Local ultra-runner has Irish eyes on Belfast meet

A La Conner High track coach teaches her charges how to hit the ground running.

Yvonne Naughton, who works with the school’s sprinters and jumpers, is an accomplished ultra-runner, who has qualified for the Irish 24-hour team that will compete at the World Championships in Belfast in July.

Her journey has been a long one on several levels.

“I grew up in Ireland, taking part in track from about the age of six,” says Naughton, now nearly 40, though she sports a far more youthful appearance. “As a young sprinter and jumper, I had a pretty good early career winning county, provincial, and national titles.”

By her late teens, she was on track to represent Ireland competitively, Naughton notes in her compelling blog, The Miles of My Life.

But that’s when illness struck. A ruptured appendix and subsequent second surgery put running on hold.

So did life.

“The next 13 years or so flashed past in a blur,” she notes.

Medical school, marriage, childbirth, an internship, a pediatric residency in the United States, and a cardiology fellowship took turns rotating atop the priority list.

That’s when she and her husband, Dave Brown, also a trained physician — his specialties are internal and obesity medicine — decided after more than a decade of globetrotting to find jobs in a community they could call home for good.

That proved to be Snee-Oosh Beach.

For Naughton, the move brought her full circle back to running. More specifically, to endurance running.

“I was quickly introduced to trail running,” she says, and has since been a regular fixture at Deception Pass, the Chuckanut area, and her personal marathon route from home, through La Conner, and past Swinomish Links.

On bad weather days, she settles for the treadmill.

“This serendipitous discovery,” Naughton says of ultra-running, “was born from the simple desire of wanting to run with our new Malamute Juno, who needed the exercise. However, transfixed by the beauty of the forest, I was soon running further and further to discover new trails.”

Part of that discovery returned Naughton to her childhood. She says the Puget Sound area, and La Conner in particular, remind her of Ireland.

Naughton’s first race was the 2014 Orcas Island 25K. She then advanced to 50-kilometer and 100-mile events.

She made steady progress over a two-year period, learning how to pace herself in competition — often mixing 1-minute walks between 10-minute runs, in hopes of maintaining an 11-minute mile average — while paying close attention to nutrition and other racing essentials.

Even how to efficiently shed and don clothing layers on the move, as temperatures alternately rise and fall over a day-long period.

Then came a major epiphany.

“Last summer,” Naughton relates, “I learned that the World 24-Hour Championships would take place in Belfast, and immediately the idea of representing Ireland crossed my mind.”

Turns out her 2016 summer race slate was wide open, giving her an eight-week window to train for a major Belfast qualifier race.

“This,” says Naughton, “gave me the nudge I needed to take a more serious look at making the qualification standard for the Irish team.”

She did so while embarking on yet another new professional challenge, one now truly close to her heart.

“When I got more involved in endurance running,” Naughton explains, “I realized I wanted to sub-specialize in Sports Medicine.”

She is currently completing work on her diploma and can foresee adding nutrition and childhood obesity credentials down the road.

Despite such a full plate, figuratively speaking, of course, her preparation and strategy for the Riverbank One Day Race in California — and a ticket to Belfast — could hardly have been better. Naughton completed just over 530 laps, almost 132 miles, in 24 hours.

“In short,” she says, “I really had a perfect race and far exceeded my performance expectations. My training, diet, and race pacing and nutrition plan played a huge part in this success.”

A success she shares with her husband, himself now a committed ultra-runner, and a host of friends and role models.

Naughton counts as among her heroines 82-year-old Bellingham great-grandmother Barb Macklow, who ran 100 miles in a 48-hour event in Arizona recently, and 70-year-old Spokane ultra-runner Gunhild Swanson.

While her work with the La Conner High track teams has much to do with helping young people reach their potential, measured in most cases by shaving fractions of seconds from a stopwatch, Naughton finds that ultra-running is a sport in which time can be an ally.

“Ultra-running,” she says, noting the accomplishments of Macklow and Swanson, “can be a sport for older runners. There are runners who happen upon trail and ultra-running later in life and do extremely well.”

It’s definitely the sport for Naughton.

“The true spirit of endurance events, I think, is to endure over time,” she says. “My goal is to be still running ultras into my 70s and 80s.”