One Monday last month, hardly recovered from running 100 miles in the mountains around Leadville, Anne Flower was back to work as an emergency room doctor at Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs.

“I was on our triage shift,” she said. “So yeah, super busy. People could care less what I did over the weekend.”

Outside, the ultra running world was still buzzing.

Flower was still getting interview requests, because everyone wanted to know: Who was this unknown who just beat one of the most long-standing, legendary records in the history of 100-mile races?

The short answer: a 35-year-old ER doctor in Colorado Springs who had never run a 100-mile race prior to the Leadville Trail 100.

The longer answer: a runner as humble as her Midwest roots; a runner probably more passionate about running than the everyday runner, but not so passionate as to be as well known as, say, David Roche. In what was a stunning weekend in Leadville, Flower topped the women’s record that had stood since 1994, finishing only behind Roche, the Boulder pro whose Wikipedia page now includes the men’s record.

Still no Wikipedia page for Flower at last check. Still no major sponsors, something she has weighed.

“It’s a complicated sort of thing,” she said. “Obviously, it’s phenomenal they do a lot of travel (costs) and that sort of thing, which would be incredible. But at the same time, there’s a lot of … trading your time.”

It’s complicated, and Flower would never want running to be complicated.

“For me, running has just always been my way of staying happy, sane and fit,” she said, pausing again, careful with her words. “The races and competitions are really cool … but I’m not sure if that’s what brings me the most joy.”

She’s careful, because she does not want to seem ungrateful. “The record is obviously phenomenal,” she said. And yet: “I’m still just most happy that I got it done.”

For Leadville 100 runners, “getting it done” means under 30 hours for the prize belt buckle or under 25 hours for a bigger buckle. Flower finished in 17 hours and 58 minutes — becoming the first woman to run under 18 hours in the race’s 42 years.

Not that Flower had a record in mind approaching the race. Finishing, indeed, was the only goal approaching her first 100-mile race, which she hesitated approaching at all.

“I didn’t think 100 miles was something that I was interested in this summer,” she said.

But she had earned not one but two invites to the race, with top finishes earlier this summer at the Leadville Trail Marathon and the Silver Rush 50. She did not want to seem ungrateful. Plus: “I didn’t know when else in my life I was gonna be better prepared for the opportunity.”

So off she went in the morning darkness that Saturday, her headlamp lighting the way over rugged terrain. She started slow by her own measure. “Then I started to climb up, and the sun started to rise, and I started to move a lot better,” she said.

It was the first of many great sights along the way in the mountains — the first that she did not have time to fully appreciate.

“I was definitely getting distracted by watching that sunrise,” she said with a laugh. “If I hadn’t been racing, I would’ve stopped at the creek and stayed there for a while.”

Nature has always captivated Flower.

In Cincinnati, she grew up the child of parents who had summers off from their jobs at a school. The family would venture west to the national parks. One stop was in Silverton, around the time of the Hardrock 100.

“I knew it was a 100-mile race,” Flower said of her childhood memory. “I didn’t know how people did it, but I knew it was exciting.”

She was most excited about soccer, before heading off to Regis University in Denver. There she deepened her love for the outdoors, leading fellow undergrads on climbs up 14,000-foot peaks and backcountry ski trips. She graduated to become a ski bum in Aspen, but only for a year.

“I was missing a little something. … It just wasn’t quite checking all the boxes,” Flower said. “So I stopped deferring med school, and off I went.”

Off to perhaps more uncertainty than she had felt as a ski bum. She knew she wanted to work in the emergency room, that environment that combined so many skills and attracted “a certain personality,” Flower explained. “It’s usually people that need a little adrenaline to stay awake during work, and then will go do big, adventurous things.”

The emergency room was her kind of challenging, thrilling place. But she didn’t quite know how to get there between intense exams and the ever-shifting numbers game that the medical field seemed to be.

“It seemed like it was all so hard to control,” Flower said. “But I knew that running, I could go out my door and hit the exact same splits. That was running for me — very tangible, in my control.”

She decided to try her first marathon in 2016. She won. A few years later, on her 30th birthday, she would run in her first 50-miler, the Dead Horse Ultra in Moab, Utah. Lacking gear and wearing clothes and shoes better suited for the gym, she won.

Winning might not have been her favorite part. “I got to watch the sunrise in Moab on my birthday,” she said.

She has similarly reflected on the Leadville 100 — that sunrise, those “flowy aspen trees” she ran through after taking the lead around mile 30, that climb up Hope Pass above 12,500 feet, “really beautiful and interesting.” Overall, she said: “It was just delightful.”

Others describe a “sufferfest.” Flower would never describe running like that.

“You can stop at any time in an ultra. You can change your shoes, you can eat something, you can take a break,” she said. “It’s not something out of your control. It’s not an injury or a disease or an addiction. It’s running.”

Injury, disease, addiction — she sees all that and more in the emergency room. In interviews since the Leadville 100, she has credited that perspective for carrying her to victories.

What’s next? interviewers have asked. Flower is hoping to start a family.

“There’s gonna be at least three years where I’m probably not running as much as I am right now,” she said.

And that would be OK, she said. “I think I have a pretty sober understanding of what ultra running means in my life. … It doesn’t necessarily define the things I find most important.”

That includes her work in the ER. The shift that Monday was much different than the celebratory day before in Leadville.

In the ER, “there’s very few high-fives,” Flower said. “No one’s gonna recognize you. Which is kinda good, too.”