From Too Scared to Start to a World Record with Meg Eckert

Meg Eckert once trained for a 5K and was too afraid to show up at the starting line. Now she's one of the best multi-day runners in the world.

Meg joins Scott to talk about starting to run at 29, discovering trails, quitting smoking, learning through her first ultras, and developing a relationship with running built around curiosity, consistency and genuinely enjoying the process.

They also dig into Meg's incredible performance at the 2026 GOMU 6-Day World Championship in Hungary, where she covered 636.482 miles (1,024.319 km) in six days. She won the race outright, broke her own women's six-day world record, set the overall American six-day record and became the first woman to surpass 1,000 km in six days.

Meg explains how she and her crew approached 144 hours of racing - managing sleep, pacing, food, transitions and all the little decisions that make multi-day racing such a fascinating puzzle.

But this conversation is about much more than records. Meg talks about realizing how many experiences she was missing because of fear and making a conscious decision to start saying yes, try new things and worry less about how well she did them.

Chapters 00:00 – Meet Meg Eckert

05:55 – Starting to run at 29

09:00 – Running, smoking and changing habits

19:20 – Meg's first ultra

26:15 – "I get to do this"

28:30 – Inside a six-day race

34:25 – What happens when the race ends