When the 100-mile Silverton Ultra Dirty was canceled this year, Lauren Deeley decided to run it anyway.

The ultra marathon was scheduled to start Friday in Durango and follow the Colorado Trail to Silverton, with a loop around Engineer Mountain along the way.

The Silverton Ultra Dirty has been permanently closed due to “permitting issues,” according to the event’s website.

After qualifying for the race, Deeley decided to run it anyway as a self-supported mission, beginning at 5 a.m. on Friday.

“It’s a really cool course, and I love these mountains,” she said.

Deeley altered the route, however. Instead of running around Engineer Mountain, she’ll head into the alpine terrain surrounding Silverton before dropping down into town.

“I modified the course since I’m the only one running,” she said. “And in true ultra runner fashion, I made it harder.”

Her route will climb about 24,000 vertical feet along the way, roughly 4,000 feet more than the original route.

Some of her friends will also tag along to help her out. They’ll set up a handful of aid stations for Deeley, with most of them being 10-17 miles apart along the route.

Her run, which she has named “Deeley’s Ultra Dirty,” will also be her longest run ever, and twice as long as the course she ran to qualify for the canceled event.

“It’s easy to play in your comfort zone,” she said. “It’s really scary to go after something you might not finish. But how do I know what big is if I don’t find those limits?”

Her goal is to finish the run in 36 hours, 4 hours faster than the Silverton Ultra Dirty’s cutoff. She plans on doing it in one go, without sleeping.

Her finish line will be at the intersection of 13th Street and Greene Street in Silverton.

She said she hopes a handful of her friends will be in costumes and run the final stretch through town with her. She also plans to put on a costume at her last aid station, about 6 miles from the finish.

The finish line will be two friends holding some toilet paper for her to run through.

“I’m as ready as I can be,” she said. “The fact that running 100 miles is theoretically possible is pretty magical.”

Deeley, a Colorado native, spent time in Vermont and Costa Rica before returning to Colorado in 2015. She currently works as a financial adviser for Northwestern Mutual, which is based in Denver.

She made her first trip to the San Juans in 2016 and said she fell in love with the mountains.

“There’s really incredible energy in these mountains, the kind I’ve never felt before,” she said. “That sense of exploration stayed with me.”

After running her body into the ground, however, she almost gave up on her dream of running 100 miles and mostly stopped running because of the pain.

One day, when she was in Steamboat Springs, she said she saw a pair of shoes on the sidewalk outside of a store, and there was a beam of light on them. They were in her size, and they fit.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” she said.

She hadn’t run in three years at the time, but bought the shoes and got back into the sport. She later started running as a pacer for some of her friends in ultra races.

Today, her 100-mile dream is alive again.

Preparing for the ultra dirty has also helped Deeley in other aspects of her life.

She has a dual goal of running the 100-mile ultra dirty and also signing up 100 new clients this year, and she’s on pace to accomplish both.

“I don’t think that success (in business) would be happening with out the other goal,” Deeley said. “It’s made it easier. How you do anything is how you do everything. If I’m intentional with how I do this, the I’m intentional with everything else because that becomes the norm.”

Her 36-hour goal is a soft cutoff. If she gets to the finish line, and her GPS says she’s only run 99.9 miles, she said she’ll keep running until it hits 100.

The time doesn’t matter to Deeley, who says she’s no professional runner. Testing herself at something she enjoys does matter to her.

“One of my goals for this is just to have a damn good time,” Deeley said. “I’m beyond grateful to have the opportunity to take time off work and spend 36 hours in the mountains.”

colivas@durangoherald.com