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Andrea Christensen, a competitive ultrarunner, says running on mountain trails is a way for her to decompress and disconnect from the challenges of daily life.

Courtesy photo

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Local runner Andrea Christensen participates in the annual "Yikeverest" event in which participants climb the trail to the Y 27 times to equal the distance of the climb from sea level to the top of Mount Everest.

Courtesy photo

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Andrea Christensen

Courtesy photo

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Here’s a fun local trivia question: How many times would you have to hike the 1.1-mile trail to the top of the Y to equal the elevation of Mount Everest?

Andrea Christensen, a 43-year-old mother of three from Saratoga Springs, knows the answer from personal experience.

Christensen was part of an ambitious group of adventure seekers who recently attempted the annual “Yikeverest” event. This race mimics going from sea level to the highest point on Earth by repeating the Y Mountain trail 27 times for an elevation gain of approximately 29,000 feet.

If it sounds painful and exhausting to repeat a dirt trail with 13 switchbacks that quickly gains 1,074 feet from the parking lot to the top of the white block Y, it’s because it is. That certainly didn’t deter Christensen, who works at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions (RMU) in Provo.

Not only did Christensen endure the rigorous endeavor, but she set a new women’s course record by finishing the steep 60-mile looping trek in 19 hours and 40 minutes. Only three other people completed the 27 laps this year.

Christensen has participated in “Yikeverest” since 2019 — her friend started it in 2017 — but in previous years she was satisfied with repeating the circuit as many times as her schedule permitted while getting in a workout and being with friends. One year, she did four laps. Last year, she completed 20. Participants are encouraged to do as much or as little as they’d like.

As usual, Christensen came prepared with enough nutrition and supplies to go the distance just in case. About 20 laps in, a friend suggested she should try to beat the women’s record. Though it was about 3 o’clock on a Saturday morning in October, Christensen calculated how quickly she’d need to do each remaining lap (about 45 minutes, factoring in stops to socialize and fuel up). And then her competitive juices kicked in.

“I never thought I would do the whole thing. It’s brutal on your quads to come down the Y 27 times. It’s steep down, again and again,” she said, explaining that she mostly power hiked up the mountain and ran down the trail. “But it worked out. I pushed the last few laps and got the record by nine minutes. Not a ton of people have done it, but it was fun to have something to push for.”

Christensen is a competitive ultrarunner, so she’s accustomed to pushing her body and mind to the limits. It drives her to accomplish incredible feats. She started as a middle-of-the-pack runner in junior high, fell in love with doing marathons in college at BYU and was introduced to the world of trail running in her mid-30s while going through some rough times.

“Growing up, it was the boys in my family who got to go hiking, camped and backpacked, so I had no exposure to the trails at all,” she said. “But a friend took me on a trail run. It was a Monday morning and we climbed to the top of Mount Olympus (in Salt Lake City). I thought, on a weekday morning, you can be at the top of a mountain before work? What is this world? It was like a revelation to me that I could do something like that.”

Already a fan of marathons — she’d done about 40 — Christensen was intrigued to find out that people ran 50 to 100 miles in the mountains. For a woman who was going through a divorce and whose two sons had recently been diagnosed with autism, this discovery was a godsend.

“The trails and ultrarunning and mountains became like a healing place for me,” she said. “It’s somewhere I can go and decompress and disconnect a little bit.”

Now, Christensen is a regular participant — and winner — on the endurance challenge circuit. She has done 40-plus ultra races ranging from the Running Up For Air event that sends participants up and down (rinse, repeat) Ogden’s Malans Peak in frigid February conditions to the popular Leadville Trail 100 Run in the Colorado Rockies.

Finishing this year’s high-altitude, 100-mile Leadville course in August was a physical and emotional victory. It was the only race she’d started but hadn’t completed. Her 17-year-old daughter Grace encouraged her to try again and paced her for the last stretch.

“That was highly motivating for me but also terrifying because what if I fail again? I loved to show her that we can finish what we started and see a hard thing through,” Christensen said. “It was really cool to get to Mile 87. She was there at 4 a.m. waiting for me in the dark and cold and the mountains of Leadville ready to go and talk me through the last 13 miles of this race. It was really cool to finish that together.”

In July, Christensen outlasted everybody, men included, in the brutal last-person-standing-wins McCoy Flaps Death Race outside of Vernal. She ran 87 miles over 20 hours, including during 102-degree desert heat.

Next up for her is a Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim double crossing of the Grand Canyon this month.

“It’s just fun for me to have something to look forward to,” she said. “I try to remember with races that this is such a gift to be able to do this, to be able to be out there. I want to spend time experiencing life, not just the fun things, but a full spectrum of the human experience.”

While it’s normal to feel like running away from life’s challenges on occasion, Christensen focuses on running toward an improved life.

“I am running toward what I like. I want to live a rich, full life. This allows me to do that,” she said. “I’m allowed to see beautiful places. I can feel really strong. Sometimes when there are areas of my life that are out of my control and that are hard, here’s a place I can go where I can control it a little bit and I can practice doing hard things. It has become a place where I can really fortify my own mental health.”

Though her running hobby is demanding, it’s also rewarding. It shows up in all aspects of her life. It helps Christensen do what is required as a devoted mom, a competitive athlete and a clinical recruitment and retention coordinator at RMU, where she assists future physician assistants complete necessary clinical rotations and medical internships.

It’s empowering and inspiring.

“It makes me feel capable and strong. And that then translates into a real-life situation, a work situation,” she said. “I can tell myself, ‘Guess what? You’re strong. You can do this hard thing. You can have this challenging conversation or you can do this thing that maybe makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable or that you’ve never done before.’ It’s a different context, but for sure the lessons carry over.”

By the way, Christensen doesn’t have plans to head to the Himalayas.

“Nope, no actual Everest for me,” she said. “I like to run more than hike.”

Jody Genessy is the senior content writer for Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.