At Panama City, Dolhare reconnected with competition, which had been so core to her being but had been absent from her life since she had to give up tennis after college. Since she had started playing tennis at age 5, her life had centered around competition. Triathlons gave that back to her. And they gave her a goal to keep her focused and motivated.
A stranger to moderation, she went on a triathlon binge, completing a dozen IRONMANs and a dozen triathlons of shorter distances over three years. That included a stretch in 2011 when she qualified for the IRONMAN World Championship where she did IRONMAN Texas in May, then did IRONMANs in France, Austria and Switzerland on three consecutive Sundays. Four weeks later, she took second place among women in the Ultraman United Kingdom (6.2-mile swim, 265-mile bike, 52.4-mile run over three days). She also ran several marathons, including Boston, and several longer events. The thrill of extreme competition felt so good that she just wanted more, more, more. “I’m an adrenaline junkie, that’s safe to say,” she says. “Yeah, I’m a little crazy.”
The extreme competition caught up with Dolhare in Kona in October 2011. She had been having pain in her wrists, but thought a cortisone injection prior to the race would ease the pain. It didn’t. She couldn’t grip her water bottles. She had a terrible headache, but didn’t think that unusual — she’d had migraines since she was a teenager. Her neck hurt so bad, though, that she couldn’t tuck into an aerodynamic position on the bike. Still, she willed herself to finish the race in 12 hours, 42 minutes, 23 seconds. “My pain threshold is really, really high,” she says. “My first son was 10.5 pounds, and I had him naturally [without pain medication].”
She did five more running races, including the Boston Marathon, the JFK 50-miler and the 124-mile Rouge-Orleans Ultramarathon before her doctor finally did an MRI and discovered that she had two ruptured discs between her C4 and C6 vertebrae and that her spine actually curved the wrong direction — as though she’d been sleeping on her stomach in a hammock. She underwent reconstructive surgery, spent five days in the hospital and needed another six months before she could compete again.
That could have been akin to a death sentence for her spirit, but Dolhare found a new way to cope: helping others. She had been raising money for disabled athletes through the Challenged Athletes Foundation in San Diego, but wanted to be more personally involved in work closer to her Charlotte, North Carolina, home. So in 2012 she founded RunningWorks, a nonprofit that gets homeless men and women out running, offers workshops on topics ranging from anger management to financial planning and provides support such as rides to court appointments or the hospital. “Running saved my life,” she says. “Maybe it can help save others.”
The idea is to pass along the values of discipline, confidence, teamwork, self-respect and respecting others that Dolhare learned from sports to others through running and volunteering at events. “Sports gave me a sense of self-worth,” says Dolhare, who serves as executive director of RunningWorks. “That’s what I want to pass on to other people.”
One of her proudest moments, Dolhare says, came in 2013 when she ran alongside a RunningWorks member, Matthew, in a 50k event and then saw this man who had been homeless for six years begin a 30-hour/week job with the strength and confidence he had gained. Since its inception in 2012, RunningWorks has opened seven affiliates in the Carolinas and reaches about 500 individuals annually.
Dolhare came back from her spine surgery in characteristic extreme fashion, running the Bartram 100k at the close of 2012 after only a month of training. The following month, she took fifth place at the Brazil 135 Ultramarathon, 135 miles with 30,000 feet of elevation gain through the jungles of Camino da Fé. That year, 2013, she became the sixth woman in history to garner the Death Valley Cup by completing the Badwater 135-mile running race and the Furnace Creek 508-mile bike race in the same year.
Since her spine surgery, Dolhare has not returned to the pool. Her injury has made it difficult for her to turn her head. But she would love to resume triathlons, if her neck and her commitments at RunningWorks allow it.
“My favorite event ever is the IRONMAN,” she says. “I would love to go back to Hawaii.”
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