2024 Western States 100 Reflections

Thoughts on my debut 100 mile race

PC: Mike McMonagle

This was written in early August 2024 in my Google Docs. I wasn’t really planning on making it public and it’s not very polished, but I think I’ll leave it as is.

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Gonna stream of consciousness this out for a bit. I’ve been reading Mark Twight’s Kiss or Kill book about climbing after a wedding in the Tushars this past weekend where I met/learned about him from Finn. It’s sick. Such a raw well-written book on being absolutely obsessed with mountains and climbing. It makes me miss real mountaineering. I’m definitely obsessed with running, but this book is another level of both addiction and danger/risk taking. 

I ran Western States about 6 weeks ago now. It’s August 8th and that race was June 29th. I’m still kind of absorbing it all. I want to write about the experience and not forget it because there’s a chance that was something special that might not happen again at the same level. I think it’d be fun to try writing about it in a more detailed, artistic format like Mark Twight writes about climbing, even though it’s lacking some of the epicness that you can only get from near-death experiences in the alpine. Also, I want to just document the thoughts and events of the entire race, which is not very Mark Twight style, so idk how that’ll balance out. This is also now being filtered through 6 weeks of time and how I’m remembering it now. Maybe the best place to start is with how I’m feeling now.

In 6 days Morgan and I will be on a plane to Geneva and then head over to Chamonix. That feels way too soon to be considering doing CCC. My legs have felt tired since WSER. I haven’t had a single run yet that has felt truly good and fast. I feel like my body and heart are trying to limit me and I’m trying to ignore it and push through anyway but it hasn’t been easy. After WSER I rested for about a week, then went to the Sawtooths and Lost Rivers with Morgan for some hiking. Then eased in for a week, and then ramped up really quickly and did two weeks of 92-101 miles with 33-34k feet elevation gain. I forced the big weeks, but felt like if I wanted to give myself a chance of doing CCC I needed to have some big verty volume under my belt between WSER and CCC. My heart rate weirdly won’t get above like 140. I push hard and breathe hard and my legs feel tired, but I’m going slow and my heart rate is like 135. Never used to happen, but that’s what I mean when I say I’m fighting my body and it’s trying to limit me.

I’m still not sure if I’ll race CCC. It’ll be a week-of decision probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if against my gut instinct I tell myself that I’ll just start and see how it goes and drop out if I need to. I’ve told many people this already but I don’t want to do that race again and do fine at it. 13th or 17th place, 11-12 hours? Been there done that. I want to either not race, or I want the podium. Honestly if I felt as good as I did at Western I’d say I should be aiming for the win/podium. To know how good and fit you can feel at a race and then not feel that way leading into another big race sucks. It’s not motivating to suspect that you won’t be able to live up to the bar you just set for yourself. It’s a privileged problem but mine usually are. I’ve tasted success and got some attention and now at a race like CCC if I can’t have that again or ideally even surpass that, why do it? 

I’m going to Chamonix either way. Going there and having fun without the pressure of racing sounds nice. Climbing Mt. Blanc or doing the Haute Route and Matterhorn or something like that sounds fun. My worst case scenario is that I go out there, don’t do anything cool because I want to rest and taper for CCC, then either bail on CCC last minute or start it and realize at mile 25 that the legs are dead and then jog it in for a similar or worse result than I’ve had the past two times. The two ways to avoid that are either don’t rest/taper too much so I can still do some cool things even though that would probably kill CCC, or somehow have things go super well at CCC. One of those options I can control and choose, but the second one (which I’d prefer) is risky and I won’t know until I’m in the thick of it. How’d I get myself in this situation in the first place? By having a great day at Western States.

I almost want to write two different versions of how the day went- a dramatic, exaggerated, artistic version; and an accurate historical account according to my perspective 6 weeks later. Let’s start with the historical, chronological account.

Western States - 100 miles in a day according to me

I slept as well as you could hope for the night before the race, in the Precision house right next to the start line. At about 3am I choked down some oatmeal and half a banana. No appetite that early. I topped off my bottles, loaded them into my pack, tied my shoes tight, and walked over to meet my family by the start line.

There was some nervous energy, but not as bad as I thought. It was cool to be lined up with legends like Jim, Petter, Jon Albon, Hayden, Tyler, etc waiting for the gun to go off. When it did, I was surprised how much we all stayed packed up together going up to the Escarpment. It didn’t feel like an easy pace but it definitely wasn’t as hard as I suspected people might go out. I surprised myself by being very much in the pack, probably within the first 10 people or so over the top of the pass and within 20 seconds of the leader. We made it up in about 40 minutes if I remember right.

I had the idea in the back of my mind that I wanted to pace off Tyler. I didn’t know what I was doing and he clearly did. He had a proven track record at this race and it seemed like a smart idea to be kind of near him. He was behind me for about the first 5 miles, going out very conservatively, and then blew by and got up near the front for the next few miles. I knew I didn’t want to be that close to the front that early on, so I sat back and watched and waited. By about mile 10 or so we had all regrouped without any conscious effort on my end, and I got into a nice rhythm of running with Tyler. We hiked the steeper uphills and he told me he had a theory that his body or central governor strategically makes the effort on the early hills feel harder than he’d like so that he’d chill out and save energy for later. I liked that, because the hills felt harder than I liked too and it gave me hope. When we hit the first aid station he mentioned that it was about 10 minutes faster than he’d hit it last year (when he ran 15:09). By mile 25 at the first crew point we were on closer to 14 hour pace. We chatted about how there was no way the 10-12 or so people in front of us at that point were going to run in the 14 hour range, so where we were was perfect and we just needed to wait for them to blow up and come back to us.

Mile 25 was the first crew access point, Dusty Corner. It lived up to its name and the trail to get there was the dustiest I’ve ever run on. A giant group of us all hit the aid station at the same time and it felt like madness trying to find the crew, get ice and refills, and get out as quickly as possible. It was nice to see crew and know that the longest stretch without seeing my people was over. At most aid stations, Tyler would get out before me, though I usually thought I was ahead of him, and then a couple miles later I’d catch back up to him and we’d run together again. At Robinson Flat about 50k and 4:11hrs ish into the race I saw Morgan hopping up and down to get my attention. That was a fun crew spot for me and I liked knowing that they’d be out there all day waiting for me at the next spots. I got out with Tyler and Chris Myers for the long downhill forest road and we clicked off some faster miles.

PC: Precision F&H

 Around mile 40, Tyler took off up ahead of me on the Devil’s Thumb climb and I ran with Ryan Montgomery for a while instead. I’d moved into the top 10 at that point and was sitting right around 10th place. The steep climbs felt surprisingly easy and I hiked/jogged up them and settled into a nice pace that I felt I could hold all day.

I hit mile 50 just before Eldorado and glanced at my watch. I don’t remember now exactly what the split was but it must’ve been around 7:15-7:20 because I thought wow I’m on pace for sub 15 and I think that unless something unexpected happens I can do what I just did again. I had a weird rush when I thought that and the adrenaline got my heart going. That was the moment I started suspecting that I was going to have a special day. But I also had some fear of the unknown. I thought, this is probably how everyone feels when you’re only halfway done with 100 miles. It’ll probably get really hard and I’ll start dying around mile 80 or something. Or once I get through Foresthill it’s going to be so hot on Cal Street that I’ll die there and lose some time and end up closer to my 15-15:30 guess of what I thought would be my finish time on a good day.

I went into the race with the attitude of “this is the only thing that matters to me this year and I want to go big and die trying”, and I even basically have that in my crew/pacer notes, so I was mentally prepared to go to a deep dark place and have things get really hard. I wanted that, and I wanted the transformational experience that I assumed running a 100 mile race would force on me. But I balanced that with what I thought was “being smart” and running cautiously enough to make sure I could finish and feel decent in the later miles. I think I might have erred a little too far on the safe side, but more on that later.

My feet were killing me by Michigan Bluff and I changed shoes, which brought instant relief. I had caught up to Cole Watson and Tyler at the top of the climb into that aid station (I was climbing really well compared to them, at what didn’t feel like a hard effort), but they both got out before me. At mile 50 when I felt amazing I thought of something funny to tell my crew at Michigan Bluff. I asked Jacob if he had his tags and let him squirm while he racked his brain trying to figure out what I was talking about. Then I said “your hunting tags”, and I thought I was funny. I was ready to start making moves. I passed Cole pretty soon after as he was less than half a mile up the road puking. It took the climb going up to Foresthill for me to catch back up to Tyler, and we ran it in to our crews together. That was a fun moment. Brian Robbins ran with me too. Lucy brought down a Nike ice vest to the end of bath road and it felt great and I wore it for the mile on the road until I got to the crew. I picked up Finn as my pacer and we set out on Cal Street.

We had three glorious miles together, right on the heels of Tyler and his pacer, and then Finn started making comments about how I might want to bring down the pace a little to conserve some more energy for later. I told him, dude I’ve been running this pace all day, it feels good and I think I can keep running like this. Then I realized he was probably saying it more for himself than for me, because about half a mile later we hit an uphill and he fell back and told me to go on ahead, and that he’d be within 5 minutes behind me. Not sure how that was supposed to help to have him 5 minutes back because as a pacer you’re either with me or not, but it turns out it was more like 45 minutes back anyway by the time he got across the river. He had eaten a big burger right before starting his pacing section, didn’t have an ice bandana for the heat, and didn’t have a phone with him to let anyone in our crew know where to pick him up. Classic Finn (but I love him). I didn’t worry about it, I knew it would work out. I somehow dropped Tyler on an uphill around mile 68 and figured he’d catch me on the next downhill but that was the last time I saw him. I ran solo for the next 10 miles through the hottest part of the course. I ran out of gels and was hungry by the time I hit the Rucky Chucky river crossing. The crossing was a party and the river water felt so good.

Brian was waiting for me with an ice vest on the other side of the river. I ran every step of the climb to Green Gate, knowing that my crew, another change of shoes, and Jacob as my next pacer was waiting for me. I must have passed Dakota Jones somewhere on Cal Street without realizing it because I was now in 6th place. From Green Gate to the finish is a cruisy 20 miles, with the worst of the heat and climbing out of the way. I realized I had it, that I was going to finish. I was on sub 15 pace still but I thought it would be close. 5th place would mean getting a little bit of money from sponsors, enough to cover the gas it took to drive out to the race and some snacks. That was motivating. So was beating the great Jon Albon, who was the next target ahead. 

Chatting with Jacob was fun. He was a fantastic pacer, always saying the right things and knowing when to not say anything. It was also really nice to have him set the pace on a couple sections, dialing in a smooth, hard-but-not-too-hard pace that I could zone out to and just follow his footsteps. I got excited when we came around a corner at about mile 88 and saw Jon up ahead. We passed hard and hoped we wouldn’t see him again. Turns out he was just trying to hold his stomach together and probably hardly even noticed we passed.

I kept asking Jacob for splits to the next person, Dan Jones, and they kept not getting much smaller. When I heard I had a 10 minute gap with about 6 miles to go I knew it was unlikely, but I hammered about as hard as I could up the final hill to Robie Point just in case he was also on the side of the trail puking or something. He wasn’t. My family and crew ran in the last bit downhill on the road with me and it was great. Such a fun moment to hit the track and see 14:40 on the clock. 5th place was about as well as I thought I could have done before the race, but seeing what my time ended up being I was pretty quickly slightly disappointed that it hadn’t equated to a higher place, given that something like 49 out of the 51 editions of that race would have been won with that time, and before 2024 it would have been the 4th fastest time on the course ever. More on the fleetingness of satisfaction later.

I was whisked away to the medical tent for doping control before I could even really celebrate with my crew. It took forever to pee, probably about 1.5 hrs or so. It was a funny scene in there with Rod puking, Hayden’s cramped forearms trying to screw on the lid of his pee bottle, Jim in a daze, Jon in a coma, etc. Eventually I peed and got out, said hi/bye to family, and got back to the hotel room to shower. That was a good shower, although moving around got tough. We made it back to the track just in time to see Leah finish and hang out until past midnight chatting with her, Rachel, Tyler, Mike, and friends. That was one of the best moments of the day, telling our stories and congratulating each other.

I ran the fastest debut WSER of anyone ever. I got a bunch of cool pictures, some new followers, and some nice shoutouts. Lots of congrats from friends and stuff. It’s funny how exciting that stuff can feel for just a minute right after you finish, but then pretty quickly this nagging feeling of wanting more creeps in. It’s hard for me to be satisfied. Like that was good and I’m really happy about it, but I thought within minutes of finishing, I should have pushed harder earlier on and put myself in it more. I didn’t finish feeling like I gave 100%, maybe more like 93%, which is a big difference in my mind. I could probably go faster next time knowing what I know now. Podium would be way cooler than 5th. It’s the same feeling I have now that’s making me only want to do CCC if I can get a bigger dopamine hit off of it than I did at WSER. Like if it’s not at least as good as that, I don’t want it. The problem is that that was really good, and those are hard to replicate.

Alright I think that’s enough for right now. My artistic version will need to wait. Time for sleep.