You can't escape

The most demanding trail of Czech ultramarathon runner Kateřina Kašparová, pain transformed into strength.

They call her Ultra Katka. Nomen omen. In her life, everything is somehow “beyond, over, extraordinary, extreme”—an athlete with a delicate constitution but an unbreakable will that allows her to conquer the longest running distances, the most demanding academic challenges, and the most painful life losses.

This is the personal confession of a woman who has loved mathematics and movement since she was a little girl. The story of an exceptionally bright girl who always felt different, yearned for self-discovery, and threw herself headfirst into everything. With the same force, fate compelled her to solve a problem that rationality cannot handle: How do you cope with the death of the person closest to you? Running and pausing both played a role. After competing on elite world courses, Kateřina is now tackling what is likely her toughest race, because caring for loved ones is a test that truly puts a person to the test. And teaches so much in the process.

“The most beautiful equation is the one that cannot be solved by the brain, and the only way is to use the heart and let life solve the countless unknowns itself. I believe in miracles. But I had no idea how great the miracles in our lives can be when we allow them, when we stop planning, stop clinging to expectations, and just are. Just go. Just move. Then it starts to work. Because life isn’t meant to be thought about. It’s so simple. And yet so complicated—to live… When was the last time your intuition let you down? When did your heart lie to you? When did an experience deceive you? When was your feeling ‘wrong’? Why do we trust our brain more than our feelings, what some would call intuition, a sixth sense? Why don’t we believe in ourselves?”

Kateřina Kašparová, Ph.D. (born 1986) is a Czech runner, mathematician, doctor of economics, and lecturer on artificial intelligence. A love for numbers has been an inseparable part of her life since childhood, just like her passion for running—and her running career has taken an opposite path to most: she started with ultramarathons and gradually moved to shorter distances. As a Puma brand ambassador, she competes for USK Prague. She won silver at the 246-kilometre Spartathlon with a time of 27h 47m 16s, ran a marathon in 2h 44m 39s, and in 2025, she completed 10 kilometres in 36m 12s.

Although she studied economics, her professional life is primarily dedicated to teaching mathematics and AI. At the same time, she cared for her ill mother for more than ten years. It was a period that taught her patience and reinforced her conviction that perfection is not a prerequisite for love.