![]() Trail running became a healthy addiction. ![]() I both hated and loved how hard it was, but it was empowering that I did something I didn’t think I could do,” she says. “I had no trail running experience, and the race scared the daylights out of me. Throughout the 20-mile race, Lance had been caring for their son and Cody was ready to see his mom after the long break. She needed a consistent mental outlet beyond ranch labor to combat the symptoms, so on a whim, she signed up for the 2011 Bridger Ridge Run.Īfter clawing her way through 20 miles and 6,800 of vertical gain, DeHaan crossed the finish line and went straight into half-conscious breastfeeding. (Photo: Courtesy Megan DeHaan) Community and Mental Health in MovementĭeHaan played team sports growing up and, after having her first son, struggled with postpartum depression. He thinks DeHaan’s running hobby is bizarre but offers to join her training on horseback. Now the couple works a large-scale 30,000-acre ranch northwest of Bozeman in the southwest corner of the state. Within seven months, she fell for her now husband, Lance, a fourth-generation Montanan cattle rancher. That saddle-making school, as well as an animal husbandry job with Trans Ova Genetics, planted her in the world of agriculture. When she saw an ad for a horseshoeing course at Montana State University in Western Horseman, the 17-year-old left. “I took the first ticket out of the Bay Area I could find,” she says. She grew up in California but felt a call to be a cowgirl. The race, which launched last summer, also happens to be Montana’s first 100-mile foot race.ĭeHaan didn’t grow up running or ranching. It helps that the ultrarunner-rancher’s two boys, Cody and Cayson, are now old enough to cook, do laundry, and drive the tractor.ĭeHaan, 37, is a rancher, ultrarunner, and race organizer of one of the gnarliest 100-milers in the country. Between the all-nighters to bail alfalfa glittering with dew, tagging a sea of 1,870-pound Black Angus cattle, aiding birthing cows, and bottle-feeding dozens of calves, the Crazy Mountain 100 race director Megan DeHaan throws in runs whenever she can-often around 4:30 A.M., when she’s not grinding dusk to dawn. Three seasons exist in southwest Montana: calving, haying, and feeding.
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