From Nude Model to Elite Obstacle Course Racer

Laura Messner started the transformation into the popular obstacle-racing elite and social media star three years ago, though back then, no one knew her real name.

Today, people know her for her signature “Messner Pose,” popular posts on Facebook and Twitter and recognizable smile. She’s one of the most well-known obstacle-course racers in the world, in fact, even though she doesn’t quite match up with top elites such as Amelia Boone.

But on Aug. 10, 2012, Laura Messner was in fact a different person under a different name, and she knew nothing about obstacle course racing.

She was nervous and yet intrigued at the Spartan sprint race in Amesbury, Massachusetts. She loved the gym, was stronger than most women and needed to stay fit for modeling and singing, so she wasn’t intimidated. She entered the race for a fun workout.

The first sign that this race would be something more than that came before her wave, when a storm brought a sheeting rain, turning her mascara and war paint into black waterfalls that ran down her face. Again, she was a model, and her messy face made her self-conscious, and yet the people around her didn’t seem to care. Instead of staring at her or judging her, they fist-bumped her and asked her if she was ready to kick some ass.

She lined up and did this weird chant, the Spartan “aroo,” as if they were all tribal warriors, and about midway through the race, a funny thing happened. She found herself not caring about her face either. It was fun to be muddy and sweaty and blow snot rockets across her legs. That was, honestly, who she was. Growing up, she was a tomboy who liked to get dirty. But she craved approval, like most people, and after a lifetime of searching for it from her father, she found it from a photographer who got her started in modeling. She changed her voice, lifting her gruff tone to more of giggling lilt. She changed her hair from red to blonde, a blonde so extreme she had to sign waivers that absolved the salon of any responsibility if her hair fell out. She changed her name.

When she crossed the line that day, she was elated. She stared at her finisher’s medal dangling from her neck, and she realized she was not only happy, she was proud of herself.

She’d made herself happy. She hadn’t experienced anything like that in a long time.

And she didn’t need to take off her clothes to get it.

* * * *

Today, Messner is one of the most popular athletes in obstacle course racing, at least if you go by social media. On Facebook, for instance, you will find hundreds of examples of everyday Spartan racers in her signature pose, tagging it with #StrikeAMessner. Thousands follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and her posts, almost all of which are inspirational messages, garner hundreds of likes. More than a few ask to have their picture taken with her at races.

Her popularity is astounding, especially when you consider her ranking among the elite women. Messner, 25, is an elite competitor, and she places regularly in the top 10 (18 times in 25 races in 2014) and will typically win her age group. But she rarely finishes on the podium, even with her third-place finish in a Spartan race in Arizona earlier this year. She’s not a member of Spartan’s pro team, instead relying on a bevy of sponsors she got herself to cover travel costs to the more than 20 races she finished last year.

Messner, though, believes that may be part of her appeal. Many don’t know about her past as a nude model, but they can sense that Messner gets the same thing out of obstacle racing that they do, rather than just a desire to have a career.

“I’m more driven from the mental part of it,” Messner said. “I focus on how this is making me better as a person.”

In 2014, Messner decided to totally devote herself to OCR, and so she does consider herself a pro. Not only did she travel to all those events, and trained hard for them, she works as a personal trainer with MYLO Obstacle Fitness in Austin, Texas. She enjoys inspiring others, and she loves all obstacle-course racers, from the elites to the age-groupers to the ones just hoping to finish.

Messner needs the income from being a personal trainer, and that’s part of her motivation as well. Giving up nude modeling meant giving up her career, and she hasn’t found a way to replace the bulk of that income. It was a lucrative job, she said.

But just as she did as a pop singer or a model on the margins of popularity, she’s building her brand, only now she considers it giving something back to the people who she believes helped rescue her from what she now realizes was an unhappy life.

“She had a following, even a big one, as a model and a singer, but she was depressed from the emptiness of it,” said her mother, Abby Collins. “She believes the people in OCR like her because they genuinely admire her and love her. There’s just such a difference. She’s working her fan base now just like before. She’s always posting a picture and a message. But now she’s enjoying it as opposed to seeing that as a chore.”

Messner was a shy girl—“pretty much the opposite of what I am today,” she said—until the sixth grade, when she had a solo at a school choir concert. She loved the way she connected with the audience. She got lead roles in school plays and had an acting coach for a few years. She sang and posted professionally filmed videos singing covers on YouTube and Facebook.

She also loved to get pictures taken. Modeling, she said, was a natural next step from all that. It was fun and people told her she was good at it. In 2010 at age 20, she met up with a photographer who told her he could help her build her portfolio to help her do it full-time. “Show me a shoulder,” he said, and it went from there.

“I was nervous as hell the first time,” Messner said, “but I didn’t want to disappoint him. He probably picked up on that.”

Messner, in fact, craved the approval the photographer gave her, and the response she got from the resulting nude photos was all she needed. Messner threw together a persona and dove into modeling. It wasn’t a huge stretch—Messner was comfortable being naked her whole life, Collins said, and her mother admits she wishes she had her daughter’s body—but Messner knew even then she was pretending to be someone else.

She loved her mother, and her stepfather, a military man, helped her get through her most serious issues, such as an eating disorder that started at age 12 because he would command her to eat. But she wanted approval from her father most of all, and he never gave it. If anything, her new career drove him away even more, and yet she needed her career to make her feel special. Nude modeling became her specialty and her escape. It some ways it even lifted her out of the deep depression she felt from her father’s physical and emotional absence. She thought it was what she needed.

“Sexuality is an easily approved business,” Messner said. “It makes them feel good in the moment. It’s like a drug.”

She became so wrapped up in it, she wanted to legally change her name to the one she was using for her modeling and sometime singing career. (She doesn’t want that name in this article, for obvious reasons.)

Four years ago, she says a magazine offered to make her a centerfold, although a representative killed the deal after she refused to sleep with him, she said. Others approached her to star in porn movies, waving thousands of dollars in her face. Some of the photo shoots she did were pretty crazy, she said, but she never did hard-core images with another man. She’s proud of that today.

“At the end of the day, you start thinking about their story,” Messner said. “I view sex as something very personal and passionate, and I would have felt like a rag doll. I pictured myself watching myself doing that, and I asked myself if it would make me feel sexy. The answer was just the opposite.”

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