A Dialog With Stephanie Case – iRunFar

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

Case is at present residing in Chamonix, France, and hoping to increase her parental depart from her work as a United Nations human rights lawyer into the summer season, noting that she’d possible be someplace within the Center East if she weren’t on depart. Case might be greatest identified within the ultrarunning world for founding the non-profit Free to Run. With this system, which makes use of operating and management applications to assist younger ladies and ladies in battle areas, Case has achieved 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 struggle zones, being an ultrarunner, and current as somebody who doesn’t imagine within the phrase inconceivable, she’s supplied alternatives for numerous ladies in six international locations, together with Afghanistan and Iraq — international locations 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 ladies — and particularly runners — coping with infertility points. After two miscarriages and realizing how little info there was accessible on fertility in endurance sports activities, she’s undertaken this latest movie undertaking documenting her journey, together with these of different ladies, to changing into a mother.

In search of Limits

Born in Ontario, Canada, Case didn’t take into account 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 college and signed up for a marathon. From the get-go, the purpose of operating was to seek 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 might change my life.” She’d watch movies of ladies stumbling throughout marathon end strains, fully spent, and wished to know what it might be prefer to “hit the wall and push by way of.”

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

She discovered the 250-kilometer Racing the Planet: Vietnam, tried to recruit associates to race together with her, however determined to go alone when she couldn’t discover any takers. She admits there may need been a couple of glasses of wine concerned within the resolution to enroll. She says, “I wished to seek out one thing that I wasn’t certain I’d be capable to end.” She went on to win the ladies’s race and end third general, a consequence that made her understand, “possibly I wasn’t an incredible athlete in any sport earlier than that, however ultrarunning was my factor.”

She says, “I discovered that I bought a lot confidence and function out of ultrarunning that I hadn’t been in a position to get by way of anything.”

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 college, she’d been serious about human rights. “I began doing a little work for Attorneys With out Borders on trial observations and ended up type of working for them within the area throughout my summers all through legislation college. Liberia, Rwanda, that type of factor.” Whereas she was working for the New York legislation agency, she continued to do professional bono work, increase her human rights portfolio. When Lehman Brothers crashed and mergers and acquisitions died, her legislation agency provided a beneficiant incentive for folks to take a yr off. In Case’s phrases, “I mentioned, ‘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 Legislation, Case landed a volunteer place with the United Nations in Afghanistan. When requested what drew her to working in struggle zones, she says, “I had grown up by way of the Nineties when the Taliban was in energy, and also you noticed these stark photographs of ladies in burkas. It was one of many worst locations on the earth to be a lady. One thing simply drew me to that. It was thus far exterior 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 know the way I may assist however I knew that I wished to go to locations the place issues had been arguably at their worst as a result of that’s when there’s essentially the most potential for optimistic change.”

She moved into an armed compound the place the longest stretch of street was 800 meters. Folks advised her she wouldn’t be capable to pursue her ultrarunning anymore. However these folks didn’t understand that telling Case that she couldn’t do one thing was one of the best ways to make sure that she would.

Redefining a Relationship with Working

Working in Afghanistan was a far cry from what most ultrarunners take into account preferrred coaching grounds. As a substitute of operating in stunning landscapes, Case was restricted to operating laps in her armed compound. Oftentimes, the air air pollution was so dangerous she may 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 exterior. Gone had been utilizing the most effective 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 not had, Case checked out her state of affairs as a chance. She says, “I needed to discover a strategy to develop my psychological capacities to show it into one thing stunning.” She goes on to say, “I used to be utilizing the rubbish as obstacles, pretending that they had been tree roots fairly 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 stunning sunsets. I might run at sundown in order that a few loops across the compound can be at nightfall, and the subsequent few in the dead of night. It could make the compound appear greater 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 properties, a lot of them with youngsters. 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’d 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 perfect coaching floor as an excuse to not sustain my operating simply appeared ludicrous.”

Free to Run

Case wished 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 yr, she signed up for 3 ultramarathons and raised $10,000 for it. And Case’s response to her fundraising effort? “I spotted that I used to be pondering means too small in regards to the energy of operating.”

Case realized that the ladies she was instantly working with had been appreciative however not essentially that within the amount of cash she may carry to the shelter. She says, “What they had been tremendous serious 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 achieved sports activities earlier than and a number of the youthful ladies had by no means gotten the possibility to run exterior. They wished 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 residing in a struggle zone can be significantly serious about, however she says she got here to study, “They’ve been residing by way of struggle for therefore 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 way of battle. They usually wished to have the ability to expertise the entire 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 achieved 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 might be a part of driving social change of their nation. Not like indoor sports activities, Case explains, “Working includes this bodily act of reclaiming public area. If you see somebody operating by way of the streets, if you see somebody operating by way of the mountains, proudly owning that public area, 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 area by way of operating can change the concepts that society has in regards to the roles that girls and ladies can play in broader society.”

This system was successful, spreading to 6 totally different international locations and serving to hundreds of ladies benefit from the sport of operating safely. In 2021, when the Taliban regained management of Afghanistan, this system employees needed to evacuate the nation, burn all of their information, and shut their places of work. Because the majority of Free to Run funding got here by way of the Afghanistan leg of this system, your entire group was in jeopardy. However Case was decided not solely to maintain Free to Run alive, however to maintain a toehold in Afghanistan, nevertheless inconceivable the duty appeared. Within the years since, she says she’s discovered that, “There are cracks on this oppressive regime the place just a little bit of sunshine can come by way of. There are alternatives the place we might help ladies and ladies entry sure kinds of sports activities, in a secure means.”

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

Working 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 latest 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 had 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 tough 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 rejoice her run — she’d needed to depart earlier than the awards ceremony had completed — that one thing advised her to take a being pregnant check. 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 instantaneous the place I knew that it was simply one thing I all of a sudden wished, and wished 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 levels 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, “Out of the blue, the factor that gave me pleasure and that took away my stress was changing into in my head one thing that had simply brought on one of the horrible and largest moments of grief.”

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

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 dying day-after-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 comprehend 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 means as a result of we now have the entire questions across the relationship that operating has with fertility and no good solutions. After which we now have the guilt.” Wanting to spotlight, “how little info there may be, how lonely it may be, and there are plenty of ladies which are 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 must be in path operating and ultrarunning, about the necessity to assist mothers and being pregnant, and the necessity for being pregnant deferrals and clauses in athlete contracts for postpartum.” Nevertheless, she famous the disgrace and silence that also exists round how tough it’s for a lot of to even get to the stage of changing into pregnant within the first place.

Benefiting from a being pregnant deferral from final yr, 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 can be to have her fully bomb the race, a nod to the truth that being pregnant and motherhood is tough and may derail coaching and the most effective of intentions, Case says that she’s discovered new motivation to present it her all, “As a brand new mother, and seeing how society treats ladies postpartum, I’ve bought an actual hearth to return again and truly do rather well within the race.”

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

Trying to the Future

After this yr’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 earth the place she will be able to make the most important 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 need it to be malleable. I need it to be an area that she doesn’t simply transfer by way of, however that she influences.”

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