Coaching Female Ultrarunners in Afghanistan Helped This Man Fall in Love With Running Again – Runner’s World
Tyler Tomasello wakes before the sun and waits for an unmarked van to pick him up from where he’s staying in Kabul, Afghanistan. Already inside the van are anywhere from three to six Afghan women in their early 20s eagerly anticipating his arrival.
That’s because when he gets there, it means it’s almost time to go for a run.
The group is on their way to a stretch of road, just three-quarters of a mile long, littered not with plastic bottles or gum wrappers, but with bullets, guarded by concrete walls, barbed-wire fences, and members of the Afghan National Army.
This was Tomasello’s routine every day for a month while coaching a team from an organization called Free to Run, who were training for the Gobi Desert March, a six-stage ultramarathon in Mongolia that covers 250 kilometers (155 miles) in seven days.
Tyler Tomasello
Tomasello, a 34-year-old photojournalist and ultrarunner, lives in Winter Park, Colorado, a mecca for skiers and snowboarders. In fact, Tomasello moved to the city 15 years ago to pursue a snowboarding career, but got “a little too old and beat up,” so he decided to start running. Not long afterwards, he heard about the Copper Canyon Ultramarathon in Mexico and signed up—if only just to get out of the U.S. for the first time in his life.
“But I met a lot of really good people down there and just kind of fell in love with the ultra community,” he told Runner’s World by phone. “I realized that [running] was a good way to get out and see parts of the world that most people don’t see.”
Tomasello initially heard about Free to Run—an international organization that works to make sure women and girls living in conflict areas have the opportunity to run—last year on a news report on TV.
“I just wanted to know more about it and the women who were actually running this race, so I contacted them and said I wanted to come and document them,” he said. “Originally it started as just that—going and being a fly on the wall—but once I got there, I started training and running with the girls, and the next thing I know, I’m going out every day with them, coaching them, and creating a really special bond.”
Tyler Tomasello
Life for Women in Afghanistan
Under Taliban rule, which lasted from 1996 to 2001, women and girls had no independence and were banned from going to school, working, leaving the house without a man escorting them, showing skin in public, or speaking publicly about or being involved with politics. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t able to play sports, either.
Since the fall of the Taliban, some notable advances have been made. In 2014, a record number of women both voted and ran for office, and in 2018, two skiers became the first women to represent their country in the Winter Olympics. Still, in some circumstances, women have to enter through different doors than men or be screened at the airport in a different area, Tomasello says.
“Women’s rights are not nearly like what they are in America. They really can’t show any skin, even when running—they have to keep their heads covered with headscarves, and everybody’s wearing long dresses and long pants. When the Taliban was in control, women had zero rights. I think it’s come a ways since then, but it still has a long way to go.”
And that’s where Free to Run comes in, continuously offering support and empowerment to women and girls who want to be active, despite the fact that it’s still somewhat looked down upon.
Arriving in Afghanistan
The first thing you notice when you land in Kabul is its military presence, Tomasello says. “You come out of the airport and there are all these security checkpoints—I don’t even know how many I went through, but you’re constantly going through them. Sometimes they stop you, sometimes they just wave you through.”
Tyler Tomasello
Bombed-out buildings, rusty old Soviet tanks, and barbed-wire fences are all over the city, and it seemed like almost every week there was another bombing.
“There’s no escaping the effect of war while you’re out, but thankfully we were outside of the Green Zone [the central area of Kabul where foreign embassies and government offices are], which let us be a little safer because things were happening more near the embassy where there’s more of an American presence.”
Despite that, Tomasello expected a lot more violence than there actually was, basing this idea in his head off of what’s been shown on the news for nearly two decades.
“Instead, I experienced a welcoming society that was happy to have me there,” he said. “The locals I met were all very, very friendly—they tell you this whole story about their lives, and it was pretty amazing how open everyone was, just wanting to chat and make new friends. I learned so much from them and I couldn’t be more grateful.”
Training for the Ultra
While most days were spent running back and forth for an hour on the 0.75-mile slab of pavement about 30 minutes outside the city, once a week they had a long run that lasted three hours, where they were able to get out on the trails in the surrounding mountains of the Hindu Kush.
Tomasello also had the women strength train twice a week. “They had no weights or equipment whatsoever, so it was all bodyweight stuff,” he said. “I would always focus on tons of wall sits and lunges and planks—really simple workouts that we would just cycle through over and over.”
What’s it like to have to stick to the same routine over and over for a month and not be able to vary it at all?
“It was pretty hard at first—boring and monotonous,” he said. “But the girls taught me more than I could ever teach them. They were just happy to be out on the trail for an hour a day where they could forget about all the chaos in their country. The way they handled their runs was almost like they were outside playing—they were always laughing and joking around. So it’s just about being mindful and not paying attention to where you are as much as what you’re doing.”
Tyler Tomasello
And while anywhere from three to six women from Free to Run joined Tomasello, only two—Hasina and Zeinab—were chosen to compete in the Gobi Desert Marathon. Free to Run opened applications back in February and asked that each member of the organization either write an essay or create a video detailing why they wanted to participate in one of the toughest races in the world.
“I want to run because I want to see how strong my mind is to finish a 250K race in seven days,” Hasina said in a Free to Run video about race training.
Zeinab echoed Hasina’s sentiment in the same video, saying that running an ultra is like a fight between the body and the mind.
“If we have that strong mind to do that 250K in the Gobi Desert, our mind will be strong to do the other difficult tasks in the world,” she said. “I want to show other Afghan girls that we can do it. We are capable of doing any challenging thing in the world.”
Both lead a high school community development program where they teach a class called Life Skills Through Sports, in which they talk about their experiences as female athletes in Afghanistan.
The women never really ran into any negativity during their runs, Tomasello says. “Some people would tell the girls that what the were doing was amazing and very brave. Sometimes men would join our group for a day and run with us. I feel like having a man running with them kind of showed other men in the country that [women out running] is okay.”
The women not only taught total strangers a few valuable lessons, but Tomasello, too. The biggest? Being present.
“A lot of days, the fastest girl would be running with the slowest girl, and that would inspire me to just slow down and enjoy the moment,” he said. “I fell away from running before I went to Afghanistan, but the girls really reinvigorated me and brought running back into my life.”
Tyler Tomasello
While Hasina wasn’t able to complete the Gobi Desert March, Zeinab crossed the finish line in 59:24:16, making her only the fourth woman from Afghanistan to finish an international ultra.
Free to Run will eventually pick a new team to train for and run a race in 2019. This means that while the girls Tomasello coached can still go out and run on their own, they won’t have access to the organization’s one van that shuttles them back and forth from their homes to various trails and paths. Tomasello is currently trying to figure out a way to raise money to buy another van and hire another driver, “so they can still get out and do something they love.”
His plan is to head back to Afghanistan sometime early next year, although he’s not entirely sure in what capacity.
“I still want to do my part to help out. I love the society and the people, and I just want to immerse myself and make a difference.”
Associate Health & Fitness Editor Danielle specializes in interpreting and reporting the latest health research and also writes and edits in-depth service pieces about fitness, training, and nutrition.