Mother, ultramarathon runner, keeps on running

By Donovan Quintero
Special to the Times

WINDOW ROCK — Driven by her teachings to wake up before the sun rises to go running, DeShawna Joe has taken it to levels only a select few Navajos have dared to go.

The 38-year-old mother of four, from Rock Point, Arizona, is an ultramarathoner.

Joe, who now lives in the Salt Lake City area with her family, has so far completed the longest race in her storied career — the 250-mile Cocodona 250 — a grueling 125-hour ultramarathon that traverses mountain ranges and deserts in central Arizona.

The mother of four said she completed the race under the allotted cutoff time with about 17 hours to spare.

An “ultrathon,” also known as an ultra-distance race or ultramarathon, is a long-distance running race that is longer than the traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles. Ultrathons can range from 50 kilometers, or 31 miles, to hundreds of miles. Participants often run on challenging terrain such as trails, mountains, deserts, or other rugged environments.

Participating in an ultrathon requires a high level of physical fitness, mental toughness, and careful preparation due to the extreme distances and often challenging conditions involved, which Joe says she’s acquired since she began running at a young age.

Joe’s mental toughness comes from her experiences growing up on the reservation.

“I started running back in elementary and junior high. I wasn’t really into running at the time, but I was told by my elders to run. So, I would be up early in the morning running,” Joe said.

She is Nátʼoh Dine’é, born for Tó’ahaní, whose maternal grandfathers are Tł’ááschí’í, and whose paternal grandfathers are Tábąąhí.

To deal with the hardships of reservation life that can often include acquiring trauma, Joe said she ran to work off the pains.

“I’ve been through a lot of pain. Basically, life is about pain,” she said, explaining how she uses it to help her run for hours, or hundreds of miles at a time.

Her experiences dealing with postpartum depression also helped her hone her toughness, she added.

“Especially coming to be a mother, we deal with a lot of mental toughness in your life, like from having a baby like postpartum depression, seeing how your body changes as a woman. You look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I don’t feel attractive, I need to change something.’ That was me,” Joe said on Tuesday.

In September of last year, she said the loss of her 16-year-old daughter, SoRaya Niesha Manakaja, has been becoming her new armor. Although, the path has been arduous and perhaps her toughest to date.

“She went to see her friend – she never came home – she was killed on the highway coming back home and was struck by a vehicle,” Joe shared of the loss of her daughter. “That will be heavy forever, until the day I die.”

Joe said she loss the motivation to run after the loss of her daughter SoRaya. But with her toughness and determination, along with support from her husband Pake Joe, and her family, she laced on her running shoes and started running again.

But her goal wasn’t just to run short distance. She decided she was going to enter the Cocodona 250.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to go for it,’” Joe said.

So, she began applying to enter the race. Despite feeling a sense of doubt in her abilities to run extreme long distances, she entered the race.

“So, I did it,” she said, and adding that during the entirety of the race, she felt her daughter’s presence. “To the end of the race, her presence was with me.”

To avid runners, or beginners, who might be considering taking on long distance running, Joe said it’ll require a lot of training.

Joe says she runs between 15-24 miles a week.

“Just three miles a day. Within those three miles, I sprint a mile,” she said. “On weekends, I do long hours of running without focusing on the miles.”

In addition to that, she said she focuses heavily on squats and lunges, as well as shoulder and abdominal exercises.

“It’s something you can’t just walk into. You have to prepare yourself for the worst, and mentally, just putting your body through stuff you haven’t put it through while running for hours, days or nights,” she explained, adding that developing a good training plan was also key.

She runs at least three miles a day and focuses on squats and lunges. Still, she said when running extreme long distance, there is no other way to deal with the pain that will come.

“I deal with (pain) with a lot of salt tablets,” she laughed.

Joe has so far completed 27 ultramarathons. In June, Joe said she’s running in the 50-mile Bears Ears Ultra in Monticello, Utah, and in July, she’s competing in the Crazy Mountain 100 in Lenep, Montana.

Joe says she hopes to see more Navajo people running because of what it has done for her.

“Keep moving every day, be kind, try to be happy, try to make the most of it every day, and make goals that you never thought you think are impossible to achieve,” Joe advised.

 

A correction was made on May 30, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated DeShawna Joe’s 16-year-old daughter. Her name is SoRaya Niesha Manakaja, not Sariah Joe.

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