St Amand Finish
Jennifer St. Amand has turned heads every step of the way through her running journey, starting with two-mile drills, advancing to road races up to the marathon distance and competing in trail ultramarathons up to 100 miles, so it is ironic that she gained the most attention with a last place finish in California in June.
That finish was in no ordinary race, though. The Western States 100, considered by many to be the most prestigious ultramarathon, is difficult to even get chosen to go to the starting line and the grueling course has an extremely aggressive cutoff time for runners competing in the race. Just finishing within the official allotted time is an accomplishment worth noting, especially for someone who can’t train full-time due to work and family commitments.
As St. Amand gutted out mile 99 of Western States, a crowd of cheering supporters followed her to the finish where she crossed the line just 20 seconds before the official cutoff time. After that finish, she has been interviewed in at least half a dozen podcasts, including ones with Runner’s World and Ultra Running magazines, and her accomplishment has been featured in several articles. Altra shoe company even rewarded her with several boxes of free running shoes.
Recommended against ultras
If she had followed all the advice she has received over the years, the 49-year-old Dexter area resident wouldn’t have even tried to run Western States or any of the 10 other 100-mile races she has tackled.
“Someone discouraged me from doing them for many years and his name is Thom Woo.He was like, ‘St. Amand, you do ultras, you’re going to slow down,’” she said.
St. Amand, who still values the advice she receives from Woo, an accomplished Rochester runner, admits he “was not wrong, it kind of does slow you down.”
St. Amand, who grew up on a potato farm in New Brunswick, Canada, before moving to Maine and joining the military after she got out of high school, was a hockey fan, not a runner, when she ran a fitness test during basic training. She finished the two-mile run in 16:17. She admitted she wasn’t trying too hard because she didn’t know what she was capable of at that point, but the drill sergeants were very excited about her time. Later, at her first Army duty station, her two-mile time was down to 10:54.
“I started to feel really good about my running,” she said.
A tank mechanic in the Army, she was able to train for a marathon on her second deployment to Europe. She read some advice online while training, but didn’t realize she needed to fuel and drink fluids for such long distances, thus she didn’t approach her potential in marathons at first, either.
She moved to the Rochester area in 2004 where she started running mostly local races from 5k distance to marathons. She closed in on the three-hour mark in some of her marathons before she came down with an injury in 2016.
There was’t an official diagnosis for the injury, but she said it was something like arthritis that moved around. Tests did show some inflammation in her left knee and sports medicine specialists recommended she dial back her running.
St. Amand theorized it was the speed workouts that were taking a toll on her body, so after she took a couple months off with little running she resumed serious running minus the speed work while gaining back distance.
She had dabbled in ultramarathons prior to that, but she usually ran flatter ones where she could use her speed. She ran the Surf the Murph in Savage, Minn., in 2013 when she did the 50k distance and in 2014 when she took on her first 50-mile course, finishing as the second female overall. In the fall of 2015, she decided to do a new trail race, the Hixon 50k in La Crosse, where she took first place among females with a time of 5:35:56.
With Woo’s advice against ultras in her mind as she was making progress on her road running success, she had thoughts of running 100-mile races, but decided she would wait to do 100-mile runs until she was in her 50s when she would naturally be slowing down. However, the injury made her think she may not be able to wait. Besides, she couldn’t get out of her head the memory of the satisfaction she got from running longer races.
“I had done one 50-miler and felt amazing after that,” she said.
She changed her diet, which helped a lot with her running, so she became confident she could handle the distance without injury or ibuprofen, which could also take a toll on her body. She signed up for the Superior 100 along Minnesota’s northern shore of Lake Superior in 2017. She found success right away this time, finishing as the seventh female overall and first in the master’s division with a time of 31:21:40.
The route has “gnarly trails,” especially in the overnight hours, said St. Amand, and although it isn’t run at elevation, it has a lot of elevation change, about 40,000 feet in all. “I want to say it is definitely as hard as Western States, maybe a little harder,” she said.
The next year, she finished third female overall and first master female runner in the Kettle Moraine 100 in Wisconsin. In her third 100-mile race, the Lean Horse in Custer, S.D., in 2019, she took first place among females.
From snow to dusty heat at Western States
By the time she reached the starting line of the Western States 100, which runs along the Western States Trail starting at Olympic Valley, Calif., and ending in Auburn, Calif., she was prepared for the distance with eight 100-mile races under her belt. However, she wasn’t quite prepared for all that Western States threw at her.
Sure, she had done the training, mostly near Whitewater State Park, but it is hard to replicate the terrain of Western States in Minnesota. Instead of focusing on the technical aspects and the trail running, she went out past the main part of the park in the heat of the day to run dirt roads that were dusty and dry with steep hills.
“So I would just do repeats up that hill for hours just to stimulate the ups and downs because I heard your quads get really beat up in that race,” she said.
In retrospect, she would have trained a little differently, probably focusing more on running technical trails and pushing harder to help her prepare for the intense climbs that started at about mile 40 in the race.
“There was some climbing in that race that was just insane,” she said. “It was like I was going at a 30-minute mile up a canyon because it was just straight up. It’s not like you were climbing up rocks, but almost – you were leaning the whole way up.”
That came after a cold introduction to the race. The race started at 5 a.m. with a climb of 2,550 vertical feet up a ski hill in the dark. Although it was light when she came to the top, which is at elevation 8,750 feet, there were mounds of snow with sun cups, which form when the sun beats down to create open bowl-shaped depressions with sharp ridges encircling them. They are slippery and very difficult to maneuver. St. Amand she she didn’t feel like she was running, but wouldn’t call it trodding, so she came up with the term “slogging” to describe her pace.
“The first 30 miles of that race was slogging since you’re just trying to stay upright because there is so much slipping and falling,” she said.
Runners would climb up the mounds of snow, but have to slide back down on their butts because the snow was too deep for running. Some of the runners were wearing shorts so St. Amand saw blood in the snow at times. There were also times when runners couldn’t see the route since it was a seldom-used portion of the race.
“You’d think you’d be able to see it, but everything was white,” she said. “Even though there were hundreds of people running through it, people were going the wrong way at times, there were tracks everywhere.”
After she got out of the worst of the snow, she started feeling better as she descended a valley that ended in a canyon.
“It was probably the only time during that race – and it only lasted 10 miles – that I felt really good,” she joked. Then she hit the incline to Devil’s Thumb. “It was just a struggle bus from there on out, pretty much,” she added, as the rest included hills along with miles and miles of dust.
From the top of that first incline with the snow, the course follows the original trails used by the gold and silver miners of the 1850s, climbing another 15,540 feet and descending 22,970 feet before reaching Auburn, a small town in the heart of California’s historic gold country. Most of the trail passes through remote and rugged territory.
Even the valleys were difficult as heat blasts runners at the lower elevations. Although St. Amand said temperatures often reach the 100-degree mark in the canyons, last year it wasn’t as bad with highs near the 90-degree mark. St. Amand may have always lived in the north, but it was the snow, not the heat, that bothered her most. That and the relentless hills.
Besides overcoming the obstacles on the course, St. Amand also had to deal with her own internal trials. More than halfway through the course, her body was rejecting food, but her mind knew she needed the calories to make it through to the end. She decided to take some time to force some food down, even though some of her crew members were telling her she needed to get back to running
“It took all my mental energy…and my body finally gave up,” she said about finally getting some calories into her. “I felt much better and I started running. At this point, you’re going to think this is crazy, but I felt like I was flying at a 14-minute pace”
Some people may label that a quick walk, she added, but noted she is short and she just felt good to be moving again without worrying about a calorie deficit.
“Never once did I ever think I wouldn’t finish,” she said. “No matter what, even if I didn’t make the cutoff, I was finishing. That’s not even a question for me. When I start one of these things I’m finishing.”
However, even as she closed in on the finish line, she still was dealing with heat, even more climbs and technical trails on rock. She finally descended a hill into Auburn and felt really good until she learned there was yet another hill before she could run on the Placer High School track at the finish line.
“At this point, I had a group of probably 30 people with me and they’re all running with me, screaming at me,” she said. “And I thought, this is weird because in an ultra you never see that many people. But the whole town it seemed like they had come out for this and they were all involved and they were cheering me on. Like why are they making such a big deal about me?”
When she got on the track and saw the finish line clock, already at 29 hours, flip over to the 59-minute mark, she started running an eight-minute pace. “I don’t know where it came from – adrenaline I assume,” she said.
She sprinted to the end where she nearly collapsed after she crossed that finish line with a time of 29:59:39.
“Everybody was around me, there was media everywhere. It was crazy,” she said. “Then it hit me, well now I know why where were so many people cheering me on and they were all watching me. I didn’t realize I was going to be that close.”
Never lacked support
St. Amand has had plenty of support throughout her running journey. For ultras, Sarah Chapman of Rochester has been a key individual in her success as she has been on the crew of nine of St. Amand’s 11 100-mile races. She has also become a good friend and the two took their time traveling by car to Western States, enjoying the sights along the way.
The other crew members at Western States were Alex Bartley, from Plainview, who St. Amand met at the Hixon 50k in Wisconsin and Brian Mansky, from Wisconsin, who she met at the Superior 100 where he volunteered to be a pacer.
They all knew Dan Strain, another Rochester runner who has done several ultras, and they often train together in the Rochester area. Strain, who had run a couple 100s before St. Amand had tried the distance, has been an inspiration. “I didn’t think it was even possible,” she said about the 100-mile distance, until she talked to him and heard his experiences.
Even though Woo advised her against ultras, he still coached her, convincing her to do some shorter races as training for ultras.
“I listened to everything he told me,” said said. “He is really such an inspiration to me. He’s still doing great, running fast races.”
She also learned some things on her own. “I think the biggest thing in preparing to run these is the mental aspect of it,” she said. “For me, I need to see what it is I’ll be doing and I need to replicate that, the specificity in my training as much as I can.” She added that another important aspect is “accepting things that you are not going to be able to prepare for. And, being able to switch up things in the moment, being flexible, being like a reed.”
She also credits the National Guard with helping her achieve her goals. She had been a social worker for several years before getting the opportunity a few years ago to work with teens again as a recruiter for the Guard. In addition to enjoying the competitive atmosphere of her workplace, she has also been able to run on the National Guard marathon team, which is open to the top runners. She has qualified for the team three times even though she is much older than most competitors. She ran the Lincoln, Neb., marathon last year, finishing in 3:29, a time she was satisfied with since it had been a while since she ran that type of race. Next on her team schedule is the Boston Marathon.
She has taken a pause in her ultra miles, although she promises it won’t be permanent. She has a lot going on in her life right now, as she will take over the Rochester recruiting station this year and her son will graduate from high school in the spring. Plus she said she is mentally worn out from the distance training.
Spreading the love
Although St. Amand has experienced so many difficulties, such as the body rejecting food, injuries, swelling, dehydration, night sweats after races, cramping and a host of other maladies, she still recommends ultramarathons.
“To me, it’s like a big adventure when you do these 100s,” she said. “It’s like you’re going to get to eat all kinds of fun food, you’re going to go out and see a lot of cool country, things you’ve never seen before.”
In the beginning, she was still in the marathon mindset and went for the flatter ultras where she could run faster, but now, “I’m all about let’s do the sightseeing ones that take a really long time,” she said. She added that it is also a bonding event because she gets to spend so many hours with like-minded people all gutting it out there.
She would welcome the opportunity to help introduce the experience to others and lend her knowledge to newcomers to the distance.
“I had so many people who did that for me,” she said. “I know that it can seem overwhelming. If anyone ever needs a mentor, I would love the opportunity to give back.”
Note: Story written by David Phillips for the Rochester Running Club. St. Amand will be speaking at Resolution Night Thursday, Jan. 11, at Terra Loco in Rochester.