Ironwomen

   A few years ago I wrote about a "Wonder Woman", Camille Herron, who is an ultramarathoner. For example, she has run close to 170 miles in one day (270,km). In "Women Running Around", you learned that in the 1960s women weren't allowed in the Boston Marathon and it was not until the early 1980s that women could run a marathon in the Olympics. If you combine those two posts with this one, you will have a pretty good pile of impressive, athletic female feats.

RUNNING - Very Far
   

    Shandra Hill - Vernon, B.C.
  I remember thinking back in the late 1970s that no one would be able to complete an "Ironman Triathlon", since it included a marathon which was hard enough. I was wrong, now there are "ULTRA"-triathlons and they are being completed by women. Ms. Hill is doing "Decas", and even double and triple ones. Here is the story:
  "B.C. Ultra Triathlete Becomes First in the World to Complete 3 Double-Deca Races," Shaurya Kshatri · CBC News · Posted: Oct 20, 2023.
   "Imagine running, swimming and biking more than 4,500 kilometres for 26 days with three-hour naps and 15-minute breaks in between. Now imagine doing that twice in a row. Shanda Hill of Vernon, B.C., just did.
  After completing an ultra triathlon in Switzerland, the 41-year-old took a week of downtime before doing the same race in San Felipe, in Mexico's Guanajuato state, where she clinched the top spot in the DecaUltraTri Continuous Double Deca on Thursday, besting five other athletes. 
   With her latest victory, Hill has become the only person in history to compete in and finish three double-Decas. 
   The Deca exists within an extreme niche of the triathlon world, where participants go through a 38-kilometre swim, 1,800-kilometre bike ride, and a 422-kilometre run. A double-Deca, as the name suggests, is twice that distance.   
   According to the International Ultra Triathlon Association (IUTA), the official governing body of the sport, the double-Deca requires athletes to complete 76 kilometres of swimming, followed by 3,600 kilometres of cycling, and finally 844 kilometres of running.
  That's the equivalent of 20 Ironman races.
 According to Ms. Hill, "Smart people would have stopped at one. I'm not quite sure how I ended up doing three of those."
   Update: As this was being done, Ms. Hill was competing in Taiwan when a typhoon arrived and she has decided she has had enough - or her body has:
"Vernon Ultra Athlete Announces Retirement from Competition mid-race", Roger Knox, Vernon Morning Star, Nov. 12, 2025.
Sources: 
Her website is here: https://www.shandahillultra.com/
For more details and photos, her FB pages are here and accessible:  https://www.facebook.com/ShandaHillUltraAthlete/
All of this activity is made clearer by looking at the Wikipedia entry for "Ultra-triathon."

The Bonus: A Simple 100 Mile Run
  This story just broke: "Irish athlete Caitriona Jennings Breaks 100-mile World Record: The run of Jennings of 12:37:04 was almost four hours ahead of the next best woman," Ian O'Riodan, The Irish Times, Nov. 9, 2025.
   "Caitriona Jennings has broken the world record for 100 miles after running 12 hours, 37 minutes and four seconds to complete the Tunnel Hill 100 Mile, a US ultra-marathon event staged in Illinois."

ROWING- Across the Pacific

   It is a long and tiring trip in a jet.
   "How Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne Made History Rowing the Pacific Ocean, Caoimhe O'Neill, New York Times, Nov.6, 2025.
    …”the two British women made history by becoming the first female crew to successfully row non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean. To grasp the magnitude of their feat, more people have walked in space than successfully rowed across the world’s biggest ocean.
Their journey started in Callao, Peru, in May and finished in Cairns, Australia on October 19: a 6907-nautical mile odyssey from east to west in 165 days."

The Bonus: A Tragic One
   In MM you will find this post by clicking on the following link. It is about a woman with no legs (or breasts) who tried to row across the Pacific, but didn't make it:
"Angela Madsen (R.I.P.) 

WALKING - A Very Long Way

   Betty Kellenberger has done many difficult things, and attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail a few times, where she got Lyme disease and a concussion from a fall. Recently she had shoulder surgery and a knee replacement, but she decided to try the Trail again.“We put all kinds of limitations on ourselves,” said Kellenberger, who lives in Carson City, Michigan. “Sometimes the biggest one is we don’t get up and try it.” 
   She thought it was interesting that you can actually walk from Georgia to Maine and she has now done it - the entire 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail (3535, km).
She is 80!

   I learned about her in this article: "She Hiked the Entire Appalachian Trail at 80, Unaware She’d Just Made History," Sydney Page, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2025. That article is behind a paywall, but you can read more about her trek and see more photos in The Trek: "Betty Kellenberger Just Became the Oldest Woman To Thru-Hike the AT at Age 80." 

Angela Madsen (R.I.P.)

      This post is interesting and should be inspirational. It is not about me. Even though we are living during the time of the Great Flu, many of us probably do too much whining (or whinging or even whingeing) about problems or issues that result in inconveniences that are often very minor ones. My toe hurts, for example, and it is raining, but this is not about me.

   It is about Angela Madsen and she was the one who is interesting and can inspire us to be a little tougher. I write ‘was’ because I only learned about her in her recent obituary. She died at the age of 60, alone in the Pacific where she had been rowing for about 60 days. Her legs didn't work. She had no breasts.

   The obituary begins this way and only gets worse:

Angela Madsen was a healthy young Marine who was playing basketball when she suffered a serious back injury in 1981. When she had back surgery a dozen years later, at 33, she woke up paralyzed from the waist down. She lost her job, her partner cleaned out her bank account and left her, and for a time she lived on the streets, sleeping in her wheelchair in front of Disneyland.

In case you can’t get behind the firewall I will itemize some of the other difficulties she faced and provide additional sources. She got pregnant while still a junior in high school. Apart from the injury and the botched surgery and the paraplegia, she broke a leg and some ribs in a car accident. She fell from her wheelchair onto the tracks of the San Francisco, subway, injuring her brain, but “even cancer and a double mastectomy did not slow her down.”

  None of those things slowed her down. Apart from the Pacific she also rowed across the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans and around the United Kingdom. She also won gold medals as a Paralympian in rowing and other medals in events such as throwing a javelin and putting a shot. In short, she is worth reading about and we should all complain less and do more.

Sources:

   The obituary: "Angela Madsen, Paralympian Rower, Dies on Solo Pacific Voyage at 60, Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, June 30, 2020.

   See also: "Paralympian Angela Madsen Found Dead While Trying to Row From California to Hawaii, " Allen Kim, CNN, June 26, and  “Paralympic Rowing Star Dies During Solo Crossing of Pacific, "Tom Lutz, The Guardian, June 24, 2020.

   Apparently Madsen went overboard in an attempt to fix a problem as a typhoon approached. She was found attached to her boat. Details are provided at the website The Row of Life and on Explorersweb.com - "What Happened to Angela Madsen?".

  This was not her first problem at sea. In one account a huge container ship almost resulted in her drowning during a rescue attempt. There are several YouTube accounts about her. She is typically poised and well-spoken. See, for example, the interview with Jennifer Longdon - "Angela Madsen: Rowing Against the Wind."

The Bonus

   Another tough woman without legs is also in the news these days. Senator Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) lost hers during the Iraq War as a pilot of a Black Hawk helicopter. She also was not slowed down and became a U.S. Senator and mother - the first to give birth while serving in the Senate. 

   She was attacked by Tucker Carlson on Fox News, apparently for hating America. I gather her husband doesn't know that since he is also an Iraq War veteran.

See: "Tammy Duckworth Confronts Nativist Smears From Tucker Carlson," Reid J. Epstein," New York Times, July 8, 2020.

  For more about Senator Duckworth see the Wikipedia entry and her Senate biography.