Girl vs. Horse: Why a long-distance runner raced a horse in a 50-mile marathon

Nicole Teeny was the dark horse.

She took her place at the starting line of a 50-mile course, but when the marathon began and her opponents set forth, she stood in place.  

“I started a few minutes later,” she said, “because I didn't want to get run over.”

It was a stampede of sorts. The 18 opponents she was competing against were horses.

“We all set off onto the same 50-mile course,” Teeny told NBC Local. “It had a couple of loops and we just saw who crosses the finish line first.”

Teeny, a long-distance runner from New York City, years prior had read the book “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall. One chapter that had always stuck with her detailed how humans can outrun any animal if the distance is long enough because of their endurance. The example McDougall used was a horse.

“And when I read that, I was like, ‘Humans can outrun a horse? What?!’ Teeny said. “And then inevitably I'm like, ‘Does that mean I could outrun a horse?’ Like, that's ridiculous. Like, I can't even imagine such a thing.”

Teeny, at the time, did not anticipate that she would one day put the theory to test by attempting to outrun a horse. Then in April of 2018, she suffered a seizure. Six months later she suffered another and was diagnosed with epilepsy.   

That diagnosis, she said, severed the connection between mind and body that she had spent years building as a runner. When she wanted to rebuild that connection, she was reminded of the book and its message.  

“That connection between thinking about [horses] being spirit animals and then having this desire to outrun a horse kind of just like cemented in my mind as like, this is the way I'm gonna kind of come to terms with this,” she said.

“And when everything felt out of balance, this was the one thing that I, for some reason, felt really connected to that I just needed to do. If it was the last thing I did before I died, I wanted to race a horse.”

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But she found that it’s not so easy for a human to enter a horse race.

“I called hundreds of riders trying to get someone to let a two-foot individual race against their four-foot individuals,” Teeny said.  “So, it all came down to one race.”

That was the 50-mile ultramarathon in Big Hill Lake, Kansas – the setting of what became a one-runner town.

She competed against 18 horses and riders on a course that was divided into three loops that each lead to base camp. The horses, she said, get mandatory vet checks and safety breaks at rest stops during the 20-mile and 35-mile mark. She planned to use those periods to separate herself from the horses.

Teeny documented the journey from her diagnosis to her unique marathon on ESPN’s 30-for-30 four-episode podcast series titled “Girl vs. Horse” – which premiered Tuesday.

It captured how the dark horse fared against actual horses.

“At some point in life, we all experience setbacks,” Teeny said. “Something where life went off script, we weren't expecting, and there's different ways in which we can deal with them and process them. And for me, that was racing against a horse.”