Finding purpose and community in ultra running — and outside the LDS Church

Zach Bates waited quietly in the morning twilight, outfitted in some of the gear he would need to cover 250 miles: fabric guards to keep the dust out of his shoes, a face covering, sunglasses, a hydration pack and water bottles, hiking poles and a green hat with a neck flap to block the sun. The race, just moments away, would be the hardest thing he had ever taken on.

“Cocodona 250,” said the banner at the starting line. “Adventure awaits.”

The course was well-marked, and Zach, 22, had a digital tracking device. But Zach’s mother, Rana, was worried. Her son has autism and is prone to losing his way. The rules prevented him from using an official pace runner during the first 78 miles of the race, so Rana had found another competitor who was willing to run alongside Zach informally.

But now she couldn’t find him.

Rana stood on her tiptoes, searching for the runner in a sea of 278 participants. She had meticulously planned every mile of Zach’s race, and, as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. start, her voice revealed her agitation.

The other runner, she said, “was supposed to meet Zach at the starting line — that was the plan.”

Then the gun went off, and Zach disappeared into the swell of competitors, jogging up a steep canyon of rocky switchbacks toward Flagstaff and a future full of questions.

Testing His Independence

The Cocodona 250, held every May in Arizona, would be daunting for anyone, given the punishing distance and the stress of running on a rugged trail day and night. But it was a particularly tough test for Zach, whose autism gives him fierce concentration and determination, but also comes with limitations, like difficulty multitasking, communicating his needs and socializing.

It was unlikely that he would ever live independently, and milestones like holding down a job still felt out of reach. After high school, Zach briefly worked at a fast-food restaurant, but he was eventually let go. His mother said he needed more direction than most employers have time to give.

Zach, who lives with his family in the small town of Snowflake, Arizona, wanted to learn to drive, but Rana feared that he would be easily distracted, or that he would not remember to stop at a stop sign. “He would have a hard time getting to the school that he went to for years, or the Walmart we often go to,” she said.

Zach had discovered a love of running in high school, on the cross-country team. The sport brought out his strengths — his athletic ability, his focus and his unflappability.

Running also gave him direction. Zach is fascinated by record-setting feats of any kind. After learning about ultrarunning on YouTube, he became determined to run a 100-mile race before he turned 20, even before he ran a marathon. He has since completed four 100-milers, plus dozens of shorter ultramarathons. For the last three years, he has diligently followed his coach’s training plan, running between 50 and 100 miles a week. He dreams of setting the world record for running 100 miles a day for the most consecutive days.

“Zach’s always crunching numbers in his head and knows exactly where he is in a race, time-wise,” said John Hendrix, a family friend who paced Zach in a 100-mile race last year. When Zach realized he might not make his goal of finishing that race in under 24 hours, he picked up the pace and left Hendrix, who still winces at the memory, on the trail.

Zach has become recognizable in the ultrarunning world and has some corporate sponsors, thanks in part to Rana’s continual social media posts and networking. He rarely talks about his autism and sees himself as no different from other people who accomplish amazing running feats. Finishing the Cocodona 250 would be another step toward his goal of becoming a full-time professional ultrarunner. It would also be another test of how independent he could be, how much he could handle.

Rana, a stay-at-home mother of four, was testing her limits, too. She and her husband, Brian, an anesthesiologist, had raised their family in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But as Zach progressed in running with her help, she began broadening her own life and social circle beyond the church she had grown up in.

Blistered and Hungry

Zach covered the first 37 miles of the Cocodona 250 on his own, on a trail of loose rock that ascended nearly 10,000 feet. This section of the course was so hot, steep and technical that runners were required to carry a gallon of water, adding another 8 pounds to their packs.

Zach’s family was waiting for him when he reached the first aid station, in an old mining town. So was Mikael Cars, the runner whom Rana had asked to accompany Zach. They had missed each other at the start because of a misunderstanding about where to meet.

Zach sat in a chair on the deck of the town’s old saloon while family and friends tended to him. His feet were already blistered. He was behind on his nutrition and dehydrated. Hendrix encouraged him to eat a barbecue sandwich. Hendrix’s wife, Diane, and Zach’s 15-year-old sister, Emma, removed Zach’s shoes, and Zach’s dad prepared his medical kit.

Rana encouraged everyone to work faster. She wanted to get Zach in and out of aid stations as quickly as possible so he could finish within his time goal of 85 to 90 hours.

It was difficult to know how any of this felt to Zach, who generally just said he was “fine” when asked how he was doing. But his paleness and uncontrollable shaking suggested he was already struggling.

Temperatures were expected to plummet during the night. Zach wore only a thin, long-sleeved shirt, but did not ask for warmer clothes. When Hendrix asked Rana if Zach had a jacket, she snapped that they had talked about it and decided to not bring one for this section of the course. Now she was regretting it. Zach had only shorts, two thin shirts, a windbreaker, a small beanie and gloves to keep him warm in near-freezing temperatures. Before he left the aid station, Rana gave her son her cotton sweatshirt. She felt terrible, worried that she had let him down.

The Toe of Satan

Zach has dark hair and a fit frame, and his facial expressions are often hard to read. When I spent time with him before and during the race, he frequently answered questions with, “I don’t know,” and his mother usually spoke for him. But when he found something he was interested in, like world records or ultramarathons, his hazel eyes lit up, and his shyness disappeared.

Zach was diagnosed with autism when he was 4. He didn’t just play with toys; he turned play into a challenge. When he was 10, his speech pathologist asked him how many times he could bounce on his pogo stick. Hours later, he had reached 5,000 bounces — and was still going.

One in 36 8-year-olds in the United States has autism, according to a 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. That is roughly 4% of boys and 1% of girls that age. The CDC reports that there are 5.4 million people 18 or older, or 2.2% of adults, in the United States living with autism.

Some people with autism are hypersensitive, which means they overreact to sensory input. Zach is hyposensitive, meaning his reactions are muted. According to an article in Autism Parenting Magazine, hyposensitive people may tire easily from reading and school work, have trouble seeing the big picture and seek out loud sounds. They tend to prefer strong-tasting food and, in some cases, do not experience pain or temperature the way neurotypical children do.

When Zach learned about the system used to rank the heat of peppers, known as the Scoville scale, he built his pain tolerance to the point that he could keep a lollipop called the Toe of Satan in his mouth for five minutes. The lollipop, laced with a chili extract, has a Scoville rating of 9 million, roughly 900 times that of a jalapeño.

When Zach was growing up, Rana read books about autism, experimented with his diet, pushed to get him the help he needed in school and held him back in kindergarten, even though it meant his twin brother, Alex, who does not have autism, went ahead. What she could not shield him from was social isolation.

“As a kid, Zach did not really have friends, and that was incredibly hard for him,” his older sister, Erin, told me. “When Zach was 6 or 7, he was so sad that he was not invited to hang out with his brother and his friends that he ran away from home to go find them.”

Rana said Zach still did not have the social skills to initiate friendships. While most people his age have many people in their lives who can fulfill their need for connection, Zach mostly has his mom.

Sleeprunning

Zach had a rough first night of the race. Exhausted, he fell asleep on the trail, occasionally winding up facedown in the dirt. More than once, Cars thought Zach was right behind him, but didn’t see Zach when he turned around, or saw only the faintest glimpse of his headlamp. When he asked Zach how he was doing, Zach would reply, “I’m good.” Cars would follow up: Are you eating? “Yep.” What are you eating? “Food.”

I met Cars and Zach on the trail when they emerged from the mountains in the morning. Zach called his mom on her cellphone, and the pain and exhaustion in his voice were so obvious that Rana thought he was ready to quit. Zach told her that his knee ached and that it would take him hours to cover the few miles to the next aid station. Rana calmly told him where to find an energy drink in his hydration pack.

Soon, powered by caffeine and the late morning sun, Zach picked up the pace.

“I’m going to focus on my back because it does not hurt,” he said, as we ran together toward the aid station. He had not slept for more than a few minutes in 30 hours, but he was as eager as ever to talk about running records.

“I think after a woman runs a 4:05 mile, competition will build, and a woman will break the four-minute mile,” he said.

He was hours behind schedule by the time he reached the aid station. Rana, who had been awake most of the night watching her son’s tracker move across her phone screen, was still angry at herself for not bringing Zach warmer clothes. She hugged him, then cleaned the dirt and sand off his body and lathered him in sunscreen.

During the break, Zach, who sipped a chocolate protein drink and ate pizza and vanilla ice cream, looked dazed. His head jerked, and his eyes widened when his dad offered him ammonium salts to keep him awake.

When he returned to the trail, Zach still had 172 miles to go, Brian had tears in his eyes from seeing his son in so much pain, and everyone in the crew had their doubts that Zach would finish.

‘This Completely Different Person’

Rana is 52, with a smattering of freckles and big brown eyes. The second of eight children, she grew up in a conservative Mormon home and met Brian at church when she was 18.

The couple built their life around the church, tithing and spending hours each week attending services. When Rana was not at church, she spent most of her time taking care of Zach. His fascination with ultrarunning was a relief to Rana, who for the first time saw her son find a direction in life.

“When there is a big dream that he really wants, he puts his foot down and is like, ‘This is what I really want, and we can’t be delaying this thing,’” she said.

Zach’s immersion in ultrarunning coincided with a period when Rana was questioning her faith and wondering about her purpose in life.

Rana said she was “entrenched” in her religion when her oldest daughter, Erin, 24, was growing up.

“There were a lot of rules and a lot of expectations and a lot of fears,” she said. “We had this dynamic of me being constantly afraid that her choices were damaging our chances of having an eternal family in heaven. I was really strict with her.”

But over time, she said, she focused less on the rules of her religion and “let go of fear and let compassion and love come through.”

Today, Erin’s younger sister, Emma, is allowed to wear shorts, bikinis and spaghetti-strap tops, and to socialize in a way that Erin was never allowed to. Rana said her experience with Zach taught her how to better support her children and helped her understand what she was capable of.

At first, Rana did not attend Zach’s cross-country meets. But as he became immersed in the sport, so did she, and her world expanded. John and Diane Hendrix, whom Rana met through ultrarunning, were her first friends outside the church.

Now she knows all of the gear required for the sport, from socks to running shoes to the latest hydration packs. She can rattle off the names of the best runners as if they were old friends.

“My mom has become this completely different person,” Erin said between bites of pizza at an aid station. “Zach’s running has given her community, purpose and something to get excited about. It brings her as much joy as it does Zach.”

A Breakthrough

By the second night, Rana realized that Zach’s 85- to 90-hour goal was out of reach, and that he needed more rest if he was going to complete the race within the allotted 125-hour time limit. When told that he should get more sleep, Zach demonstrated his gift of single-minded focus and was out in seconds. He took several two-hour naps at the aid stations and dozens on the trail, including on a snowbank.

At the halfway point, what lay ahead was daunting. The red cliffs of Sedona popped out of the desert like shards of glass. Mount Elden — the final climb before the finish — looked like a mirage. Rana told Zach that if he wanted to finish the race, he would have to go faster.

The next couple of days passed in a blur of bloody noses, aching knees and mouth sores so painful that Zach struggled to eat and drink.

On the fifth day, Zach and his new pace runner, Peter Mortimer, closed in on the mile 227 aid station. Though Zach was still hobbling and short on sleep, a shift had taken place. With only 23 miles left, he was hours ahead of the cutoff and knew he was going to finish the race.

I caught up with him on the trail that afternoon, and he talked excitedly about the last 37-mile stretch.

“Woof, woof,” he said, laughing. “There was a dog barking. I heard it!”

The dog had been a phantom, the product of too little rest. Mortimer said he and Zach had passed the long night by listening to Imagine Dragons on shared earbuds. They recounted how Zach, who is usually calm and reserved, had screamed his frustrations about the race into the ether. Mortimer said that Zach then went into “aggro mode” and started running.

“I was just sitting on the trail yelling at nothing,” Zach said, smiling. “And afterward, I got mad and decided I was going to run the rest of the race, which does not make any sense.”

When Zach reached the aid station, he was greeted with cheers from volunteers, his family and other runners. His crew put his feet in ice bags and tried to get him to eat.

At 5 a.m. on the sixth day, when Zach would have to either complete the race or be disqualified, Rana shivered at the finish line in Flagstaff with the rest of the family. Soon, Zach came into view — jogging — with siblings Emma and Alex running next to him. Zach’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and flakes of skin peeled off his chapped lips, but he flashed a triumphant grin.

A cowbell rang and the announcer called Zach’s name as he crossed the line. He ran straight into his mother’s arms. “You did it!” she told him. He didn’t say a word.

‘We Have to Adapt and Change’

In the months since the Cocodona, Zach has focused on his next goal — getting faster. He wants to qualify for the 2026 Boston Marathon this fall. To do that, he will need to run 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 55 minutes or less. By the end of 2026, he hopes to run 150 miles in 24 hours and represent the United States in the 24-hour world championship in 2027. Ultramarathoners tend to peak later in their careers, so Zach has plenty of time to improve.

Rana is intent on giving Zach a future, whether or not it involves running. Because he is still unable to hold down a job, she has him clean the Airbnb she owns. She is also working with him to take online classes so he can become a personal trainer and one day work in the gym the family plans to open.

“He needs something real that he feels happy and fulfilled in,” she said. “Whatever we can give him to do, even if it’s just motivating people in the gym and helping keep the equipment dusted and watching for any maintenance, he’ll feel like he has ownership and a future.”

But she has learned from experience not to expect too much, too fast. When I last spoke with Rana, she was giving Zach’s younger sister Emma a driving lesson, while Zach sat in the back seat. It appeared Emma would get her license first.

“Having a child with autism is kind of like running a 250-mile race,” Rana said. “We have this plan and all of these ideas, and sometimes things fall apart and we have to adapt and change and let go of our expectations.

“It is slow progress and there are a lot of roadblocks,” she added. “But we are finding joy in doing the thing that he loves.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.