The Grayson Murphy story: Aeroplane arms and winning world championships
The two times world mountain champion's life in running started late, quickly embraced success and is powered by having fun
There’s a video on Grayson Murphy’s Instagram account where the two times world mountain running champion is sprinting down a technical trail, dodging rocks and tree stumps like they’re the opposition players she took on as a young soccer starlet at school.
Her legs are going ten to the dozen as she almost flies downwards, the most in-control out-of-control running you’ll ever see.
Her arms are flailing around. The whole thing is ridiculously fast. It’s brilliant. It’s clearly fun.
And that’s what running is for a 28-year-old who’s motto is “aeroplane arms or you are doing it wrong. If it’s not so much fun that you are doing aeroplane arms, you are not doing it right.”
A two-time world champion in mountain and trail running, as well as a four-time US national champion in mountain running and vertical kilometre, Grayson has been hailed as one of the greatest mountain runners of all time.
She also has a background as a five times All-American cross-country and track and field athlete at university, and came within seconds of qualifying for the US Olympic team in the steeplechase.
But behind all her success, Grayson is powered by a desire to enjoy herself while running.
It’s an ethos that saw her embrace the sport as a late developer at university, and then persuaded her to take to the trails despite having won a professional track and field contract.
But things weren’t always that way.
‘It’s not fun, why would we do running?’
At school, Grayson was a soccer - or football depending what side of the pond you are on [editor’s note, it’s football!] - player.
Although, along with her twin sister, she would regularly win the PE mile they both thought “it’s not fun, why would we do this sport?”.
Indeed, when Grayson went to Sweet Briar College in Virginia it was to play football.
But her dream turned sour - “football at university wasn’t enjoyable” - so she transferred to California’s Santa Clara University, primarily to take up a place on an engineering programme.
It was there her path took an extraordinary turn after she was asked to try out for the track team.
“I didn’t have any sports I could walk on to,” she said. “That was my last ditch attempt to still be involved in sports.”
In fact she only made the team due to Title 9 - American laws against discrimination on the basis of sex - because “they needed another woman so they could have another guy on the team”.
‘All the gear, no idea’
After arriving in the autumn, Grayson originally ran cross-country. Later, she took part in 5km, 1,500m and steeplechase races.
“My team mates made the sport for me, they were great fun. If I hadn’t have had such great team mates, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it so much,” she told the Running Tales Podcast.
“It was fun to learn something new. There were so many things I didn’t know about it.”
Despite quickly becoming one of the faster members of the team, Grayson lacked the ‘base’ and aerobic engine of many of her colleagues.
“Eight miles for me was quite a lot,” she said. “I had not run more than three at one time before showing up at practice.”
She also stumbled into racing steeplechase when her first coaches suggested the event might work for her due to the agility she already had from playing football.
“I didn’t know what it was and had to be shown pictures on a computer,” she said. “I thought ‘that seems pretty fun, it’s like a little obstacle race’.”
But running quickly became a serious pursuit. In her second year at Santa Clara she qualified for two national events, and a move to the University of Utah followed.
Utah had a bigger running programme and Grayson’s place there came with a scholarship - and a desire to run professionally.
She said: “I was having a lot of fun so I didn’t want it to be over in just four years.”
The university’s faith in her was rewarded when she became a five times All-American, competing in cross-country and track and field.
University was duly followed by a professional contract in 2018, but much like the trails she now races down, Grayson’s path continued to be full of twists and turns.
Competing on the track came with a host of pre-race nerves and she wasn’t enjoying the training.
Taking to the mountains
Out-of-the-blue, she decided to try mountain running.
“I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah which is a really mountainous place,” she said.
“Every summer I was in the mountains with my family, hiking. We weren’t running, but we hiked, biked and camped a lot so I felt at home.
“I thought why not run in them. No-one had really introduced that idea to me before.
“In the US pipeline, it is not typical to go from track and cross-country to trail running.
“It was a weird side-step that a lot of people questioned, but the race was right out of my back door so why not try it.
“It was so much fun, I thought I can’t not do this.
“If you gave me the choice to run on the track or go out in the mountains, I would pick the mountains, and I thought that was pretty telling of what I should be focussing on.”
Immediate success followed.
A year after making the switch, she won her first national title at the USA Track & Field (USATF) Mountain Running Championships.
It is an achievement Grayson replicated in 2021 and again this year, when she also captured first place in the championships’ vertical mountain running division.
Victory in America was followed by similar success at the 2019 World Mountain Running Championships in Argentina, while she later became a double world champion in winning the 2023 World Mountain Running Championships in the Up and Downhill Mountain class.
In between her mountain running successes, Grayson even had time to make another unusual move when she returned to the track in 2020 to take part in the 3,000-metre steeplechase at the US Olympic Trials.
After having smashed the 9:55 qualifying time for the trials by clocking 9:37:25 at an event in Iowa, she won her semi-final in 9:25:33.
In the final, she finished sixth in 9:25:55 missing out on the Olympic team by just three places.
It was a stunning return, typical of Grayson’s ability to exceed expectations and shock those watching.
Despite that, she said qualifying for the Olympics had never been her ‘end goal’: “It was more to show that you can do these things and to stay fast.
“It wasn’t the main goal of the season.
“Some people can’t wrap their brains around it. I get asked a lot, how do you train for that? But it’s all just running.”
Becoming world champion - and silencing the doubters
That ability to take people - and herself - by surprise was best seen in her first world mountain running championship win.
When she lined up at the start of the event in Argentina, Grayson had no idea what was to come.
“I was doing well immediately, but I was having so much fun and I recognise that as a key to success,” she said.
“On the track I’ve never felt the level of joy that I feel when I’m running on trails.
“That can really elevate you to the next level and get the extra one per cent out of you.
“At the world championships, I had no idea how I would do.
“I had won the US nationals to qualify, but I had never raced any international trail runners.
“I thought ‘maybe we just aren’t that good in the US, now I have to race these Europeans, who are supposed to be really good at downhills’.
“I just went out in the front and started running - and no-one caught me.
“That was really strange. Coming into the finish, I thought ‘did I take a wrong turn'.
“There was nobody challenging me the whole race. That had never happened to me before.
“It didn’t register what had happened. It was like a dream, not even a good dream but more like a confusing dream where you don’t know what has happened.
“It took me a year to come around to the idea it was real and wasn’t a fluke.”
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That imposter syndrome wasn’t helped by the attitude of many online pundits, with some belittling her victory as the result of the absence of top African athletes who had not managed to get Visas for Argentina.
“Some people said I wouldn’t have done well if real people had been there,” she said. “That was hurtful and added to my confusion.
“I was so new to the space, and had no idea if the things they were saying had any weight or not.”
Those feelings only really came to an end when she took first place again at this year’s championships in Austria.
“I remember thinking ‘no-one can say anything this year, you’ve earned this one’.
“It felt like I had won two races in that one race. I’d waited four years to come full circle and finally give that victory to myself.
“I made sure to enjoy the moment as last time I had been so confused.”
And we’re back to enjoying the moment, arms out flying down a mountain trail.
“I think everyone probably does it when you are just feeling good on the trail, and you are having so much fun you just want to put your arms out like you’re an aeroplane, like a little kid,” Grayson said.
"I realised that should be the basis of my why, of why I run.
"If I keep that as my number one priority, everything else seems to fall into place.
"So my motto is aeroplane arms or you are doing it wrong. If it’s not so much fun that you are doing aeroplane arms, you are not doing it right.
"At the end of the day it should be something fun you are doing."
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