She's late. Of all the words that describe Carolyn Smith, "late" typically is not one of them, but there was nothing she could do. A meeting ran long. It happens.

Smith, a senior physician for Marquette's Student Health Service, steps onto the track at Valley Fields on this unseasonably warm mid-October morning and immediately breaks into a light jog.

Coal-gray clouds hung over Milwaukee earlier, but now the sun was peering down on Smith, tracking her as she propelled herself four times around the royal blue oval.

After completing her warm-up mile, Smith transitions right into the day's workout—a 60-minute dynamic run that will cover roughly eight miles, or 32 laps. She does not pause to stretch. When you've run competitively since 1978, stretching doesn't do a whole lot for you.

When you're training for a 24-hour ultramarathon race, your concentration centers on other aspects of your physical, mental and emotional preparation. The winner of such races is the one who runs the most miles in a day's time, not the one who is most thoroughly stretched.

When you're trying to find that ever-elusive meditative state—the one you reached during your first ultramarathon experience six years ago but rarely have reached since—you stick with what you think works best.

Smith's light blue tennis shoes barely clear the ground as she flows from one stride to the next. Her head remains still. Her arms remain cocked at an angle, propelling front-to-back, but rarely swinging laterally.

"She's extraordinarily efficient with her strides," said Michael Gordon, a Milwaukee-based orthopaedic surgeon who trains with Smith. "You don't compete at the level she does by missing on many steps."

Gordon cannot always keep pace with Smith, who has completed 16 ultramarathons and holds the U.S. women's record for miles run in a 24-hour race (137). But, Gordon said, whenever Smith wants to go for a short-distance run, he's more than willing to tag along and help break up the monotony of her workouts.

Endurance runners' terminology, however, upholds a different meaning than is used by the casual jogger. A "short-distance run" for Smith consists of a six- to 14-mile jaunt.

This day would be considered a short-distance workout. Smith alters her speed in decreasing intervals. Sprinting, then jogging. Sprinting, then jogging.

A few days removed from a 45-mile training run, the pace of Smith's sprint drops only slightly as the workout progresses. Sure, her legs are sore, but they've been sore before. Sprinting, then jogging. Sprinting, then jogging.

"There are some days when she's really tired, but she'll still go out and do a 30-mile run," Gordon said. "To have the mental strength to do that is unbelievable."

*****

The thoughts crossed Smith's mind as 3 a.m. approached in Death Valley, Calif. Why am I out here? This isn't fun. I need to eat.

Her internal clock told her it was time to go to sleep four hours ago. Her stomach told her it was eating away at itself. Her legs told her they were soon going on strike.

As Smith made her way across the desert during the 2004 Badwater Ultramarathon, she lost control what swirled around in her head. It was July, and she once again was in search of that meditative state she so craved. It was just up the road a ways, maybe over that next hill.

The temperature was 113 degrees at the start of the race, and at its highest point, the thermometer read 126 degrees. That was nothing compared to the 200-degree heat rising off the pavement. Smith ruined four pairs of shoes that race. The darn things kept melting.

With each step, Smith could feel hot pokers stabbing the bottoms of her feet through the soles of each dissolving pair. The wind wasn't helping, either.

"It was like standing in front of a blast furnace," she said.

As Smith reached one of the many peaks along the route, Jenny Alexander, a close friend and member of the crew that provides Smith nutrients and support throughout her races, walked alongside and tried to keep her alert.

"My heart hurts," Smith said.

"What do you mean?" Alexander replied. "You're having a heart attack?"

"No Jenny, if I was having a heart attack, I would pull myself out of the race," Smith said. "I'm saying my stomach hurts. I'm hungry."

Content that Smith at least still had her wits about her, Alexander fetched some nourishment for her runner and then watched as Smith trudged onward.

Prior to departing Milwaukee for the Badwater race, all eight of Smith's crew members attempted to simulate the desert's stifling heat by sitting in the sauna at the Rec Plex. They felt they were ready to outlast the elements, but they were riding along in cars.

It was Carolyn they were worried about.

"I don't ever want her to run that race again," Alexander said. "It was hard on her. It was hard to watch."

During the race's final 13 miles, the course called for an elevation hike from 4,000 feet to 8,000 feet. At that point, the dinosaurs appeared. Other animals, too. And the worst part was they were coming right at her.

The hallucinations continued for quite a while, transforming construction equipment and roadside signs into wild beasts and prehistoric creatures. The crew members took turns trying to re-orient Smith, but she stumbled about nonetheless.

After 37 hours and 50 minutes, Smith crossed the finish line, the fourth female and the 16th participant overall. She swore she would never do anything like that again.

"The next morning, I was thinking about what I could have done differently," Smith said. "I was thinking about how I could do that race better."

*****

By 1980, Larry Smith had done Al's Run, a charity race named after former Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire, for a couple of years. He considered himself fairly capable in the event. That year, though, his daughter wanted to join him, and he was a little concerned.

A few weeks prior to the Sept. 27 race, Carolyn Smith was involved in a serious car accident. A ruptured spleen, some broken ribs and a collapsed lung sidelined Carolyn for a few days, but then she was back on her feet and ready to do something, anything, athletic.

Larry Smith looked down at his 15 year old as the two walked up to the starting line and offered what he thought was sound advice.

"I'm going to go out pretty fast, so don't get trampled," he said. "Meet you at the finish line."

After a mile and a half, Larry Smith was sailing down Wisconsin Avenue when he heard a familiar voice, first just behind him, then just in front.

"Hi, Dad," Carolyn said. "Bye, Dad."

Carolyn was the second female to complete Al's Run that year. Her father crossed the finish line in the middle of the pack.

"She went by me like a Porsche going past a pastry truck," Larry Smith said 27 years later in sardonic retrospect.

Though Carolyn claims her genetics allow her to run long distances "fairly effortlessly,"

Larry claims to have never been a star athlete, and Carolyn's mother, Gerrie Gustafson, calls herself a klutz.

Carolyn, though, was far from clumsy. An All-American cross country runner in high school and a member of the NCAA title-winning cross country team at the University of Wisconsin in 1984, she discovered her sport without necessarily finding her niche.

She qualified for the Olympic marathon trials during her junior year at Wisconsin, but that distance did not suit her either. Regardless, she continued competing in marathons until entering medical school at the University of Illinois in 1991.

After completing her residency five years later, Smith returned to competitive running but realized she no longer had the leg speed to excel at "shorter" events like the marathon.

"It was a natural progression to gravitate toward ultramarathons," Smith said.

At her first ultra-distance race, the 50-mile Ice Age Trail in East Troy, Wis. in 2001, Smith reached the 30-mile marker and sunk into what she described as a meditative state.

"I was floating the rest of the way," she said.

Smith won the event, and the instant gratification got her hooked on her new activity. In search of the sensation that meditative state provided, she entered more and more ultra-events. She took fifth place at the U.S. National 100-kilometer Road Championships the spring before she ran the race in Death Valley.

By then, Smith understood what it took to overcome the physical and mental anguish that accompanies such challenges.

"For me, the key is breaking the race up into smaller pieces and knowing during those pieces when things are going to go bad," she said.

Smith breaks her 24-hour races up into four, six-hour blocks and performs nearly constant body checks. Am I running too hard? Am I running too slow? Does something seem to be nagging me? Run, Carolyn; don't press.

"Run; don't press" has become her mantra. Smith said she wants to run so that it's an effort, but she doesn't want every stride to be an effort. To help create a more natural rhythm to her stride and to keep her alert during the night, Smith listens to an iPod. Folk. Jazz. Rock. Opera. Whatever keeps her going.

The music helps to fend off the bad spells as long as possible. Smith said she has only completed one ultra-event without experiencing a single bad spell. In 2006, she won the female division of the 24-hour U.S. National Championship in Grapevine, Texas. She covered 137 miles, the No. 1 distance all-time for U.S. women in a 24-hour race and the fourth-most all-time in the world.

Usually, Smith will undergo anywhere from three to 12 periods during a race when she wonders what on earth she is doing running around a two-mile loop for an entire day.

During the worst race of Smith's career, she encountered two dozen such segments. She represented the U.S. in the 2004 100-kilometer World Cup in the Netherlands. Just two months removed from the Badwater experience, Smith's body was not as recovered as she hoped it would be. The cramps set in on mile 40 of a 62-mile race, and they remained until she crossed the finish line.

Smith called it the worst of her four World Cup performances. The first thing she did after the frustration subsided was sign up for her first 24-hour race. In December of 2004, Smith ran 127 miles, which was the third-best distance in the country that year.

"My crew was disappointed," Smith said. "But I had found my niche."

*****

Cindy Smith still thinks her older sister is just plain silly for all the running she does. She's thought so ever since they were kids.

Even for Carolyn, these 24-hour races seemed a bit extreme. Why would anyone subject themselves to the torture that accompanies burning 10,000 to 12,000 calories over the course of a single day?

"I still think she's crazy," Cindy Smith said. "But I'm still in awe."

She also has played a large role in Carolyn's decision to pursue and continue her career in ultra-events. It was Cindy's gift—the book "To the Edge" by Kirk Johnson about the Badwater ultramarathon—that inspired Carolyn to enter the race in Death Valley.

Cindy was there for the Death Valley experience, just like she has been there for almost every other ultra-marathon in which Carolyn has competed. A consistent member of Carolyn's crew, Cindy helps organize the group's most important task—to make eating and drinking as easy for Carolyn as possible.

SpaghettiOs, honey sticks, Go-gurts, natural apple sauce, jellos, graham crackers with peanut butter and bananas all need to be ready for consumption at any time because the crew never knows what Carolyn will crave.

Sometimes, though, the crew knows what Carolyn needs—Carolyn just doesn't want it.

"It's a constant battle," Cindy Smith said. "We have to be persuasive when she doesn't think she needs something."

That's when Cindy sneaks extra nutrients into foods being handed off to her older sister. She's been known to lace hot chocolate with the contents of a GU Energy Gel pack from time to time.

But why does Carolyn put herself through such physical and mental anguish?

"Because she can," Alexander said. "She's good at it, and she wants to be the best."

But being the best in these types of events does not carry much reward. Winners of 24-hour races might receive, at most, a grand or two in prize money. The winner of the Badwater race receives a belt buckle and a T-shirt. That's it.

But to Smith, the answer is more about limitations: what people think they are, what people can do to surpass them, what people need to do to be one of the surpassers.

"For years, people thought the farthest you could run was a marathon, and then people started going longer and longer," Smith said. "So we have this notion that there are physical limits on the body. It's challenging those limits, knowing physically that you're not designed to run that far. And then figuring out what, mentally, can you do to overcome that?"

This weekend Smith will compete in the 24-hour U.S. National Championship in Grapevine, Texas. She'll strive to improve upon her own personal record. She'll push to find that coveted meditative state.

"I don't think she feels she ever reached her potential (as a runner) as a young woman," Alexander said. "She was never the best at marathons. She never found her race until she found ultramarathons.

"Carolyn really is remarkable. That's a good word for her."