Anne Flower didn’t fully commit to running the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile until about two weeks before the event. She had never run 100 miles before and was nervous about getting injured or having to take a long time off from running afterward to recover. But, she’d earned an automatic entry into the race — twice — earlier in the summer by winning both the 2025 Silver Rush 50 Mile and the 2025 Leadville Trail Marathon, and running 100 miles was on what she calls her “Baby Bucket List,” things to do before starting a family.
Flower signed up for the race with the simple goal of finishing. Her reach goal was to finish before it got too late into the night, and she says the dream goal was to finish in the top 10, maybe on the podium, if everything went well.
As the running world knows well by now, Flower broke Ann Trason’s 31-year-old course record by just over eight minutes with a time of 17:58:19 and finished second overall at the race.
Anne Flower on her way to setting a new women’s course record at the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile. All photos courtesy of Anne Flower unless otherwise noted.
In an ultrarunning world highlighted by elite athletes focusing an entire year’s effort on a single race and working with a team of professionals to extract every ounce of performance from their body and mind on race day, Flower seems to be the Type B personality who shows up to start lines with a “let’s see what happens” attitude.
She works full-time as an emergency room doctor in Colorado Springs, Colorado, doesn’t train with a coach, chooses her races based on exciting geographies and places to visit, and has minimal motivation to pursue running in any sort of full-time, professional manner. She ran Leadville in a pair of discontinued Hoka Tecton X 2 shoes that she bought off eBay, and is at a point in her life where she has the perspective to understand that there are things far more important to her than running.
Regardless of how Flower continues to pursue the sport, her win at Leadville was historic, and her approach to running and racing is fascinatingly far out of the norm for performances of that caliber.
Draw of the Outdoors
Flower grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, with soccer as her passion. She played on travel teams from age six and says that she was good enough that playing in college would have been a viable path forward. There was just one small issue: All throughout her childhood years, Flower’s parents, who were teachers, would take the family for vacations out west. She says, “They would pack us in the van and we would go Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Jackson Hole, that sort of thing, camping and doing all of that sort of stuff.” She developed a love for the outdoors at an early age and admits, “I really wanted to be a ski bum.”
Unfortunately, college sports scholarships and activities such as skiing don’t mix well, something Flower realized around her junior year of high school. She stopped playing club soccer and started to look for “some career where I could ski, bike, do outdoorsy things maybe during the week and not so much on the weekends.”
Flower with her family during a summer camping trip.
That desire landed her in college in Denver, Colorado, where she admits, “I didn’t know the proximity between Denver and the true Front Range mountains. I thought that I was going to get this very mountainous experience, which I did. I just had to leave every weekend to get that.” Her career choice was emergency medicine, largely due to the shift scheduling, which would afford her plenty of time to play in the mountains. Of the career, she says, “It’s the most exciting five minutes of every specialty. You get to do all the cool stuff and then not so much the follow-up.”
After finishing college in Denver, Flower ended up at Ohio University for medical school. While there, in 2016, she ran her first road marathon, saying, “I thought it was really fun. It was nice to have a big goal.” Two years later, she qualified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon. She’s nonchalant about running the Trials, saying, “It was incredible. But I was just watching and enjoying while I was technically running it as well. But I don’t think I finished in the top 40 or 50, and that was fine.”
Turning to Ultras
In 2019, for her 30th birthday, Flower signed up for the Dead Horse Ultra 50 Mile in Moab, Utah. She says, “I love Moab. It’s one of my happiest places.” Wanting to put in a big running effort in a place close to her heart, and knowing that she’d finished road marathons before, she says, “I thought I’d be able to do at least 30 or 40 miles.”
Flower won the race by more than 20 minutes. She was living in Kentucky at the time, doing her medical residency, and she says, “The only people who cared were the people who were at that race.” She goes on to say, “I wanted to keep racing, but truly for me it was getting to cool places and having a really big, adventurous day. Winning and stuff was cool, but it’s not like I was doing it for the cash prizes or the notoriety or anything like that.”
Anne Flower atop the 2023 Dead Horse Ultra 50k women’s podium (l-to-r): 2. Giselle Slotboom, 1. Anne Flower, and 3. Genevieve Lillis. Photo: Mad Moose Events
Flower continued to race ultras, racking up a string of impressive results including wins at the 2021 Crested Butte Ultra 55k, 2022 Pikes Peak Ultra 50k, 2024 Javelina 100k, and most recently, the 2025 Leadville Trail Marathon and 2025 Silver Rush 50 Mile. The races she chose, including many more in Moab over the years, were a good excuse to visit places she loved.
While many runners finding success in the ultra world would consider putting the rest of their lives on hold to pursue athletics, Flower was committed to her own path. She says, “I really wanted to do emergency medicine. I landed the residency I wanted, and once I was finally allowed to be part of the club of emergency medicine, there was no way I was going to give that away for something like running.”
After winning the Leadville Trail Marathon and Silver Rush 50 Mile earlier this summer, both of which offered coveted automatic entries to the Leadville 100 Mile, Flower still wasn’t certain she wanted to take on the 100-mile distance. She says, “I’d done 100 kilometers at the end of last year, and I thought that would be as long as I wanted to go. I love 50ks. I think they’re a fantastic distance. They’re so much fun, but you’re not broken, and a couple of days later, you can run again.”
The 2025 Leadville 100 Mile women’s podium (left to right): 3. Lea Mulligan, 1. Anne Flower, 2. Imogen Ainsworth.
Flower had heard too many stories of people running 100 miles and then not wanting to run again for a long time afterward. She laughs when she says, “I didn’t want to dislike the sport because I had tried too hard.” Her biggest fear? Getting hurt and not being able to run for the rest of the year.
Still, the draw of the Leadville 100 Mile proved to be too strong, and after feeling fit after a summer of running, she signed up.
The majority of her training consisted of one or two longer runs each week in Cheyenne Canyon or on Pikes Peak, both near her home in Colorado Springs. Other times, she accompanied her friends, who had coaches and structured training, on their workouts. On days that she worked, it’s was a 40-minute road run before her shift to help her get centered for the day.
Running Leadville
Flower says that she doesn’t get nervous before races by keeping the whole situation in perspective, saying, “I can stop at any time. It’s not that bad.” She realizes the lack of nerves is a bit of an anomaly. “I do think that there is some superpower in that.” She had an AirBnB in Leadville the night before the race that she left at 3:45 a.m. before the 4 a.m. start, walked to the start line, and didn’t allow herself any time to let nerves creep in.
She says she started conservatively, especially over the rocks and roots around Turquoise Lake in the early miles of the race. Flower passed the race leader, Katie Asmuth, around mile 23, but says, “I passed her when she had to go use the restroom, so I thought for sure she’d be back any minute. I knew there were other fast women behind me, so I wasn’t expecting to be there long.”
Anne Flower on her way to a new women’s course record at the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile. Photo: Life Time
But Flower was having a day. She says, “Coming out of Outward Bound, there’s this really flowy aspen tree section before you get to Twin Lakes at mile 40 that was just delightful. It was the most comfortable running. The weather was great. The aspens are turning. It was just beautiful.”
Her race plan was to run to Hope Pass in “50k-style,” hike over the pass, and then, “hopefully be able to run home.”
If Flower’s crew, which consisted of her partner, as well as Hannah Allgood and Gil Allgood, knew she was ahead of record splits, they didn’t tell her. She says, “My crew is pretty smart. They were telling me, ‘You’re doing awesome. Keep moving. You’re looking strong. You’re moving. Just keep going.’”
Flower picked up Gil as a pacer at mile 87 and says having someone to talk to was a huge boost. She says, “We were moving fast. He was pushing me to run faster, and my body felt pretty good.” About two miles from the finish, Flower passed Justin Grunewald and his pacer, Kyle Pietari. Flower says that it was Pietari who looked at his watch and explained that Trason’s course record was within her reach, saying, “You have to go now. Fast.”
Anne Flower with her pacer Gil Allgood descending Powerline road.
Flower says, “I love the last mile of most races. I don’t know if I’m just so happy for it to be done or I’m so excited to get to the finish, but there have been very few races, even when I’m having a terrible race, that the last mile, I can’t pull out some energy from somewhere.” Crossing the line in 17:58:19 was a result that few, let alone Flower herself, would have predicted.
Of the finish, she says, “It was so cool. It was so electric. There were lights everywhere. I could see my friends and everything like that. It was phenomenal. I think it’s still sinking in.”
When asked if anything went wrong during her run, Flower pauses to contemplate. “My shoe was rubbing a couple of times, and so I stopped and retied my shoes.”
The Leadville Aftermath
Flower went straight back to work in her emergency room after the race before taking a bit of time off to go to Scotland with her partner, a trip that was on his “Baby Bucket List.” She doesn’t have any big plans for the rest of the summer, or for her racing next year, but is approaching it with the same casual outlook as she always has.
When asked if she thinks her newfound prominence in the running world would change how she’s viewed at races, she laughs, “I’m not worried about that.”
She does know that she wants to start a family, but doesn’t see having kids as something that will stop her from showing up to start lines. She says, “Ideally, we get pregnant once or twice, be good with that, then I would definitely want to do the Hardrock 100. I’m very curious about Hardrock. Give me the big Colorado mountain races.”
She goes on to say, “I would love to stack up against people who are really, really fast just to see what that’s like.”
Anne Flower celebrates her win at the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile with race directors Ken Chlouber and Merilee Maupin.
But as far as chasing sponsorship deals in the short-term, Flower says, “I just don’t know where that fits in my life right now.” She says, “I want to run forever, but I’m not going to be accidentally winning races for a long time. I see that there’s stuff that’s maybe more long-term that I should be focusing on.”
Accidental or not, Flower’s win at Leadville will be remembered for a long time as one that showed that perhaps one doesn’t need a hyper-regimented plan, long-term goals, and perfect preparation to find success in the sport.
Anne Flower breaks Ann Trason’s 31-year-old course record at the 2025 Leadville 100 Mile. Photo: Life Time
Call for Comments
- Are you inspired by Anne Flower’s approach to running and life?
- Do you find that focusing on things in life other than running actually helps your running?
