10
Go out for a run with Larisa Dannis ’05
and be sure to bring along a bag of
trail mix that will last.
Make sure it’s packed with enough
sodium to keep your salt levels bal-
anced. Strap on an electrolyte-filled
backpack to ensure your legs don’t
turn to mush. Don’t be fooled by the
smile that spreads across Dannis’s
face. It’s not there to mock; it’s there
to welcome you. What you might con-
sider a long commute – 50, even 100
miles – is now your day’s run. Welcome
to the world of ultramarathons, and
meet Dannis, a late bloomer who may be
St. Paul’s most accomplished runner.
In just over four years of competing,
Dannis has made a name for herself
in this world of endorphin-seeking
and whole-pizza-eating athletes. A
five-hour-59-minute performance
at the U.S. road 50-miler champion-
ships in the fall of 2014 established
the 27-year-old native of Manchester,
N.H., as not only the first woman to
break six hours for such a distance in
20 years, but also earned her a course
record and a fifth place overall finish
in a field that included dozens of sea-
soned male marathoners.
But if you think rewriting history
and torching the boys is what motivates
Dannis to heed the early-morning cry
of her alarm clock for her track work-
outs, steep mountain runs, and grueling
intervals, first consider what running
means to her.
“I run for happiness,” Dannis explains,
“not competitively. I challenge myself
and run, first a foremost, for the love
of the sport.”
Dannis’s journey began in her home
state of New Hampshire, where, as a
young adult who found herself sud-
denly sedentary in her first desk job,
she decided to take back a passion for
hiking she once enjoyed as a child. Her
first ambitious goal came in the form
of tackling all 48 of the state’s 4,000-
foot peaks. Ultimately, that goal proved
malleable. Simply hiking, it turned
out, kept her from summiting all 48 as
quickly as she would have liked.
“So I decided to hike the ups, and run
the downs,” Dannis explains.
Quickly thereafter, Dannis, whose
athletic pursuits at St. Paul’s covered
only a season and a half of crew and
half a season of cross country, had
found an appetite for running that
had lain dormant for the first 20-plus
years of her life.
“I found my path through running
– and there is nothing better in life
than when you find that one thing
you absolutely love,” she says.
ATHLETICS
The Dann
by Peter Harrison ’07
PHOTO: GLENN TACHIYAMA
A late bloomer,
Larisa Dannis ’05
has turned from
recreational
runner into one
of America’s best
ultramarathoners
