A Dialog With Stephanie Case – iRunFar

Stephanie Case arrives on the display screen for this digital interview along with her daughter, Pepper in tow. The three-month-old gurgles and smiles on the digital camera, utterly unaware of Case’s almost three-year battle with being pregnant that ultimately introduced her into the world. Pepper, whereas most certainly realizing on some primal stage that her mother is superb, doesn’t but know of the scope of the work Case has completed around the globe, and particularly within the Center East and Central Asia, to champion ladies’s rights.

Case is at the moment dwelling in Chamonix, France, and hoping to increase her parental go away from her work as a United Nations human rights lawyer into the summer season, noting that she’d doubtless be someplace within the Center East if she weren’t on go away. Case might be greatest recognized within the ultrarunning world for founding the non-profit Free to Run. With this system, which makes use of operating and management applications to help younger ladies and ladies in battle areas, Case has completed what many individuals dream of: she’s turned her love for the game into one thing that advantages others.

Utilizing the very distinctive intersection of expertise of being a human rights lawyer, working in warfare zones, being an ultrarunner, and present as somebody who doesn’t consider within the phrase unattainable, she’s supplied alternatives for numerous ladies in six nations, together with Afghanistan and Iraq — nations the place ladies are historically extremely restricted of their actions — to get out and run. The formation and operation of Free to Run was documented in a movie that toured movie festivals after it was launched on-line by The North Face. The movie, made by Dream Lens Media, received a number of awards.

Case has stepped away from the day-to-day operations of Free to Run however stays on the board and may be very concerned on a governance and strategic stage. Now, she’s turned her efforts to bringing mild to the struggles of girls — and particularly runners — coping with infertility points. After two miscarriages and realizing how little info there was obtainable on fertility in endurance sports activities, she’s undertaken this latest movie mission documenting her journey, together with these of different ladies, to turning into a mother.

In search of Limits

Born in Ontario, Canada, Case didn’t contemplate herself “sporty” rising up. She quips, “I used to be very a lot a nerd.” Pushed from the beginning, Case began operating whereas in legislation faculty and signed up for a marathon. From the get-go, the objective of operating was to search out her limits. “I believed the marathon was this epic, arduous factor that you would do, a ticking-the-box life occasion,” she says, “ I believed it could change my life.” She’d watch movies of girls stumbling throughout marathon end strains, utterly spent, and needed to know what it could be prefer to “hit the wall and push by means of.”

After coaching and crossing the end line on the marathon, Case discovered she nonetheless had vitality within the tank and says she didn’t have any “large, epic, difficult moments.” She admits, nearly sheepishly, “I didn’t discover it that arduous.” Including distance to her racing was the following logical step.

She discovered the 250-kilometer Racing the Planet: Vietnam, tried to recruit pals to race along with her, however determined to go alone when she couldn’t discover any takers. She admits there may need been just a few glasses of wine concerned within the resolution to enroll. She says, “I needed to search out one thing that I wasn’t positive I’d have the ability to end.” She went on to win the ladies’s race and end third total, a outcome that made her understand, “perhaps I wasn’t an amazing athlete in any sport earlier than that, however ultrarunning was my factor.”

She says, “I discovered that I acquired a lot confidence and goal out of ultrarunning that I hadn’t been capable of get by means of the rest.”

Within the meantime, she discovered herself working for a legislation agency in New York Metropolis in mergers and acquisitions, however she knew that it wasn’t a long-term profession. Even whereas in legislation faculty, she’d been excited about human rights. “I began performing some work for Attorneys With out Borders on trial observations and ended up type of working for them within the subject throughout my summers all through legislation faculty. Liberia, Rwanda, that type of factor.” Whereas she was working for the New York legislation agency, she continued to do professional bono work, build up her human rights portfolio. When Lehman Brothers crashed and mergers and acquisitions died, her legislation agency supplied a beneficiant incentive for folks to take a 12 months off. In Case’s phrases, “I stated, ‘Thanks very a lot.’ I took that and went and did human rights work within the U.Okay.”

In 2012, armed with a brand new Grasp of Legal guidelines in Worldwide Human Rights and Humanitarian Regulation, Case landed a volunteer place with the United Nations in Afghanistan. When requested what drew her to working in warfare zones, she says, “I had grown up by means of the Nineteen Nineties when the Taliban was in energy, and also you noticed these stark pictures of girls in burkas. It was one of many worst locations on the planet to be a girl. One thing simply drew me to that. It was to this point outdoors of my realm of understanding and my very own cultural context, and it was such an injustice.” She goes on to say, “I didn’t understand how I might assist however I knew that I needed to go to locations the place issues have been arguably at their worst as a result of that’s when there’s probably the most potential for optimistic change.”

She moved into an armed compound the place the longest stretch of highway was 800 meters. Folks instructed her she wouldn’t have the ability to pursue her ultrarunning anymore. However these folks didn’t understand that telling Case that she couldn’t do one thing was the easiest way to make sure that she would.

Redefining a Relationship with Operating

Operating in Afghanistan was a far cry from what most ultrarunners contemplate superb coaching grounds. As a substitute of operating in lovely landscapes, Case was restricted to operating laps in her armed compound. Oftentimes, the air air pollution was so unhealthy she might really feel grit in her tooth after her run, her eyes would go purple, and she or he would begin coughing after solely half-hour of operating outdoors. Gone have been utilizing the perfect vitamin and equipment, changed as a substitute with barbed wire fences and items of wooden and trash littering the bottom.

As a substitute of lamenting what she now not had, Case checked out her state of affairs as a possibility. She says, “I needed to discover a solution to develop my psychological capacities to show it into one thing lovely.” She goes on to say, “I used to be utilizing the rubbish as obstacles, pretending that they have been tree roots reasonably than items of wooden or plastic.” She even discovered the optimistic within the air high quality. She says, “The air pollution would give us actually lovely sunsets. I might run at sundown in order that a few loops across the compound could be at nightfall, and the following few at nighttime. It might make the compound appear larger as a result of the scene would change.”

As a part of her time in Afghanistan, Case visited a shelter that housed ladies fleeing unsafe conditions of their houses, lots of them with kids. Case says of the ladies within the shelter, “They’d a tiny yard and a home and so they couldn’t [leave that area.] I do know that they might have given their proper arm to have the ability to run within the compound that I used to be operating in.” It gave perspective to Case’s compound laps.

“For me to complain or to make use of my lack of a really perfect coaching floor as an excuse to not sustain my operating simply appeared ludicrous.”

Free to Run

Case needed her operating to be greater than a egocentric pursuit. Her preliminary thought was to make use of her racing to boost cash for that Afghan ladies’s shelter, in order that 12 months, she signed up for 3 ultramarathons and raised $10,000 for it. And Case’s response to her fundraising effort? “I noticed that I used to be considering manner too small concerning the energy of operating.”

Case realized that the ladies she was instantly working with have been appreciative however not essentially that within the amount of cash she might carry to the shelter. She says, “What they have been tremendous excited about listening to about was the operating and the races and the landscapes.” She goes on to say, “A few of these ladies had grown up earlier than the Taliban had come into energy, and they also had completed sports activities earlier than and among the youthful ladies had by no means gotten the possibility to run outdoors. They needed to have the ability to do the operating as properly.”

Case admits that she’d arrived in Afghanistan with the preconceived notions that operating wasn’t one thing folks dwelling in a warfare zone could be notably excited about, however she says she got here to be taught, “They’ve been dwelling by means of warfare for thus lengthy that, they need a full and full life like everybody else. Sure, there are bombs going off. Sure, security was a priority, however there have been generations rising up in Afghanistan by means of battle. They usually needed to have the ability to expertise all the regular joys of and freedoms in life that we do.”

In 2014, with seed cash supplied by the founders of the primary ultramarathon she’d completed in Vietnam, Case launched Free to Run, a non-profit devoted to creating alternatives for ladies in Afghanistan to run and develop their life and management expertise in order that they could possibly be a part of driving social change of their nation. In contrast to indoor sports activities, Case explains, “Operating includes this bodily act of reclaiming public house. If you see somebody operating by means of the streets, if you see somebody operating by means of the mountains, proudly owning that public house, in locations like Afghanistan, it may be an act of actual rebel. It may be an act of protest. It may be an act of activism.” She continues, “Having ladies reclaim that public house by means of operating can change the concepts that society has concerning the roles that ladies and ladies can play in broader society.”

This system was a hit, spreading to 6 completely different nations and serving to hundreds of girls benefit from the sport of operating safely. In 2021, when the Taliban regained management of Afghanistan, this system workers needed to evacuate the nation, burn all of their information, and shut their workplaces. Because the majority of Free to Run funding got here by means of the Afghanistan leg of this system, your complete group was in jeopardy. However Case was decided not solely to maintain Free to Run alive, however to maintain a toehold in Afghanistan, nevertheless unattainable the duty appeared. Within the years since, she says she’s discovered that, “There are cracks on this oppressive regime the place a little bit bit of sunshine can come by means of. There are alternatives the place we may help ladies and ladies entry sure kinds of sports activities, in a protected manner.”

This system’s base has since migrated to Iraq, and the group continues to supply alternatives for ladies in places the place they wouldn’t in any other case exist.

Operating and Motherhood

Case left her job in Afghanistan in 2013 and launched Free to Run whereas working in South Sudan on the humanitarian response to the current battle there. On the time, she was residing in a tent in a camp for internally displaced folks. Afterward, she took a job in Gaza for a few years earlier than shifting to Geneva, Switzerland, after which returning again to Afghanistan with the United Nations in 2018. Her relaxation and recuperation weeks from Gaza have been spent in Afghanistan engaged on Free to Run. For Case, it was an intense interval of labor and volunteerism, and the worldwide motion amongst battle zones required by it.

All through all this, Case continued her personal operating. In 2015, she positioned sixth within the 330-kilometer Tor des Géants within the Italian Alps. She went on to earn a second- and two fourth-place finishes within the occasion in 2016, 2017, and 2018. In 2021, she received the notoriously troublesome 450-kilometer Tor des Glaciers, a self-navigated improve on the 330-kilometer model.

In 2022, she completed second on the Hardrock 100. She laughs when she says, “I used to be seven hours behind Courtney [Dauwalter]. Proper on her heels. However I used to be actually pleased with the way it went.”

It wasn’t till she’d flown again to the Center East after the 2022 Hardrock 100 and purchased a bottle of bubbles to have fun her run — she’d needed to go away earlier than the awards ceremony had completed — that one thing instructed her to take a being pregnant take a look at. It got here again optimistic, and whereas Case had by no means been one to desperately desire a household, she says, “It was in that prompt the place I knew that it was simply one thing I all of a sudden needed, and needed actually, actually badly.”

When she miscarried, Case was devastated. Then folks began asking her if she thought it may need been due to her operating. In spite of everything, she’d raced the Hardrock 100 whereas within the very early phases of being pregnant. She says that whereas there’s no science to point out that operating could cause a miscarriage, “Having folks type of plant that seed in my head began to have an effect on my relationship with operating.” She explains, “Abruptly, the factor that gave me pleasure and that took away my stress was turning into in my head one thing that had simply precipitated one of the crucial horrible and largest moments of grief.”

When she acquired pregnant a second time, Case reduce on her operating, however miscarried once more. This time folks instructed that her job was too tense for a profitable being pregnant. She says, “I believed, I can’t win!”  If she ran an excessive amount of, she was doing it improper. If she didn’t run as an outlet for work stress, she was additionally doing it improper. Case goes on to say, “I discovered it extremely troublesome. I felt like I simply misplaced my id.”

Not wanting to surrender on beginning a household, Case turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF), planning her work schedule then centered round Jerusalem, Israel, and Gaza round her cycle and flying again to Europe for embryo transfers. Surrounded by battle, Case remembers saying, “If you’re surrounded by loss of life each day in your work, it’s very arduous to ask your physique to make a life.” However Case believed in what she was doing, and ultimately an embryo switch resulted within the start of her daughter, Pepper, in November of 2024.

Returning to the Hardrock 100

Case acutely understood the emotional toll exacted by fertility struggles, particularly amongst endurance athletes, and got here to understand that it was one thing that wanted to be talked about. She says, “I believe these fertility struggles have an effect on feminine runners in a heightened manner as a result of now we have all the questions across the relationship that operating has with fertility and no good solutions. After which now we have the guilt.” Wanting to spotlight, “how little info there’s, how lonely it may be, and there are numerous ladies which can be struggling, in runners and non-runners alike,” Case got down to make a second movie following her personal struggles with fertility in addition to these of different ladies.

She says, “I believe that there’s much more dialogue, as there needs to be in path operating and ultrarunning, about the necessity to help mothers and being pregnant, and the necessity for being pregnant deferrals and clauses in athlete contracts for postpartum.” Nonetheless, she famous the disgrace and silence that also exists round how troublesome it’s for a lot of to even get to the stage of turning into pregnant within the first place.

Making the most of a being pregnant deferral from final 12 months, Case will line up for the 2025 Hardrock 100 once more, three years after the beginning of her being pregnant journey, and says the occasion would be the fruits of the brand new movie. She says that whereas she initially thought a becoming finish of the story could be to have her utterly bomb the race, a nod to the truth that being pregnant and motherhood is tough and might derail coaching and the perfect of intentions, Case says that she’s discovered new motivation to provide it her all, “As a brand new mother, and seeing how society treats ladies postpartum, I’ve acquired an actual fireplace to come back again and really do very well within the race.”

Pepper can be ready for her on the end line, no matter what storyline her race follows.

Seeking to the Future

After this 12 months’s Hardrock 100, Case is hoping to plan some adventures nearer to residence within the Alps, together with a multi-day journey with Pepper. She’ll additionally return to work in locations on the planet the place she will make the largest distinction.

When requested what her hopes are for her daughter, she says, “I don’t need her to really feel like she’s in a world that’s static and type of introduced to her. I would like it to be malleable. I would like it to be an area that she doesn’t simply transfer by means of, however that she influences.”

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