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PARK CITY — Park City resident Jax Koudele idolizes Wonder Woman, and her impressive ability to run long distance is proving her to be quite the superhero.
Koudele said she started running when she was just 5 years old.
“I did a 5K with my mom for my school, and I just fell in love with it, and I won my age group, so I got a medal, so then I was into like collecting hardware every weekend and doing fun races,” Koudele said. “And so quite little I had that dream of running, and I’ve always I think since I was really little, so Wonder Woman has actually been my hero since I was that small, and I’ve always wanted to do something so big that it would really inspire the masses to get outside.”
Since February, Koudele has run four 155-mile races in Sri Lanka, Chile, Africa and China, and she’s not done yet. She is currently attempting another one, this time in Antarctica.
The races are part of the Grand Slam PLUS, “a series of five self-supported ultra marathons in the roughest terrain in the world,” Koudele said.
The athletes participating in the races are required to carry a pack on their backs that includes the essentials they need to survive. The packs they carry start out at about 20 pounds before they eat their food off. The race team provides hot and cold water, medical aid in extreme cases and tents for groups of participants to sleep in, Koudele said.
If Koudele finishes the Antarctica race, she will be the first woman to complete all five races in the series in one fiscal year.
“Only three people have ever done this before — all are men,” Samantha Fanshawe, the CEO of the 4 Deserts Race Series, told KSL.com in an email. “This year, there are five more people who will have achieved this feat if they complete The Last Desert successfully.” The Last Desert is the Antarctica race.
Koudele was the first woman to finish the race in Chile in October, and she finished the race in fourth place. The next female to finish the race was four hours behind her. If she wins the race in Antarctica, she will be the second woman in the world to win all four of the traditional races in the Grand Slam Plus.
The Grand Slam Plus includes four traditional races and one roving race, a race that changes locations each year. This year's Roving Race was in Sri Lanka, according to Koudele.
