Chrissy Lofgren paused briefly at the summit of Pikes Peak and watched other racers snake through the steep trail switchbacks below.

For a moment, she took in the same expansive view that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful” after visiting the summit in 1893.

Lofgren was about 13 miles into the 26.2-mile Pikes Peak Marathon.

She quickly filled a water bottle at a summit aid station as spectators and volunteers cheered under the sunny blue Colorado sky.

Less than a minute after reaching the top of the peak, Lofgren headed down, dodging rocks and runners climbing toward the top. A woman runner on her way up gave Lofgren a high-five, and for the first time since the race began, Lofgren let herself believe she could win.

As the first woman to reach the halfway point of the Sept. 20 race up and down the 14,115-foot peak, Lofgren had reason to be hopeful. Plus, she’s especially good at running down steep slopes.

“When I got to the top, that’s when it hit me: I’m in first place, and I could maybe win,” she said.

After threading her way down through the course’s highest, rockiest section and back into the forest, Lofgren, 28, picked up speed. Far below her, Colorado Springs spread toward the horizon.

As she descended, she drew strength thinking about supporters she knew would be cheering for her at the finish line, including her sister, running friends and the oncology nurse colleagues she works with at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central.

Following two passions: running and nursing

The Pikes Peak Marathon is as epic as its namesake mountain, drawing runners from across the country who race up and down Barr Trail on the peak’s eastern face. Its sister event, the Pikes Peak Ascent half-marathon, happens the day before the marathon.

Race organizers founded the Pikes Peak Marathon in 1956 and bill the event as the oldest continuously held marathon in the U.S.

Lofgren’s road to the marathon starting line began in Stewartville, Minnesota, where she grew up with her mother, father, and younger sister, Amy Lofgren. The girls spent lots of time outdoors, playing and participating in sports. Chrissy Lofgren started running cross country in seventh grade, while Amy Lofgren joined the high school volleyball team.

In high school, Chrissy Lofgren regularly qualified for the state championship meets, her teammates chanting, “run, Chrissy, run,” when she competed, Amy Lofgren said.

“People knew that running was her thing,” she said.

Chrissy Lofgren also liked science classes in high school and looked at colleges and universities with nursing degree programs. She earned an athletic scholarship to St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where she ran indoor and outdoor track and cross-country while working toward her nursing degree.

Nursing made sense for Chrissy, Amy Lofgren said.

“She’s a very selfless, caring person and someone I would want to have as my nurse,” Amy Lofgren said.

During college, Chrissy Lofgren visited an oncology unit during clinical rotations.

“I had a feeling that’s where I wanted to be and where I was meant to be, caring for patients during one of the hardest times of their lives,” she said.

In early 2020, she was coming off a great indoor track season, after setting a new school record in the indoor mile. She was excited to compete outdoors. But the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly ended her collegiate running career. She assumed her competitive running days were over. She graduated, like so many others, with a degree but no graduation ceremony.

She began looking for nursing jobs outside of Minnesota. She was intrigued by the idea of living near the mountains. She had visited Colorado when she was younger and felt drawn to the power and mystique of the state’s grand peaks.

Lofgren was thrilled when she got a job as an inpatient oncology nurse at Memorial Hospital Central. She and her dog, Nelson, a golden retriever-poodle mix, joined a longtime friend who was moving to Colorado.

Lofgren started her job in July 2020. She was a new nurse living hundreds of miles from home, starting her first job during the height of the pandemic.

Running remained a constant. She would head out with Nelson, logging miles on nearby roads, with Pikes Peak and the southern Colorado Front Range in view. She knew about the marathon but didn’t give it much thought. She focused on road running.

“I found comfort in running,” she said. “That was one thing COVID couldn’t change.”

Discovering her calling in oncology nursing

In 2024, Lofgren switched jobs, moving from inpatient cancer care to Memorial Hospital Central’s infusion center, where patients come in to receive their chemotherapy, immunotherapy and other intravenous medications.

As an oncology infusion nurse, she monitors patients during treatment, helps manage their side effects and symptoms and provides education, support and care for patients and their families during what is often a difficult cancer diagnosis.

She said she’s grown to love oncology nursing.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said.

Mandi Beeler, an oncology nurse who works with Lofgren, describes her as a “fantastic nurse.”

“She’s deeply caring,” said Beeler, who began her nursing career 22 years ago. “She’s very kind. She connects well with patients, and she has really good nursing intuition. And she’s got a really funny sense of humor.”

Beeler praised Lofgren for the inpatient nursing experience she brought to the infusion center and described her as a great teammate.

Beyond that, she said, Lofgren possesses what she calls “a level of mental toughness” that serves her well in her job and in running.

Lofgren said her patients are never far from her thoughts, including when she’s on the trail.

“When I’m running, I think about the patients I take care of,” she said. “I feel really lucky to have a healthy body that can run up and down mountains. I put myself in these situations of voluntary suffering, whereas many of our patients are dealing with hard things that they don’t have a choice about. They are going through cancer treatment and dealing with really difficult news about their health.

“It makes me grateful for what I have,” she said. “It changes my perspective on things. And I feel honored to be part of their care.”

Finding her footing on Colorado trails

After moving to Colorado, Lofgren took up many other outdoor hobbies: backpacking, camping, downhill and cross-country skiing and gravel biking. Then, she tried trail running and loved it.

Colorado Springs and nearby Manitou Springs boast seemingly endless miles of trails that attract runners and hikers of all abilities and ambitions. Lofgren’s favorite trail-running spots include North Cheyenne Cañon Park, Red Rock Canyon Open Space and Stratton Open Space, to name a few.

She also built a community of trail runners who became friends.

“They are really good runners who push me, encourage me and help me see what I am capable of doing,” she said.

In 2023, she entered the Pikes Peak Marathon for the first time.

“I thought it would be cool to do this race in my backyard,” she said.

Lofgren finished ninth among women racers.

In 2024, she ran the marathon again. Race organizers cut short the marathon after a storm left ice and snow at the summit. Runners turned around at Barr Camp, the halfway point to the summit, and ran back to the finish line in Manitou Springs. She finished seventh.

In 2025, Lofgren ran the marathon for the third time, placing third among women with a time of 4:56:40.

Along with her trail running friends, Lofgren’s work colleagues celebrated her stellar finishes. When Lofgren returned to work at the infusion center after the 2025 marathon, Beeler and other nursing colleagues brought a cake to celebrate her success.

Training and racing toward the Pikes Peak Marathon

The third-place marathon finish buoyed Lofgren’s confidence. She looked ahead to the 2026 running season and mapped out a training and race schedule across the West. Soon, she was racking up impressive results.

In February, Lofgren ran the Black Canyon Ultras 50k in Arizona and finished ninth among women.

For a few months, she cross-trained on her gravel bike after an ankle injury. Then, in June, she was back to running and completed the grueling 26-mile Four-Pass Loop near Aspen in a single day with a friend. That month, she finished fifth in the GoPro Mountain Games 10K race in Vail.

In July, Lofgren ran in the 9-mile Cirque Series Snowbird Pro race, just outside Salt Lake City, finishing fourth.

Then, in August, Lofgren and her sister headed to New Mexico for the Taos Ski Valley Up & Over 10k, where Chrissy was the top women’s finisher. Amy Lofgren ran the 10k, too, and finished 22^nd.

The next day, Chrissy Lofgren competed in the event’s VerticAL’s VertK, a one-kilometer race up Taos Ski Valley’s Al’s Run, a steep winter ski slope. She won that race, as well.

Later in August, she ran the 14-mile Telluride Mountain Run and finished second.

Amid these runs across the West, Logren also trained on Barr Trail on Pikes Peak.

“Getting more experience in races helped me at the Pikes Peak Marathon,” she said.

Racing to victory in the iconic Pikes Peak Marathon

The Pikes Peak Marathon starts in front of the Manitou Springs City Hall in the heart of the small town west of Colorado Springs at the base of Pikes Peak. Before the 2026 race began, someone sang “America the Beautiful” as the sun rose over the horizon, causing the famed purple hue to light up the mountain’s eastern flank.

Lofgren was nervous and excited at the starting line. She felt good.

“I had rested well, and my legs felt pretty fresh,” she said. “But I didn’t go in thinking ‘I’m going to win.’”

After the start, racers turn onto Ruxton Avenue and follow it for about a mile to the start of Barr Trail, a narrow, winding Forest Service trail named after Fred Barr, who began building a path to the summit in the early 1900s.

Once on Barr Trail, racers immediately encounter the notorious “Ws,” a roughly 3-mile series of steep switchbacks that climb nearly 1,000 feet. From there, the trail becomes more gradual for about three miles heading into Barr Camp.

At the start of the race, Lofgren focused on setting a sustainable pace through the switchbacks. She ran with two other women for the first 90 minutes. Then, at Barr Camp, Lofgren stopped to refill a water bottle and hit the trail again. She pulled ahead of the other women and tackled another series of steep switchbacks above tree line, where trees and other vegetation stop growing in the harsh high-elevation environment.

After reaching the summit, Lofgren stayed just long enough to fill her water bottle and take in the view. Then she started her descent, focusing on running smoothly and watching for rocks and roots that might trip her up. She felt strong and steady. By the time she reached Barr Camp on the way down, she knew she had pulled well ahead of the other women racers.

Family, friends and coworkers celebrate at the finish line

Leading up to the race, Beeler said she had a feeling that Lofgren would win this year.

“But no matter what place she came in, we would have been proud of her,” Lofgren’s fellow nurse said.

On race day, Beeler and four other nurses gathered at the finish line in Manitou Springs to cheer for Lofgren, while other UCHealth employees kept tabs on Lofgren using an online race tracker. One of the nurses at the finish line made a sign that said “Go Chrissy! You are awesome!!”

Amy Lofgren moved to the Denver area in early 2026, in part to be closer to her sister. On the day of the Pikes Peak Marathon, she and her 87-pound dog, Birch, joined nurses and her sister’s running friends at the finish line.

When Chrissy Lofgren was about 10 minutes away, the race announcer told the crowd that she was in first place among the women competitors.

Then, Lofgren came into sight. The crowd roared. She flashed a big smile as she crossed the finish line.

“You could see the joy on her face when she finished,” Amy Lofgren said.

Beeler said the moment was electric.

“We were all in tears when she crossed the finish line,” she said. “It was so much fun to be there. We’re very proud of her.”

Lofgren’s winning time was 5:01:08, 27 minutes ahead of the second-place women’s finisher.

Keeping perspective – and faith – on the trails

Lofgren was back at work two days after the marathon.

Weeks later, she was still soaking up accolades for her win. Near the end of one late September hospital shift, a coworker stopped Lofgren in the hallway outside the oncology infusion center.

“Congratulations!” she told Lofgren, giving her a big hug.

Lofgren also was a guest on The Steep Stuff Podcast, where she talked about her marathon victory.

Winning the Pikes Peak Marathon places Lofgren among a small group of athletes who have won one of America’s toughest marathons.

Amy Lofgren said her sister’s racing inspired her to take up running again.

“After I saw her do that, I said OK, if she can run a marathon up Pikes Peak, I can do a marathon on the road,” Amy Lofgren said.

In 2024, she ran a marathon in Milwaukee. She joined a trail-running group in Golden after moving to Colorado. Amy Lofgren said her childhood jealousies of her big sister have transformed into admiration.

“Now I want to be more like Chrissy,” she said. “Maybe next year I’ll even try the (13.3- mile Pikes Peak) Ascent.”

As for Chrissy Lofgren, she plans to continue spending as much time as possible in the mountains.

It’s where she finds peace and feels especially close to her faith, which has played an important role throughout her running pursuits and her career as an oncology infusion nurse.

“The mountains are so grand and majestic,” she said. “I feel so small when I’m out there. The mountains are where I feel close to God, and I believe this is where I’m meant to be.”

Soon, she’ll start training for her next race, the California International Marathon in December. She isn’t aiming for a top finish, necessarily.

“I don’t do it to win,” she said. “I just really love running.”