Two hundred wasn’t the number Rebecca Gonzalez-Kreisberg had in mind for the 2024 ultrarunning season. Her heart was set on 152 – the precise number of miles she planned to run at the Notchview Ultra.

It was an ambitious milestone, but after earning her first 100-mile finish at the 72-hour event in 2023 she dared to dream even bigger. Unfortunately for her, the combination of a toe injury and upheaval at work halted her running ambitions before the season even began.

“Things were kind of falling apart,” Gonzalez-Kreisberg admitted. “That’s where the goal of 152 had to be put aside, because suddenly I was in no capacity between what was going on at work and what was going on with my physical body to be training. I spent a lot of that winter barely surviving in a lot of ways.”

“Luckily,” she added, “I’m totally on the other side now.”

How she dealt with the disappointment and weathered storm involved an extraordinary feat of a different type of endurance, one that called to mind the popular ultrarunning phrase “200 is the new 100” while also redefining it.

“I really needed to focus in on something, and it couldn’t be running and it wasn’t going to be my work,” she said. “I knew it could be volunteering at races, so … I just went all in.”

“I’ll never do 200 miles of running,” she added with a laugh, “so I might as well do 200-plus hours of volunteering.”

Early Exposure to the Ultra World

“There was a time in my life where I knew about all of this,” Gonzalez-Kreisberg said, speaking specifically about ultrarunning. “I’d even tried running, but I failed. It did not work.”

Specifically, that time was ninth grade. A freshman at the Academy at Charlemont, she went out for the cross country team and got in trouble for walking on the course during races.

“It’s still a family joke to this day, especially now given what I do,” she said with a laugh.

At the same time that Gonzalez-Kreisberg was struggling to find her way as a runner, her high school science teacher – legendary New England ultrarunner Leigh Schmitt – was setting records and collecting some of his 50+ ultramarathon victories at races from coast to coast, including a sub-15-hour win at the 2004 Vermont 100.

“He would regularly win races, 100-mile races,” she said. “He would run laps around the school; I thought he was nuts.”

It took another decade before Gonzalez-Kreisberg truly started charting her path as a runner, but she spent her teenage years building the foundation for another of her passions: volunteering. She spent four summers in middle and high school helping as a junior counselor at a nature camp that she’d attended as a youth. Additionally, she was a member of the community service council at the Academy at Charlemont, and in college she spent time each week volunteering as a mentor with an elementary school student.

“Volunteering has always been a huge part of who I am,” she said.

Returning to Running

After graduating from Colby College in 2012, Gonzalez-Kreisberg moved to New York City with visions of a career in the photography industry. Instead, she found a job in architecture project management. She wanted to exercise, but the cost of living in New York City was steep, and gym memberships were exorbitant. Running was free, so that fit the budget.

“I was looking for what I could do to be active, so I got into running,” she said. “In 2013, I did a challenge to run 100 miles over the course of three months in the summer; that’s basically a mile a day. It’s not a huge lift, but it’s getting you out there.”

She completed the challenge and kept going. The following year, she and some work colleagues realized they shared a dream of running the New York City Marathon. Gonzalez-Kreisberg did the New York Road Runners’ (NYRR) 9+1 Program which allowed local residents to bypass the marathon lottery if they ran nine NYRR events and volunteered at another within the same calendar year. That combination of running and volunteering fit her interests perfectly. She earned her way into the 2015 New York City Marathon, which she finished in 7:03:16. Though she moved back to Massachusetts in 2016, she returned to New York City once more to volunteer at the finish line of the marathon.

Transitioning to Trails and Ultras

One of the first things Gonzalez-Kreisberg did upon returning to Massachusetts was to begin pursuing her master’s degree in Elementary Education at Mount Holyoke College. The other was to seek out a local running community. She joined the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club (SMAC), and soon made friends with Carla Halpern, Nancy Mead, and Francia Wisnewski.

“They convinced me to do … crazier things,” Gonzalez-Kreisberg recalls with a laugh.

One of those “crazier things” was the inaugural Village Ultra in New Salem, which Halpern directs. It was there in November 2017 that Gonzalez-Kreisberg completed her first 50K ultramarathon. Another of those “crazier things” came a month later at a winter fat ass-style event in North Adams in late December where they ran loops on roads in the bitter cold. The frigid run with friends was more than just a fun adventure; it was Gonzalez-Kreisberg’s gateway to trail running.

“During one of our breaks, they start talking about BURCS,” she said, referencing the Berkshire Ultra Running Community for Service. “They were like, ‘have you thought about doing a trail race?’”

One of them reached out to Alex Bancroft, the BURCS’ race director for the Vegan Power Trail Races, and inquired about getting a scholarship for Gonzalez-Kreisberg to run the event. Six months later, she completed the Vegan Power 25K in June 2018.

“That was my introduction to BURCS, and I’ve never looked back,” she said.

A Revelatory Run

Three weeks after Vegan Power, Gonzalez-Kreisberg celebrated her 28th birthday by running 28 laps at the BURCS’ Notchview Ultra, amassing a personal-best 53.2 miles in the 24-hour event while running a 1.9-mile cross country ski loop course.

“That was the first time I’d ever done anything like that, period,” she says. “I had never done an overnight race; I had never done a loop race like that. That was all new to me. I was there with Carla and Nan; I had a whole group that I was with.”

She made friends with BURCS race director Benn Griffin, a fellow teacher who would become a close friend in the years that followed. She also met a mentor who showed her first-hand how ultrarunners take care of each other. Veteran ultrarunner Ann Alessandrini opted to run the 12-hour race at Notchview, so she cranked out a quick 55.1 miles and then pivoted to volunteer duties for the final 12 hours of the event. Gonzalez-Kreisberg needed three or four more laps to achieve her goal with a few hours left on the clock, but she was struggling.

“Ann’s sitting there, and she jumps right up,” Gonzalez-Kreisberg recalled. “She accompanied me through my last laps.”

The camaraderie and sacrifice Alessandrini showed her was something Gonzalez-Kreisberg had never experienced before as a runner. The shared time on the trail was life-changing.

“So much of my running was in isolation, even though I was in a crowd,” she said of her prior experiences. “For Ann, who has done some of the most incredible feats that I can’t even comprehend personally doing, for her to jump up after having done her own event and say ‘I’ll help you!’ meant so much to me.”

Gonzalez-Kreisberg finished the race having achieved her goal, made a new friend in Alessandrini, and discovered her community of trail- and ultrarunners.

“That time with her, in addition to just the vibe of the whole event, meant I was in,” she said.

An Indispensable Volunteer

After Notchview, it was clear to Gonzalez-Kreisberg that her passion for volunteering was valued in the trail- and ultrarunning community. Following Alessandrini’s example, she became a regular at BURCS events, sometimes chasing personal endurance goals but nearly always volunteering in some capacity. She might show up early to help set up or hand out bibs, run the race and then stick around to help clean up. She enjoyed checking off personal achievements, but mostly savored the friendships she cultivated with the community.

In addition to her nearly constant presence at BURCS events, she expanded her volunteering efforts throughout the region. She became an indispensable sidekick for Amy Rusiecki, who is the race director for the Vermont 100 as well as for the entire Beast Coast Trail Running Series in western Massachusetts.

“I first got to know her when she helped with pre-race registration and check-in at the Mt. Tom race a few years ago,” Rusiecki recalled. “It was clear that she knew what she was doing and had a ton of experience, so I was quickly able to get her involved in more complicated or mission critical tasks.”

Today, Gonzalez-Kreisberg serves as the merchandise coordinator for the Vermont 100 and is a member of the race committee for Beast Coast’s 7 Sisters Trail Race, in addition to serving as the first face many runners encounter at Beast Coast events.

“She often helps with registration at numerous Beast Coast events, but after registration is complete she is my jack-of-all-trades,” Rusiecki added. “She’s able to fill in any gap we have. She’s worked at aid stations, helped with finish line timing, set up the lap chute, cleaned water jugs, whatever is needed.”

In fact, Gonzalez-Kreisberg’s knowledge and versatility as a volunteer has earned her the reputation for being the “Amy whisperer” for her ability to anticipate what Rusiecki needs done or understand her requests when others can’t.

“We quickly realized that she somehow understands what I’m saying even if I don’t share a complete thought… which makes our ability to communicate in shorthand a huge asset at races,” Rusiecki said. “It’s huge for me to hand off a task and be able to trust that she understands what I want so she can make it happen.”

Beyond BURCS and Beast Coast events and the Vermont 100, Gonzalez-Kreisberg has also made the 2-hour drive east multiple times to volunteer at Trail Animals Running Club events. She was there for the 2022 TARCtic Frozen Yeti 30-hour ultra cooking up hot food alongside fellow volunteer Stephanie Case, whose nonprofit organization Free to Run is a beneficiary of a BURCS event of the same name.

“I really got to talk to her for the first time, which was cool given all the time I’ve spent with BURCS,” Gonzalez-Kreisberg said. “It was cool to just meet her and talk with her to make that actual connection.”

Together, Case and Gonzalez-Kreisberg fed runners while standing on snowpack in sub-freezing temperatures. Seven weeks later, Gonzalez-Kreisberg returned to Hale Reservation to volunteer at TARC’s To Hale and Back 6-Hour Ultra on a warm, sunny day.

Be it long drives to support TARC, or shorter trips to her local BURCS and Beast Coast events, Gonzalez-Kreisberg says it’s worth it to support a trail- and ultrarunning community that has done so much to enrich her life.

“Once I started getting into trail running, what really caused me to not look back–especially once I found BURCS–was I am a really slow runner,” she said. “My two road marathons are 7 and 7 1/2 hours, and just to have the cultures of these trail races that BURCS, Beast Coast and TARC offer, that are so inclusive, made all the difference for me. I kind of went in really deep, but it was the people; they made it easy.”

Triple-Digit Milestones

When Griffin decided to expand the Notchview Ultra from a 24-hour maximum time limit to a multi-day endurance festival spanning 72 hours beginning in 2019, Gonzalez-Kreisberg began dreaming about completing a 100-mile run. She loved all of the BURCS events for various reasons, but Notchview was her place to go long. The extended time limit was her opportunity to do something special, and she committed to making it happen.

In 2019, she set a new personal-best distance with a 76-mile run at Notchview. In 2022, she improved by one more loop of the course, completing 77.9 miles. One hundred miles would have to wait a little longer, but she achieved a different triple-digit milestone that year. Gonzalez-Kreisberg spent more than 100 hours volunteering at running events in 2022. After kicking off the year at the two TARC events, she volunteered at Rusiecki’s Mt. Toby Trail Race before assisting at the Boston Marathon Expo. She helped Rusiecki at both 7 Sisters and the Chesterfield Gorge Ultra, before assisting at the BURCS’ Vegan Power, Notchview, Jug End Ultra, and Sweltering Summer 8-Hour Ultra races. She then closed out the year helping out with the Green River Marathon, the Village Ultra, the Free to Run Trail Race, and Rusiecki’s Mt. Tom Trail Race.

A year later, Gonzalez-Kreisberg accomplished her 100-mile goal at Notchview with a 102.6-mile performance that included running the final 22 hours in monsoon-like conditions that caused devastation in parts of Vermont and western Massachusetts. Though the storm damage forced the cancellation of the Vermont 100, freeing up Gonzalez-Kreisberg’s weekend to rest and recover, it didn’t prevent her from amassing a second consecutive year with at least 100 hours of volunteering.

“The Greatest Gift”

Gonzalez-Kreisberg’s goal of running 152 miles at the 2024 Notchview Ultra ended before the year even began thanks to turmoil at work and an injured toe. Rather than retreating from the community while she couldn’t run, she doubled down on spending time with the people who brought her joy and fulfillment.

“I don’t know if I was intentionally thinking this is what I’m going to do instead,” she said. “It was just ‘if I’m not running, then what am I doing?’ Every opportunity I had, it was just ‘let’s say yes.’”

She said yes to volunteering at familiar events; she said yes to volunteering at new events; she said yes to volunteering in additional capacities and with new responsibilities.

The level of commitment Gonzalez-Kreisberg demonstrated was an immeasurable gift to the sport and the community, but Rusiecki said it’s simply a reflection of who she is.

“Rebecca is just an awesome person who really cares about the ultrarunning community,” Rusiecki said. “She does so much volunteer work, as well as racing ultras herself, so she understands every aspect of what it takes to make events successful. When that’s matched with someone who cares about each participant, then you have someone who shines no matter what the role she is volunteering at.”

By the time the 2024 season came to a close, Gonzalez-Kreisberg amassed an astonishing 206 volunteer hours while supporting events in Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut. For some perspective, that’s the equivalent of working more than five full 40-hour work weeks. It’s a massive tally, but she said the people made every hour worth it.

“It meant so much because it fostered new friendships; it deepened friendships,” she said. “There’s people I got to know so much better because of it, either by seeing them through things or supporting them.”

One memory stands out as the biggest highlight of Gonzalez-Kreisberg’s very big year of giving. It was June 21 at Beast Coast Trail Running’s inaugural Edge Hill Trail Race 50K and 8K at the Edge Hill Conservation Area in Ashfield. She was assisting with race-day registration and bib handout when she spotted a familiar face from her past.

Midway through registration, up walks Leigh Schmitt,” she said. “I waited for him to register to confirm he was who I thought before asking if he’d taught at the Academy at Charlemont. A yes led to a catch-up after his race.”

“We talked about how I had tried cross country in high school and it hadn’t gone well, how he still sticks out as a fond memory in my running journey and how I found ultrarunning as an adult. I even shared about completing my first 100+-mile race, and we talked about how the inclusiveness of trail- and ultrarunning is why it means so much to us. That full circle moment was really the greatest gift of 2024 volunteering.”

Just Do It

Participation in trail- and ultrarunning has skyrocketed worldwide during the past quarter-century with new races popping up globally. According to an analysis from iRunFar, ultramarathon races in the United States grew from 233 in 2000 to 2,033 in 2023. Today, more than 240 100-mile events exist in North America alone, according to ultrarunning resource Run100s.com. Despite that explosive growth, the sport has a perpetual shortage of volunteers.

Some runners volunteer only if an event requires it. A handful of ultramarathons, including the Western States Endurance Run and the Vermont 100, have a volunteer service hour requirement that runners must meet to be able to participate. Others volunteer with their local club as a way of giving back to an organization that has provided them with opportunities to run. Some people, like Gonzalez-Kreisberg, gravitate naturally to volunteering and take the practice to extraordinary levels.

For anyone who has thought about volunteering at a trail race or ultramarathon but hasn’t yet done so, Gonzalez-Kreisberg has one recommendation: just do it.

“Honestly, you’ll have a blast no matter what you end up doing,” she said. “If you’re struggling to figure out where to fit in, it can be wherever. Everyone is welcoming and will show you the ropes if you’re not sure what to do, and if you’ve already been running then you know what it’s all about anyway. We make the best volunteers at our own aid stations because we know exactly how to support each other. When someone comes in struggling, we know what to ask them. You are a value-add for an aid station, for a finish line, for any of those spaces because you can support the runner who’s coming in struggling or needing advice or needing help because you’ve been there at some point in your running journey.”

“I promise you it’s totally worth it and fun, and everyone around you will make sure you have what you need and you will have the knowledge that is needed to support at least one person.”

In fact, that one person just might be Gonzalez-Kreisberg. Though 2024 didn’t go as she originally planned, she never stopped dreaming of running 152 miles–and that’s what she intends to do in 2025. She is signed up for the 72-hour race at Notchview, she’s healthy, and she is as motivated and determined as ever to achieve that goal.