The greatest endurance feat ever? Woman runs 3,500-km mountain trail in record time

Endurance runner Tara Dower smashed one of the toughest records in sport.

The Appalachian Trail (AT)  is the world's longest hiking-only path, at 3,535 kilometres from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia.

On Sept. 21, Dower finished running its entire distance in the fastest known time: 40 days, 18 hours and six minutes.

That is 13 hours faster than the record set in 2018 by Belgian runner Karel Sabbe. Prior to Dower's breakthrough, only 10 people had ever managed to traverse the AT in 50 days or less.

But while accolades like the greatest endurance feat ever are showered on the 31-year-old from Virginia Beach, Dower prefers to pass on the praise to her support team, which included her mother, who often had to exhort her exhausted, injured, hallucinating daughter to keep pushing just a little bit more.

"[My own effort] doesn't look that heroic, honestly. I remember some really tough days and some very messy days … it's very overwhelming to get that amount of recognition," she told CBC Sports.

Dower ran north to south, getting the highest and hardest mountains out of the way in the first 10 days. But those two weeks also included day after day of rain. A lot of stumbles and rocky landings. Dower developed brutal sores and craters on her feet. The physical agony and the overall effort led to some periods of hallucination.

WATCH | Dower explains how, why she was able to win 3,500+ km trail race:

How extreme endurance runner Tara Dower smashed the Appalachian Trail speed record

Races that involve such long distances and times are not easy to understand, much less attempt. Dower ran more than 90 kilometres every day for nearly six weeks. That's 15 full marathons each week. In the mountains. On muddy