While many teachers head back to school this week, middle-school math teacher Megan Eckert will be 5,000 miles from her classroom in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has a good reason to miss a few classes: she’ll be competing at the Global Organization of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners World Championship.

On Thursday, more than 100 runners will gather on a start line in Balatonfüred, Hungary, and attempt to run as many miles as they can in six days.

Eckert, who turned 40 last month, has one of the most audacious goals in the field. She wants to beat the women’s world record – and take down the US men’s record, as well.

Eckert will be racing against herself for the women’s mark. Last May, she ran 603.156 miles (970.685km) at the world championships in Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, setting the world record (pending final ratification). She bested Camille Herron’s mark by more than 40 miles and became the first woman in history to run 600 miles in six days. That’s the equivalent of running nearly four marathons a day for six straight days.

That performance earned her recognition as one of the top athletes in the sport last year. She was voted third in Ultrarunning Magazine’s rankings for Worldwide Ultrarunner of the Year.

Now, Eckert wants to one-up herself – and almost every man, too. But as she goes through her final preparations for the race, she has some doubts about whether she can actually do it. That’s exactly how she likes to race, and is how she’s built such an impressive running resume – which includes national teams, world records and podiums at Badwater 135, Cocodona 250, and Vermont 100, three notorious ultradistance races.

Eckert likes to think about odds when she sets goals for herself. It’s fitting for someone who spends most weekdays teaching algebra and calculus, when she’s not using her vacation days to chase world records.

“I like to choose goals where I have a 50% chance of success and a 50% chance of failure,” she says. “It’s amazing what can happen when you go after goals that scare you – and that just might not be possible.”

She appreciates that when she takes a big swing, she gets more out of herself in training, racing, and life, even if she doesn’t nail every big goal.

That wasn’t always Eckert’s strategy. She was once so afraid of failure that it almost stopped her from running at all.

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Eckert trained for months to run her first 5K in 2008. But on the morning of the run, she didn’t leave her house.

“I was too afraid of failing,” she said. “I let my doubts win.”

So she hung up her running shoes and walked away from the sport. It took years, and meeting her husband, Joe Eckert, before she decided to give running another try.

When they started dating in 2016, Joe convinced her to run a half marathon with him. This time, she made it to the start line. And when she reached the point on the course where marathoners continued on while the half-marathoners turned towards the finish, she remembers thinking: “It would be fun to keep going.”

“It would be fun to keep going” has become a theme of Eckert’s running career.

Eckert, who is now sponsored by brands including shoe company Mount to Coast and apparel company Janji, has won races of most every distance, but she’s best known for the supersized runs.

This will be her third six-day event. She also holds the women’s world record for backyard ultra events, a last-man-standing format where runners finish a 4.16-mile (6.69km) loop every hour for as many hours as possible. Eckert lasted 88 hours and racked up 362 miles (582.583km) at Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in 2024.

Once Eckert gave running a second chance, she was hooked. She appreciated that it offered her an outlet to test her limits. And she realized the only way to actually find out what she could do was to try things that seem impossible.

“There’s something about pushing your personal limits, seeing what you’re made of, and coming out the other side that keeps drawing me back,” she said. “I want to feel how I can do more than I think I can – again and again.”

She didn’t start her running career with record-breaking runs. She finished that first half marathon in 1hr 57 min – for context, about 55 minutes shy of the current world record.

But it wasn’t long before she realized she could be pretty good. She entered her first 100-mile run because she’d read a book about someone running 100 miles in one go and wanted to see if she could do it, too. She ended up winning the race – outright – beating all of the other women and the men, too.

She tried every challenge she could get her feet on: 100-mile runs in 100-degree weather, mountain races through sole-sucking mud, and her first multiday events, where she covered more than 200 miles at a time.

“I started dabbling in lots of different distances, different places, and different terrains and found that, regardless of where I went or how I performed, I loved it,” she said.

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The first time Eckert heard about six-day events, she thought they sounded a little too nutty, even for someone who loved a challenge.

She signed up for email updates about an event in Wisconsin without any real intention of competing. When she got a notice that the price was about to increase, she turned to her husband and said: “Should we go try this stupid six-day thing? No one has ever hit 600 miles.”

And then, the question that has shaped her running career: “Why not give it a shot?”

While ultradistance events carry runners past sweeping vistas or through miles of breathtaking mountains, six-day events generally involve a short, fixed-distance loop. As the clock runs for 144 hours, runners make quick stops to nap, eat and troubleshoot any issues that pop up, such as blisters, chafing or stomach problems. Last year, Eckert slept an hour or two every 12 hours and ate lots of rice cakes, pasta, eggs, gummy bears and barbecue potato chips.

Eckert’s first six-day event was on an 0.275-mile (443m) indoor track. The course in Hungary is a 0.558-mile (898m) loop of a paved road. If Eckert hits her goal and beats the US men’s record of 606.243 miles (975.654km), she’ll run the same loop at least 1,086 times.

But Eckert, who says prioritizing joy is as integral to her success as taking big swings, thinks the six-day event may be her happiest place. She’s genuinely excited to run for six straight days – and for every high and low along the way.

“I didn’t even know six-day runs existed until a few years ago, but I fell in love with them the minute I found them,” she said. “When I’m training for a big goal like the American men’s record, I don’t dwell on fear because I get so excited about how the goal is pushing me to train harder – and how I get to go and run with a community who’s turning the same 144-hour race into our own little world.”

She set the world record last year with the help of short naps, turkey and pickle sandwiches, and breaking her big goal into smaller chunks. And leaving the math to her crew.

“It’s such a long time to have to think about your pace, I trust them to tell me when I need to push,” she says. “I’m really good at being mindful and just staying in the moment on the course.”

Eckert even has a fish tattoo on her foot that was inspired by a splotch on the floor from her first six-day event. She’d look at it every lap and think about how it looked like a fish that was swimming along with her.

When she goes after the record this week, she’s counting on her mind to do as much work as her body.

“Sure, I go into races and have doubts, but it’s not the limiting factor or the loudest voice any more,” she said. “Failure isn’t the worst case scenario, it’s not having the experience of whatever thing I’m chasing.”

She now knows the surest way to combat her doubts is to do exactly what she didn’t do back in 2008: “When you take your first step, they all dissipate and you can just be in the moment.”

She just has to take that first step.