This is part an occasional series profiling Flagstaff runners who will be competing in May 6’s Cocodona 250 Mile race from Black Canyon to Flagstaff.
Seeing her now – so happy and fit, so carefree and adventuresome, and so tan – it almost strains credulity to think that, once, Andrea Moore was a corporate banker.
For J.P. Morgan Chase, no less.
It all seems a lifetime ago now, or at least an early chapter, but Moore, 46, didn’t always wear a trucker hat low on her brow and rock the fleece vest and scuffed up trail shoes and traipse all over Arizona’s desert and mountainous regions. She was once a button-downed urbanite in Dallas, a desk jockey climbing the corporate ladder.
“I don’t know what I was building, I guess, a career in private banking,” Moore said, reflecting on her former self one recent morning at the Kickstand Kafe. “You have to look the role and play the part. The makeup. The stilettos. The outfits. You have to communicate with your audience, an affluent clientele. I look back now and think, ‘God, Andrea, you did that for 30 years?’
“That wasn’t a façade, but a different version of Andrea. And then I started this running thing six years ago …”
Her voice trailed off.
This running thing, as Moore blithely puts it, has been a big part of a radical change in her life that, in the past few years, has seen her retire from banking, divorce her husband and move in with her partner, Jackie Cox, uproot herself from Texas to Flagstaff and plunge herself headlong into the world of ultra-ultra marathon racing.
Just thinking about such a whirlwind series of events can be daunting, but Moore, who has three grown children, is such a dynamic personality and force of nature that she talks about it all so casually, as if life changes are no big deal.
She brings the same positive attitude, augmented with a strong will and competitive drive, into her running. She’ll be running the Cocodona 250 — that grueling test of fitness, fatigue, fueling and sleep deprivation, from Black Rock Canyon to Flagstaff – for the second time. And though she straddles the line between a mid- and back-of-the-pack runner, her accomplishments in the six years since she took up running are no less laudable.
Last year, running her first 200-miler, Moore placed 121st at Cocodona, enduring the course in 117 hours 44 minutes 32 seconds. Enduring, too, severe sleep deprivation, dehydration, hallucinations, voices coming from the trees, twisted visions of falling off the edge of Mount Elden, physical and emotional highs and lows and, by the end, feet resembling ground sausage.
It was, in other words, a blast.
So fun, in fact, that Moore and Cox, a former age-group champion Ironman triathlete, packed up and moved to Flagstaff, in part so that Andrea could train on the terrain with which she fell in love last year. She’ll be back toeing the line on May 6, this time fully knowing what lies ahead and, she hopes, much better prepared to face the evitable obstacles, real and imagined, in her way.
“Unless I go out with a toe tag or an ambulance is coming to get me, I’m doing it. You need to think, ‘There cannot be a Plan B, a way out.’ Sometimes, in life, we give ourselves ways out, but once you’re really committed, on fire to do this and determined that nothing is going to stop you, you do it.”
Andrea Moore
Pause a moment and consider: Moore had become so enamored with ultra running, and was so affected by her 2023 Cocodona experience, that she moved here. Such is the pull running has had over Moore. And it all began back in Dallas when she was taking her dog on a walk along the Katy Trail, a popular rails-to-trails path in the city, and spied a few runners trundling past.
“I thought, ‘I used to be athletic, I played college volleyball, I could do this, get back in shape,’” she recalled. “One mile turned into two, two to three – it’s a very slippery slope. I just loved being out there in nature and running.”
Certainly, Moore is not the first to get sucked into the lure of long distances. But she seems smitten to the extreme. In the past four years, Moore has finished, by one count, 52 races beyond the marathon distance. Lately, the mileage keeps creeping up, matching her interest level.
You know how it goes, one mile becomes two, 50 become 100K, 100 mile becomes 250…
Asked what the attraction is of ultra-ultra distance running, Moore turns philosophical and waxes eloquent, all the while saying it’s something unfathomable, or at least unspeakable.
“When I’m out there,” she said, “all of a sudden I didn’t have to be anything or anybody else. There was no promotion at work I was chasing. You are stripped down to where you don’t have your nice car, your fancy house, you don’t have your family and those things we rely on. You are out there in the desert or on a mountains, and you’re left to face things inside of us that have been built up a long time.”
She paused, sipped water and sighed, gathering thoughts.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she continued. “We’re always criticizing ourselves, like, you’re crazy to want to do this. There are parts of you that say, ‘Man, are you OK?’ Then there’s other parts of me that are like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’
“(In an ultra), fear has left the building and you feel like you’re on a battlefield and marching toward something you know is scary but it’s so great. You have to tell this voice in you, ‘Yeah, I might be crazy, and that’s OK, because I’m going incredible places, meeting phenomenal human beings.’ “
There are no external expectations or rewards for Moore. Motivation comes from within. She’s not sponsored by any products or shoe companies or even is part of a formal team.
She simply feels the need to challenge herself, endure temporary pain for lasting transcendence.
“I don’t know what propels you to keep going (during rough patches in a race), other than there’s no other option,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how tired you are or how much your feet hurt. I think about, at night, that the sun is going to come up soon. My favorite mantra is: this is for now, not forever. You are reaching out for any piece of gratitude. With gratitude and love, you can endure a lot.
“Unless I go out with a toe tag or an ambulance is coming to get me, I’m doing it. You need to think, ‘There cannot be a Plan B, a way out.’ Sometimes, in life, we give ourselves ways out, but once you’re really committed, on fire to do this and determined that nothing is going to stop you, you do it.
“But only you can do that. No David Goggins (motivational talk). No book to read. No secret sauce. It’s the human spirit. It’s up to you if you want to do it.”
An outsider might look to Moore’s past, her childhood, for clues to her mindset. It’s a cheap psychological cop out to conclude that she’s trying to fill a need, exorcise demons, overcome deep-seated adversity.
And, in fact, Moore didn’t have the easiest childhood. But it would be reductive to pin her motivations on that. Some people, it seems, are just built differently.
The oldest of six siblings, all girls, raised by a single mother in a doublewide trailer “with holes in the floor,” she took on a lot of responsibility at a young age. Even though the family was poor, she said, they are happy – partially because a beautiful lake was “in our backyard,” right outside the door.
“Sometimes having nothing means you have everything,” she said. “That gave me the love of being outside. I liked making mom happy. I’m definitely what they call a People Pleaser. It’s very important for people to like me. But I’m growing out of that. I think that’s one thing running teaches you – you don’t need all that. I mean, I was captain of every sports team I played on, I was in the top 10 percent of my high school, I started as a bank teller in high school and worked up. Being successful was always a driver for me. I don’t know where it comes from.”
Whatever its source, such drive certainly helps Moore endure the pain of a 250-mile race.
Pain must be both embraced and repelled, accepted and endured.
Moore has been quite successful living with this dichotomy. She is not an elite runner, but she has finished high in several races between 50 and 100 miles.
Most recently, Moore was the fourth women over all in the Antelope Island Buffalo Run 100 Miler near Salt Lake City, during a freezing rainstorm on March 29, four scant days after doing a Cocodona training run of 36 miles with heavy vertical gain from Crown King to Camp Kipa. Then, a few days after Antelope Island, she did another Cocodona training run, 37 miles and 10,700 feet of elevation gain from Black Canyon to Crown King.
As she wrote on her Instagram post afterward, “Never question your heart. It is your head that’s lying to you. It builds fear and doubts. It is home to the demons…”
Such pronouncements may, at first, make it seem as though Moore is invulnerable.
Not true. Her experience at last May’s Cocodona shows that she is, indeed, human and fallible and prone to physical and emotional swings. Essentially, it’s life – in extremis.
In recalling her race last year, Moore points to several key “situations” that almost did her in.
The first segment of Cocodona is a tough ascent to Crown King in the middle of the day through rough desert terrain. Both the course and temperature climb as runners ascend and a mid-pack runner such as Moore is spending a lot more time in the heat than the speedier elites.
“I’m middle to back of the pack and a lot of people stick together and help each other, and thank goodness for that,” Moore said. “I found myself alone and ran out of water, around Mile 22. There’s a river where you can filter water, but that’s at mile 24.5. I met a guy (fellow runner) named Matt Miller, and he probably saved my life. I’d gone several miles without water and knew I still had several miles to go.
“If you’re not familiar with running out of water in a desert terrain, it gets very scary very fast. There’s no one around to help you. I found a bush that had a little bit of shade and I sat there to keep my heart rate low. I was crying when Matt came along and said, ‘Are you OK?’”
Revived, first with Miller’s water and then some filtered by the stream at Mile 24, Moore recovered and made that first climb. She redoubled her commitment to finishing – no matter what.
And other challenges lay ahead. The biggest: sleep, or lack thereof.
“That was probably my biggest mistake,” she recalled. “I had four sleep sessions 30 to 45 minutes each. But my first sleep didn’t come until Whisky Row, about Mile 90.”
She was so excited, she said, that she could only sleep 10 minutes. Adrenaline kept her up. Soon, on a section from Schnebly Road in Sedona to Munds Park, at night, Moore entered what she called “pass out mode.”
“As soon as the sun went down,” she continued, “I started to hallucinate. The trees were talking to me. It’s weird because you know that it’s not real. There’s an inner voice that says, it’s not real, but you blink your eyes and try to refocus, to get a grip, and it’s still a face in the tree there, laughing and talking to you.
“At that point, I was so sleepy, I really think I was doing sleep walking, trying to keep my eyes open. I told Denny (Hodge), my pacer, that I saw a guy building a fire, and I was concerned the fire was going to catch the forest on fire. All Denny said to me was, ‘There’s not a fire, Andrea, just keep going.’”
The latter stages of the race tested her will like never before.
When she emerged from Walnut Canyon on the Arizona Trail near dusk and could see Mount Elden looming a few miles in front of her. Doubt crept in, and she had to suppress it, with help from pacer Liz Hill. Their conversation before the final climb went something like this:
Moore: “Can we just stop and eat one more time?”
Hill: “You know you are going to do this, Andrea.”
Moore: “I just don’t know if I really can.”
Hill: “Just eat something and let’s go.”
More hallucinations followed. And doubts. But, one foot in front of the other up the rocky, technical Elden climb, she pressed on.
“I didn’t have great balance then – sleep deprivation – and for some reason I felt like we were on the side of a cliff. I’ve done Elden during the day now, and I know it’s not like that. But that’s the power of the brain and of fear.”
With Hill’s goading, Moore reached the summit. But the cut-off time for finishers was approaching, so Moore couldn’t dawdle. She and Hill each down a shot of Fireball, slurped some noodles, then Hill looked at her watch and told Moore that’s it’s been five minutes and they had to go.
Moore looked around her at bodies strewn at the summit aid station, some sleeping, some passed out. It was like a scene of carnage. Though she hallucinated that rocks were tennis balls on the descent into Flagstaff, Moore made it and finished.
“I wanted to enjoy the moment more,” she said, smiling, “but I could barely stand up.”
Next month, in her sequel, things will be different, Moore said. She’ll eat more, certainly pack more water and have regular sleeping schedule.
“I want to be the voice for the every-day runner and tell them that they don’t have to be (an elite like) Sally McRae. I want this drug (long-distance running) for everybody, you know.”
Moore, clearaly, cannot get enough of this “drug.” After Cocodona, she’s racing the Tahoe 200 in June, the Bigfoot 200 at Mount St. Helens in August and the Moab 240 in October. Oh, and she’s poised to sign up this morning for a new race, the Arizona Monster 300 — apparently because 250 miles is not enough.
“I’ve got the alarm set on my phone to register,” she said.
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