During her endeavor to run across the state of Texas, Rebecca Gartrell was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
The following written content by Emilia Benton
Rebecca Gartrell was always looking for her next big goal. The San Antonio-based ultrarunner had completed many 100-mile races, along with an Ironman, and she had also run a Boston-qualifying time in the marathon.
So when she informed her husband, Keith, and best friend, Rebecca Reeves, that she wanted to journey across the entire state of Texas on foot, they were unfazed. But neither expected Rebecca to not come home from her challenge.
On February 7, Rebecca’s body was found on the side of the road after a driver had hit her and continued on without stopping to render aid or call for help. She was 48 years old.
According to Keith, Rebecca, who was also a mother of two, first started running when she was in elementary school and went on to compete on her high school track team. She and Keith ran their first marathon, the Walt Disney Marathon, in 1999. A few years later, she became intrigued by the idea of trying out trail races and ultramarathon distances, and eventually ran the Rocky Raccoon 50-miler in Huntsville, Texas, in 2004.
Fully bitten by the ultra bug at this point, the Gartrells went on to do several more ultras together before Rebecca set her sights on the next big thing: the first annual Texas Ironman in the Houston area in 2011.
“She said, ‘if you give me a 30-hour cutoff for a 100-mile race and they give the slowest people in Ironman 17 hours—Oh, I can do that,’” Keith recalled. “I agreed that 17 hours is almost half of the time that you’re allotted for a 100-mile race, so it should be easier, right?” Read more from Runner’s World.
