MOAB 240 HISTORY: DAUWALTER'S OUTRIGHT WIN, MCKNIGHT'S RECORD AND THE TRIPLE CROWN OF 200S
The Moab 240 was first run in October 2017 as a single 238-mile loop through the desert and mountains surrounding Moab, Utah, and it became famous within days of its debut when Courtney Dauwalter won the race outright by more than 10 hours. Nine editions later, the race covers 241.8 miles, sells out with a waitlist, and anchors the Triple Crown of 200s alongside the Tahoe 200 and the Bigfoot 200.
The 2026 edition runs from October 9 to 13, and the field is already full. This is how the race came to exist, how its records were set, and what the loop asks of the runners who take it on.
A Race Built for a Friend
Destination Trail, the company run by race director Candice Burt, had already established the 200-mile format in the United States with the Tahoe 200 in 2014 and the Bigfoot 200 in 2015. The Moab race was the third, and it had a specific origin.
Ultrarunner Stephen Jones had talked about a 200-mile race around Moab before he died in a backcountry skiing accident in 2016. Burt built the course as a tribute to him, and the race has carried that story since its first edition.
The inaugural race started on October 13, 2017. It drew 127 starters, and 99 of them finished, a completion rate of 78 percent that is high for a course of that length and a sign that the cutoffs were set with finishing in mind rather than attrition.
Dauwalter's Debut Win
The first edition is still the most talked-about. Dauwalter, then in her early years as a professional, led the entire field and finished in 57:55:13. The next runner home, Sean Nakamura, was the first man across the line in 67:50:10, nearly 10 hours later.
The result reached far beyond the trail community. It was covered by Runner's World and Trail Runner magazine and discussed on the Joe Rogan Experience, and it became one of the performances that pushed 200-mile racing into wider public view.
Dauwalter's time remains the women's course record nine years on, and no woman has come within 10 hours of it since. It also stood as the overall course record until McKnight's run in 2021, which means a woman held the outright best time at the race for its first four editions.
Dauwalter went on to win UTMB three times, the Western States 100 twice and the Hardrock 100, and the Moab result is usually cited as the race that introduced her to a wider audience. She has not returned to defend the title.
The Early Records
Piotr Hercog of Poland won the second edition in 2018 in 60:14:47, the first time the men's winner had finished inside 61 hours. Jessica Pekari won the women's race in 77:26:01.
The 2019 race brought Michael McKnight his first Moab title in 59:30:12, with Sarah Emoto winning the women's race in 81:18:41. McKnight would become the race's most consistent front-runner.
Michele Graglia of Italy won in 2020 in 61:43:15, in an edition that went ahead during the pandemic. Jessi Morton-Langehaug won the women's race.
McKnight's 55:49:58
McKnight returned in 2021 and set the mark that still stands. He ran 55:49:58, and for most of the race he was tied at the front with Jovica Spajic of Serbia, who finished second in 56:54:39. McKnight pulled away over the last 30 miles.
The time is the fastest anyone has covered the loop, and McKnight and Spajic remain the only two runners to finish inside 57 hours. Annie Hughes won the women's race that year in 68:50:02, the second-fastest women's time in the race's history.
Winning times have drifted since. Jeff Browning won in 2022 and Alyssa Clark took the women's race in 73:12:29. Jesse Haynes won in 2023 in 70:47:49, the slowest men's winning time to date, and Sally McRae won the women's race in a season in which she completed four races of 200 miles or more.
Max Jolliffe won in 2024 in 69:22:17, and Sarah Ostaszewski won the women's race. Ostaszewski went on to win the Wasatch Front 100 in September 2026.
The Triple Crown of 200s
Destination Trail links its three original 200-mile races into a season-long series. The Tahoe 200 circles Lake Tahoe in the summer, the Bigfoot 200 crosses the Cascades in Washington in August, and the Moab 240 closes the series in October. Runners who finish all three in one year complete the Triple Crown of 200s, and the combined time across the three races is tracked as a record in its own right.
McKnight set the combined record in 2019, the same year as his first Moab win, and held it for six years. The series adds a layer to the Moab race each October, because the runners chasing the Triple Crown arrive with two 200-milers already in their legs and a combined time to protect.
Korth's Triple Crown
The 2025 race produced the second-biggest story in the event's history. Kilian Korth won the men's race in under 59 hours and, in doing so, completed a sweep of the Tahoe 200, Bigfoot 200 and Moab 240 in a single season. He set a new combined record for the Triple Crown of 200s across the three races, taking down the mark McKnight had held since 2019 by more than five hours.
Rebecca Rick won the women's race, placing fourth overall and holding off Manuela Vilaseco of Spain.
How the Race Works
The format differs from a 100-mile race in more than distance. Runners are allowed to sleep, and five of the aid stations are set up as sleep stations with cots and hot food. How much a runner sleeps, and where, is one of the main strategic decisions of the event, and the front-runners typically rest for only a handful of hours across the entire course.
Every runner carries a GPS tracker, and the race can be followed live for the full four days and more that it takes the field to get around the loop. The 112-hour limit gives most of the field four full days and nights. Crews and pacers are part of the race for many entrants, and the sleep stations double as the places where crews wait, sometimes for most of a day, for their runner to arrive.
The Course
The Moab 240 is a single loop that starts and finishes on the streets of downtown Moab. The 2026 course measures 241.8 miles with about 31,700 feet of climbing, and the time limit is 112 hours, or four days and 16 hours.
The distance has crept up over the years as sections were rerouted. The 2017 course was listed at 238 miles, later editions at a little under 240, and the current route adds nearly four miles to the original. The name has never changed to match, and neither has the start line on Main Street.
The early miles follow the Colorado River corridor through canyon country near the Potash evaporation ponds, with sandstone walls on both sides. The route then turns south across high desert benches and washes near Canyonlands National Park, where shade is scarce and navigation matters.
Around mile 115 the course climbs into the Abajo Mountains, also called the Blue Mountains, and rises above 11,000 feet. It is the first of two alpine sections and the highest ground in the southern half of the loop.
The second mountain crossing comes near mile 190 in the La Sal Mountains, where the course reaches its highest elevations with peaks above 12,000 feet nearby. Most of the field has been on the course for more than two days by this point.
The final miles pass through the Behind the Rocks area southwest of Moab, a maze of sandstone fins and slickrock, before descending into town. There are 16 aid stations on the course, five of which are sleep stations where runners can rest before continuing.
The Race Today
The 2026 edition is sold out, with entry now managed through a waitlist. The race remains a fixture of the Destination Trail calendar and the final leg of the Triple Crown, which Korth's 2025 sweep put back in the spotlight.
The records to beat are McKnight's 55:49:58 from 2021 on the men's side and Dauwalter's 57:55:13 from 2017 on the women's side. The gap between the two is a little under two hours and six minutes.
The men's winning time has ranged from McKnight's 55:49:58 to Haynes' 70:47:49, a spread of almost 15 hours, which reflects how much weather, heat and sleep strategy vary from year to year. On the women's side the range runs from Dauwalter's 57:55:13 to Emoto's 81:18:41 in 2019.
In nine editions the race has never had a repeat women's winner, and only McKnight has won the men's race twice. The 2026 field will start on the morning of October 9 with the same basic assignment the first 127 runners faced: leave Moab, cross two mountain ranges, and come back.