When Bec Wilcock moved from Australia to Los Angeles in 2018, she realized there were no women’s running or training groups in the area. So, a year later, she founded one of her own. HER Sports now brings together women of all ages and levels, from newbies to Boston Qualifiers and Ironman triathletes.

Wilcock, 36, is always looking to  challenge herself and her training group. So when she learned about the 75-mile Hollywood to Sea relay that traverses the region she and her team had been running every week for years, she figured it could be an ideal way to celebrate the group’s fifth anniversary.

No women’s-only teams competed in the inaugural Hollywood to Sea last spring. Wilcock saw the second edition on May 4 as a prime opportunity to set a new precedent.

“As a coach, I like to challenge my runners, and I loved the fact that we could be the first female team to finish this race and that if I stacked the team correctly, we could take the record as well,” says Wilcock, who is also a mother of two young sons.

Wilcock succeeded in executing that goal. One of HER Sports’s teams—made up of herself, Anya Kosova, Brady Chaney, and Crystal Cooper—won the event in 12 hours and 19 minutes, beating the overall course record from the previous year by more than three hours.

In total, Wilcock recruited 11 of her athletes to make up three of the four teams that participated.  They trained on the course to not only build their confidence when it came to navigating technical trails, but also to familiarize themselves with the course for race day. It was a strategy that proved successful, as the three teams she coached, all composed entirely of women, were the only ones that finished this year’s relay. (The fourth and final team competing in the event was disqualified.)

But the results don’t tell the whole story. Wilcock knew convincing a dozen or so of her athletes to take on this challenging relay would be a tall order. In total, the race covers 75 miles from Hollywood to Malibu, complete with 14,000 feet of elevation gain and loss across the course.

Runners start at the Los Angeles River before running through Griffith Park, under the Hollywood sign, and through the Santa Monica Mountains all the way to Malibu and the Pacific Ocean. With 12 legs split among four runners on each team, individual athletes would be tasked with completing around 20 cumulative miles over the course of three legs that day.

“We’ve sometimes done [trail segments] as a community, but many of them had never done a trail race before,” Wilcock says. “There were others who had never run 20 miles in a day before, so they were very intimidated by it.”

Hollywood to the Sea founder and race director Fred Buescher was inspired to create the event in 2023 after reading about the 100-year history of Mulholland Drive, which was one of the first Los Angeles roadways created to get people out of the city and into the mountains and beaches. He had participated in 200-mile relays before, including one in southern California which had a course that was largely in suburban neighborhoods rather than the semi-wild routes through the nearby Santa Monica Mountains.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, LA has so much to offer, wouldn’t it be great to showcase the beaches in the mountains?,’” he says. “From there, I did a lot of research and saw there are trails alongside that we could run on and when there aren’t, we can run on the road. Six years later, I had the course for Hollywood to the Sea.”

According to Buescher, the relay’s challenging course includes several 1,500- to 2,000-foot climbs and descents through the mountains with roads cutting through the valleys for the exchange points. While this results in a lot of ascent and descent for every runner, it makes for a memorable experience out on the course and between the exchanges, he says.

But a big reason Wilcock was so set on convincing her athletes to step outside of their comfort zone and compete in the relay was to get more women into trail and ultrarunning, where they are underrepresented. This sentiment was echoed by Buescher: although he eventually hopes to grow the small, unsanctioned event to allow individual runners to complete the entire 75 miles, he purposely started with the relay to provide a more accessible and introductory event for runners making their first foray onto the trails, and perhaps eventually, ultrarunning.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s great that women want to take this challenge on and that they see themselves running on these trails and this terrain,” Buescher says. “That’s what I love about relay running; I just think the camaraderie of commiserating in the car together and building those friendships while completing a very challenging course is what hooks a lot of people.”

Buescher intentionally started the event out small, allowing a maximum of six teams to register each year in an effort to grow the event in a manageable way that allows him to improve the  experience for participants.

“I’m really excited for what’s to come for females in ultra and trail running and just running in general because we are showing up and we’re believing in ourselves more and more,” Wilcock says. “We need to get more and better opportunities for females to do kick-ass things, and for them to be seen.”

This winning team, which wasn’t shy in sharing how challenging the event was, was made up of seasoned runners. Kosova recently completed The Speed Project—a 290-mile underground event from Santa Monica Pier to Las Vegas—as an individual in just under 91 hours on March 29 through April 1, followed by the Zion 100K in Utah on April 13. Wilcock has also completed various ultramarathons over the years, and both Chaney and Cooper have completed marathons and half-Ironman events.

“Race day went by so quickly, but I am so glad we had time to bond with the girls from my team and other teams during our preparation,” Kosova says. “I’m sometimes lazy about running trails by myself, so training with the girls before the race was a good push for me to run in more beautiful areas around our mountains.”

“The unpredictable terrain was the most challenging part of the race day, since I’m used to flat road running, which allows you to exclusively focus on speed with little to no distraction. Trail running requires agility, quick decision-making, and balance, all of which I’m still refining,” Chaney says. “Being the first all-female team to complete this race symbolizes the collective power of women supporting and uplifting each other, and for me, it’s a really proud moment of sisterhood and achievement for all the HER Sports teams who participated.”

Even though the event will continue to be small-scale in terms of number of teams for the immediate future, Buescher still hopes to spread the word to spark interest in the 2025 event, which will open registration this fall.