STEPHANIE CASE
How ultrarunner Stephanie Case’s Free To Run programmes help to empower women where their freedoms are hardest won
STEPHANIE CASE IS AN EXPLORER, A PIONEER OF DARK PLACES.
Places where her limits are tested so far that she genuinely doesn’t know what might happen. The places that human beings make for each other through violence and war, where her skills as a human rights lawyer help bring a little light.
As a lawyer, she’s worked in Afghanistan, South Sudan and Iraq. She’s lived in tents in conflict zones and worn body armour to work. As an ultrarunner, her CV is a roll call of the very toughest: Hardrock 100, Western States 100, two Barkley Marathons and the 450km Tor des Glaciers among many more. Her character is perhaps summed up best in her reaction to finishing her first marathon. Like so many runners, it was an experience that changed her – just not how you might think.
‘It seemed like the big, ultimate challenge,’ she says. ‘I felt like it would be a life-changing event. But I had a sense of accomplishment for maybe a day. Then it went away and I started to think, what was it about that experience that disappointed me? How can I improve this? What do I need to do next?’
She was studying at law school, working long hours, and running became her outlet. But the mere challenge of running against the clock did nothing for her. ‘The thought of training for another year just to bring my marathon time down by 15 minutes sounded completely insane. Because I’m not going to go to the Olympics. I know I could finish the marathon. I know now the distance isn’t that far. So what’s the point of doing it faster? I just wasn’t motivated by speed. So I started thinking about distance.’
Distance became her new frontier. ‘It felt more primal to me,’ she explains, ‘more connected to who we are as human beings. What’s the furthest we can go, when we can push our bodies to the absolute limit? When no matter what kind of external factors come our way, whether it’s wind or snow or heat, you just have to keep going. To see how the body would be able to bear whatever unexpected event came along, I found that very exciting.’
Case was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in a suburb of Toronto. Was it a childhood spent running and taking part in competitive sports? She laughs at the very idea, ‘I was a total nerd! I wasn’t sporty at all. I was interested in maths and science, and in high school, I gave up half of my lunch hour so I could be in the wind ensemble. At university, I did join the rowing team and became a sailing instructor in the summers, but I’ve never really considered myself very sporty. I’m quite clumsy.’
Law school at the University of British Columbia – including summer stints for Lawyers Without Borders in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Liberia – l
