Pacing Western States Endurance Run

Some of our favorite races aren't even ours. This is one of those.

If you don't follow ultrarunning, here's what you need to know about Western States: it's the oldest 100-mile trail race in the country, and depending on who you ask, the most famous. The whole thing traces back to 1974, when a guy named Gordy Ainsleigh decided that if his horse couldn't finish the Tevis Cup, a 100-mile horse race through the Sierra Nevada, he'd just do the course himself, on foot, in under 24 hours. He did it. A few years later Western States became its own official footrace, same route, same punishing climbs and canyons, minus the horse. It's been breaking people in the best way ever since.

These days it's also, famously, almost impossible to get into.

Western States runs on a lottery, and the lottery is its own small ecosystem of hope and math. You have to requalify every single year just to throw your name in, one qualifying race, one qualifying time, no exceptions. And if you don't get picked, you don't start over. Your tickets roll forward and double. Miss year one, you've got 2 tickets next time. Miss again, 4. Again, 8. It keeps doubling for every year you're not selected, which means the people who've been trying the longest are, eventually, buying most of the raffle.

David has been trying for nine years. Nine years of qualifying races, nine years of entering, nine years of not getting picked, watching his ticket count climb into the hundreds, something like 256 tickets by this last lottery, which is either a lot of hope or a lot of stubbornness, depending on how you look at it.

This year his name finally got pulled. Sort of. He landed around 19th on the waitlist rather than getting drawn outright, which sounds like a technicality but isn't. Historically, if you're that high on the Western States waitlist, you're getting in. David knew this. He'd done the research, he knew the pattern, and he started training like a person who was going to be standing in Olympic Valley in June, not like a person hoping for a maybe. He was right. In he went.

My pacer bib

Western States lets you have up to three pacers, and David asked me, Susan, and his brother to split the back half of the course with him. Pacers aren't allowed to join until Foresthill, at mile 62. Everything before that, you're on your own. The plan we landed on was that I'd take the first leg, Foresthill down to Rucky Chucky, the infamous river crossing that everyone who's run this race talks about in a hushed, slightly haunted voice. Susan would pick up from there, straight into the crossing itself, then David's brother would take the last six miles into town. We'd been through our own version of that crossing before, at the Overlook 50 Mile, so we both knew exactly what Susan was signing up for.

Stuff from the Airbnb, there were probably 100 more.

First, though, I have to mention the Airbnb, because David booked us into what might be the most aggressively wine-themed rental property in Auburn, California, possibly the world. He got it from Thursday through Monday, room enough for all of us, and from the second we walked in it was clear someone had gone through every "wine country" aisle at every home decor store within fifty miles and bought one of everything. Every surface, and I mean every surface, had a wine bottle, a wine barrel, a sign about wine, or some vaguely wine-adjacent dollar store trinket that had clearly been collecting dust since long before anyone thought to Instagram it. That place deserves its own post. I'll leave it there for now, but I digress.

On Friday, the day before the race, Susan and I went out for a short shakeout run on part of the Western States course itself, up at Robie Point, the last stretch runners hit before the finish in town. (Strava link here.) It felt a little like sneaking a look at the last page of a book, in a good way. Mostly we just wanted to see it with our own eyes before we spent the next day and night chasing David through the dark.

We spent the rest of Friday afternoon driving the course roads, scouting the spots where we'd be meeting David and handing off the car, so none of us would be running around lost and panicking come Saturday. Amber and David, meanwhile, had already left for Olympic Valley, where the race starts, to get settled in before Saturday morning.

Amber and Jamie meeting up with David to crew him

Saturday, race day, I skipped the group trip out to meet David at the different aid stations. Everyone else went. I decided my time was better spent trying to sleep, since I had sixteen miles of pacing ahead of me starting that night. The trying part worked out better than the sleeping part. Mostly I just lay there. Eventually I gave up, drove over to Placer High School, the finish line, and watched the first winner come across, then rewarded myself with a Beyond Burger from one of the food stands. A solid way to burn off some pre-race nerves.

Me shoving my free lunch into my face

I met David at Foresthill around 10pm. He'd started to slow down some by then, nothing alarming, just the pattern you'd expect: strong on the downhills, hiking the rest. We talked for miles. At one point he spent a good stretch of trail trying to convince me I needed to run a hundred miler myself someday. Ha. We'll see, not really.

David changing shoes before we took off 

The aid stations out there were relentless, in the best way. The longest stretch without one was maybe six miles, and every single one had great lighting and better energy, exactly what you want at two in the morning when you're trying to keep someone moving forward. I'd braced myself to be wrecked by the middle of the night. Instead I felt great the whole way. Genuinely one of the most fun sixteen miles I've ever run, and none of them were mine. (Strava link here, if you want the splits.)

Susan getting ready for the water crossing at 3am

We met Susan at Rucky Chucky around 3am. She got ready to get wet, David waded into the river with her, and I took off to find the car.

The Rucky Chucky river crossing

I drove back to the Airbnb and pretended to rest for a while, which is not the same thing as actually resting, but it's what you do. By the time Susan's leg was done, David's brother Jamie had taken over for the last six miles. Amber, Susan and I headed to Placer High School to run him and his brother in.

David and Jamie at the finish line

David crossed the line during golden hour, that last hour of the race between hours 29 and 30, with the clock and the crowd somehow both still going strong. After nine years of trying to get a number, it was amazing to watch him finish and to get to be a part of everything.