At first glance, Anne Riddle seems like a normal, everyday person — a fair-skinned, slender woman with a house, husband, and 2-year-old daughter. Every morning before work, the 35-year-old counselor at Warren Wilson College pulls on her sweat-stained running shorts, ties back her long black hair, and hustles out the door.

Like a superhero in street clothes, Riddle runs unnoticed along Asheville’s crowded city sidewalks. Passersby don’t know that she’s the country’s fastest female 50-kilometer trail runner and one of the top American ultra runners. Riddle wouldn’t mind keeping it that way.

“I’m not good at self-promotion,” she says. “I just like to run a lot.”

But Western North Carolina’s best-kept ultra running secret is getting out. Riddle won the United States 50K (31 mile) Trail Championships two weeks ago in Indiana, crossing the finish line four minutes ahead of her nearest competitor. Last year, she also won the U.S. 100-kilometer Championships and represented the United States at the 100K (62 mile) World Championships in France. Quietly, Anne Riddle has become one of the country’s premier ultra athletes.

What makes Riddle’s national championships even more impressive is the adversity she’s had to overcome to get there. Riddle was still nursing a stress fracture in her femur during her hard-fought victory at the U.S. 50K Trail Championships two weeks ago. Though she’d been limited to only one month of training and felt twinges of leg pain throughout the race, Riddle didn’t let the injury slow her down.

Two days before New Year’s, Riddle arrived in Huntington, Ind., for the U.S. 50K Trail Championships. The course — which actually measured 1.4 miles longer than 50 kilometers — consisted of three loops on a frozen trail circling a lake. Twenty-mile-per-hour winds whipping across the open water dropped wind chills below zero that morning. Standing at the starting line, Riddle recalled the race director speaking for several minutes to the crowd of 250 runners. During that time, her feet went numb.

“I couldn’t feel my feet for the first five miles,” laughs Riddle.

But she managed to stay close to Ann Heaslett, who led for most of the first loop. Riddle and Heaslett were teammates at the 100-kilometer World Championships in France last summer, and they talked to each other throughout the race.

“Pretty cold out here,” Heaslett said at the first aid station.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen Gu this consistency,” replied Riddle, trying to squeeze half-frozen energy gel from its plastic wrapper.

Ann and Anne ran stride-for-stride along snow-covered trails and across icy streams. For Riddle, the hardest part of the trail loop was the 1.5-mile dam section, which was completely unsheltered from the winds gusting across the lake.

Riddle and Heaslett exchanged leads six times on the second loop. Heaslett would open up a 10-meter gap, but Riddle would close it with quicker stops at aid stations. Back and forth they battled for the next 10 miles. Riddle knew from previous races that Heaslett tended to fade late in the race, so she never let her out of sight.

On the third lap, Riddle passed Heaslett for good. Heaslett was still within striking distance with six miles to go, but Riddle distanced herself with a strong push across the dam. She cruised across the finish line in 4:16:31, four minutes ahead of second-place Heaslett.

After the race, Heaslett and Riddle warmed themselves in the finishers’ tent. Riddle was trembling uncontrollably; Heaslett removed her socks and found icicles on her little toe.

The 50K was Riddle’s second national championship in 2001; she’d already claimed the U.S. 100K title in March. Not bad for a woman who’d almost given up running completely.

In the 1980s, her collegiate cross country and track career at William & Mary was plagued with injuries. And she wasn’t having fun pounding the pavement in road races. Burned out and beat up, Riddle spent nine years away from competition.

Then, in 1993, Riddle moved to Asheville, which reminded her of the Northern Virginia mountain town of Purcellville where she was born and raised.

“I grew up in the mountains, so Asheville felt like home,” Riddle explains.

Moving to the mountains recharged her running. Long, solitary runs on wild mountain trails helped bring back the magic, as did the community of runners around Asheville. Before she knew it, she was training for the Piedmont Triad Marathon, where she clocked a 3:32 in her first attempt at 26.2 miles. In 1996, she shaved almost a half-hour off that time and finished third in the Charlotte Marathon.

“I was pretty surprised by my performance at Charlotte,” Riddle recalls. “After that, I decided to begin training in earnest.”

Riddle ran 6 more marathons, including a personal-best 2:54 at Huntsville’s Rocket City Marathon.

Then, just two years ago, Riddle decided to give ultra running a try. In her first ultra — the Uwharrie 40-mile Trail Run — she tied for first place.

“I didn’t realize it, but I was a few weeks pregnant at the time I ran it,” Riddle says.

Since then, Riddle has run 9 ultras and won two national championships while raising her daughter Emma and working at Warren Wilson College. She credits her supportive husband, Geoff Sidoli, for much of her success.

“He is my support crew, training partner, and number-one fan. I’m really lucky to have him in my life,” says Riddle.

Sidoli watched his wife shock the crowds in Pittsburgh last March at the U.S. 100K Championships. Though she’d never run a 100K, Riddle hung with the lead pack for the first 31 miles, jockeying for position within a large, tightly-bunched group of runners that included pre-race favorite Tracy Rose. When Rose pulled away from the field during the second half of the race, only Riddle was able to chase her down. The long-striding Riddle overtook Rose shortly before 50 miles. Amazingly, Riddle accelerated her pace over the last 12 miles en route to a runaway victory in 8:13:57. Riddle’s win also qualified her for the World 100K Championships in Cleder, France, last August.

But only a few weeks before Worlds, Riddle began experiencing severe pain in her right leg. She didn’t want to let down her teammates by not competing in France. So she raced 62 miles on an undiagnosed femur stress fracture and somehow managed to finish in 28th place.

“I was still pretty disappointed by my performance,” she says.

On the long plane trip back home from France, Riddle listed her future running goals. Topping the list was a victory at the U.S. 50-kilometer trail championships in Indiana. There was one problem, though — she could barely walk, and the 50K trail championships were only a few months away.

To rest her femur, Riddle didn’t run for eight weeks.

“It was really frustrating at the time,” she recollects. “But looking back, I think the injury may have helped me. It made me listen to my body more carefully. And it forced me to rest, which is something I’m not always good at doing.”

She started running cautiously in early November, then attempted her first 5K road race on Thanksgiving. Her legs held up well, so she put in her first long run — an 18-miler — the next day. Four weeks later, Riddle was shivering at the starting line of the 50K national trail championships.

“Previously, my training had been very scientific and methodical. But training for [the U.S. 50K Trail Championships] was completely unplanned. It was all guts and grit.”

Next, Riddle has her sights set on the U.S. 50K Road Championships in Pittsburgh on March 23. The course follows the same roads where she won last year’s 100K championship.

To prepare for the race, she’s running seven-days-a-week, rain or shine, sometimes getting up at 4 a.m. to squeeze in a long run. She also includes two fast-paced runs and at least one track workout in her weekly regimen. During her training, Riddle logs close to 100 miles a week, with some runs as long as 35 miles.

“Running ultras has changed my perception of what a ‘long run’ is. These days, a 14-miler is just a typical everyday run for me.”

Perhaps that’s the biggest difference between regular runners and an ultra-running superhero like Riddle: she goes the extra miles. She treks for hours every morning, in snow and slush and zero-degree wind chills, dodging unsuspecting mortals along the way.

(Will Harlan writes about the outdoors and can be contacted at wharlan@hotmail.com)