Trenidad successfully completes first 100-mile ultramarathon

When Michaela (Schaefer) Trenidad graduated from Medford Area Senior High in 2002, her athletic achievements mostly occurred on the volleyball court.

About 20 years later, Trenidad competed in her first 100-mile ultramarathon March 25-26, placing third out of 15 women in the 11th annual Badger Mountain Challenge near Richland, Wash.

Trenidad, daughter of Michael and Debra Schaefer of Gilman, was 13th overall out of 56 official finishers in the race. She now lives in Pasco, Wash. with her husband Justin Trenidad and their children Penelope and Everett.

Trenidad’s expectation was to finish the race in 24 to 28 hours. But she did better than that, finishing in 23 hours, 48 minutes and nine seconds. Kristi Leblanc of Eugene, Ore. was the first female finisher in 22:18:04 and eighth overall. Alicia Jenkins of Bellingham, Wash. wasn’t too far behind in 22:35:22, good for ninth overall. Ali Riecke of Sedro-Woolley, Wash. was fourth behind Trenidad and 17th overall at 25:25:31.

The race began at 7 a.m. on Friday and went through the night on mostly dirt roads and trails on and around Badger and Candy mountains and the Horse Heaven Trails. About 15 miles of the course are paved.

“Indescribable,” Trenidad said of finishing. “I knew it was going to be a physical and mental challenge. For me it was very spiritual. It’s so hard to describe that to people that haven’t experienced it. You have to have a really, really deep reason for why you want to do something like that. At some point that reason just kind of takes over.”

Previous to this race, a 50K race five years ago was the longest the 37-year-old had run.

“That was before I started having kids, but that kind of planted the bug,” Trenidad said. “Then I had some other things in life as my focus. Now that I’m back to a place in life that I can tackle these goals, this is the beginning. I’m excited to see what else is coming.”

When interviewed April 5, Trenidad said two days prior she signed up for her second 100-miler, the Idaho Mountain Trail Ultra Festival Sept. 10-11. The race is better known by its acronym IMTUF (I am tough).

“This first race, the Badger, was my confidence builder that I had to do before I would allow myself to do IMTUF,” she said. “The people that I know who have been doing this for a long time, they tell me that IMTUF is not one to take lightly. It’s one that not just anyone should sign up for. Now with their advice, I call them the gurus, they’re training with me and they’re encouraging me and I’m excited to try that one in September.”

As for the Badger, Trenidad said she was talked into it by a friend after taking the maternity break. She joined a group of friends who called themselves The Wolfpack, who got together and ran seven to 15 miles each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, starting before the sun came up. They’d add 20-plus mile runs on Saturdays, stretching them at one point to 40 miles.

By race day, she had run all sections of the course but never at one time. The course, which consists of two 50-mile loops, features several 800- to 1,000-foot climbs. For each loop there are about 16,000 total feet of elevation changes.

“There are a couple of sections of it that just really tear into you as a runner, a hiker, anybody who goes out there,” Trenidad said. “There are some areas that have some pretty soft dirt. That is hard to get some traction.

“One of them, the McBee climb. That’s the most daunting climb. It’s a lot of vertical, very steep, most people would use poles for stability to climb it. For me personally, I’ve come to really love climbing. It was just a lot of fun at that point, even after I had run 70 miles. It’s funny because I was running with some other people and it’s dark and it’s about midnight and you can see some lights going up that climb off in the distance. We’re coming up on that climb and I can hear the runners around me are kind of like, ‘ohhh, here it comes.’ And I’m just getting this excitement. I was so excited for it.”

Heading into the final stretch, Trenidad said getting under the 24-hour mark became the goal.

“Sub-24 hours is kind of a coveted target for people who run 100 milers,” Trenidad said. “I looked at my watch with 30 miles to go and I said, ‘you know what I feel good enough, I can run a 50K in six hours, so I’m going to do it. Despite all the mountains and all the miles that are ahead of me I’m going to do it.’ I started to push in that direction. I had to go up and over two mountains to get back to the finish line and I texted my parents one hour and 15 minutes before I would hit the finish line at the 24-hour mark and I was like, ‘wow, I’ve done this on a really good training day. I know I could do these two mountains in one hour. Let’s see if I still have that in me after about 95 miles.’ And I managed to push that last five miles in an hour to get under 24 hours.

“To be quite honest, I was praying a lot. I was asking God for lots of help there.”

After just dabbling a bit in track in high school, running became a passion for Trenidad, who is now an engineer helping clean nuclear waste, several years later in life. She built up to doing marathons in places like Seattle and Portland, but found running in the mountains to be much more enjoyable.

“Eventually, one of the toughest ones in the world is called the Hard Rock 100,” she said. “That’s the ultimate goal but it’s one where you have to enter a lottery to even have a chance to run it. It’s one of the hardest mountain races in the world. It’s in Colorado. That’s a long way off at this point. We’ll see.”