, you always spot out the other person of color and give them a little smile because we know that we're highly outnumbered in these spaces."
Woods mentions a lack of resources as a big reason why there aren't many people of color in spaces like these.
She raised funds through a GoFundMe to help her even get to the race and people didn't hesitate to support.
"I am so happy and so proud to be here in Baltimore where people are excited to back a Black woman."
