Pain Has No Finish Line: Alyssa McClellan on Running 120 Miles, Raising 4 Kids, and Choosing Suffering

THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Dominic Schlueter

Running, Sports

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What does it take to run for 28 hours straight?

To go beyond exhaustion—when your body gives out and only your will is left?

Alyssa McClellan knows.

She’s a former elite CrossFit athlete, a mother of four, and an ultra-endurance machine. At the Go One More Last Man Standing Ultra, Alyssa ran nearly 120 miles in just under 28 hours, outlasting every other woman and placing fourth overall. No pacers. No excuses. Just pure grit.

But her story doesn’t start there.

Before ultra running, Alyssa competed at the highest levels of CrossFit, ranking 252nd in the world and 156th in the U.S. at the 2018 Open. Her numbers speak for themselves: 320-pound back squat; 236-pound clean and jerk; 340-pound deadlift and 196-pound snatch.

Now, she’s bringing that same fire to the ultra scene—trading barbells for blisters and short bursts for soul-crushing distance. And she’s doing it all while raising four boys.

This episode goes deep into the pain cave—the place where most people quit and Alyssa keeps going. We talk aboutmental toughness, comebacks, and what it really means to show up, suffer, and choose to keep moving.

No fluff. No finish line. Just raw endurance.

Let’s go.

In today's conversation, Alyssa takes me through her 28 hours of pain, how she kept pushing when things got difficult, training for these endevours as a wife and mother, her ambtions for the future, and so much more.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I would wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning and go and do a 4.2 mile loop, rest for five minutes and do another one. I would do that a few times. And that really was mental, I think, of being like, hey, I can control my mind. It doesn't matter if you're tired or not. Like, it's like, how bad do you want this?
0:23.5	Alyssa McClellan, welcome to the Running Fitch podcast. How you doing this afternoon?
0:28.4	Good. Thank you, Dominic. Thank you for having me.
0:31.7	I guess we would consider you the last woman standing. Is that right?
0:36.7	Yes. Yep. If they flipped it around.
0:40.5	Something I'm curious to get your insight on. You mentioned to me having kids before we started
0:46.4	recording. How did you describe this event to your kids when you told them you were doing this?
0:52.7	Oh, man, when I explain this to the older boys, because the younger ones are four and three, so they
0:59.1	just think I'm just out there and just running in circles.
1:02.1	But when I explained it to the older ones, they're like, well, when are you going to be
1:05.5	back?
1:05.8	And I said, I don't know.
1:06.8	There's really no ending to this.
1:08.5	I mean, we could be out there to 200 and 300 miles. And he said,
1:11.7	they don't run 300 miles. Like, they don't run 200 miles. Like, you're joking. And I'm like,
1:18.1	no, it actually can and does go that long. So, yeah, they think it's pretty wild.
1:25.5	I'd love to, I mean, you're probably one of the only moms out there on the course.
1:30.3	Is there such a thing as mom strength? Do you feel like it propelled you further?
1:33.7	Oh, absolutely. Going through labor four times, like this is a breeze compared to that.
1:38.8	And just having in the back of my mind, I really think that you can harness that strength of I'm doing
1:47.0	this for my children and, you know, just really thinking about them and having that on your mind.
1:51.6	Like it really does give you that extra push. Obviously, I'm sure your husband is very
	...

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