A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Appalachian trail is just over 2,000 miles long - 14 states, Georgia to Maine, full of mountains, dirt, rocks, and elevation. Michel, want to hike it, you and me?
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You know, let me think about that, but not on my bucket list, but...
MARTÍNEZ: No?
MARTIN: Not on my bucket list, but, you know, I could be persuaded, maybe.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Some people actually run it.
MARTIN: They run the whole 2,000 miles?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, 2,000 miles - here's ultra marathoner Tara Dower.
TARA DOWER: My trail name is Candy Mama.
MARTIN: OK, I'll bite. What's a trail name? I hadn't heard of this.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. It's a special nickname that you get when you do big long heights. Candy Mama did the big one - the entire Appalachian trail, 40 days, 18 hours, 5 minutes. That's the fastest known time.
MARTIN: I am trying to imagine what that would have been like.
DOWER: Somebody who's, like, from Colorado or from the West Coast, they don't really think that, you know, the East Coast has really difficult terrain, but they call it beast coast for a reason, because you have a lot of rocks, a lot of roots, a lot of technical terrain. Yeah, it's pretty grueling.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, it sounds that way. Dower prepped for two years. She had a team to support her, and she says, besides the blisters and the foot pain that you might expect, she also had some unexpected injuries as well.
DOWER: Oddly enough, my fingers got smashed up, and I remember thinking it was so funny that, you know, my fingers of all things were the part of my body that were getting the most injured.
MARTIN: She ever want to call it quits?
MARTÍNEZ: Well...
DOWER: I know this might be crazy to some people. There's never, like, one moment, not even one second in my head where I thought of giving up.
MARTIN: I guess the one question left is why?
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, me too. I have that question, too, and it turns out that Dower hiked the whole trail five years ago, and she said it changed her life.
DOWER: Always feels like home, and it feels like, you know, that's where I'm supposed to be. I was doing all these fastest known times on other trails, and it just seemed natural to try my hand at this trail that feels so important to me.
MARTIN: You know, I do like to hike, but I've never done 2,000 miles. But, you know, hiking - you come back with interesting tales.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, Dower has a bunch of tales, too. Here's one from one section of the trail with two other hikers.
DOWER: We had a deer, this, like, really sketchy-looking deer - he did not look healthy. He was following us for 3 miles. We were running down the trail, and this deer was just trailing us. And it was the oddest thing. And I - at one point, I was like, we're about to get killed.
MARTÍNEZ: Sketchy-looking deers are the worst kind of deers. But they wound up making it, Michel. So see, there you go. You and I can do it. I'm telling you, we can do it.
MARTIN: I'll think about it. I'll think about it. Haven't planed my vacation yet. But thanks, A, for the offer, and I trust you will be bringing the snacks...
MARTÍNEZ: All right, yeah.
MARTIN: ...If we were to do that.
MARTÍNEZ: We need energy, right? So we need the snacks.
MARTIN: Exactly. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.