Pre-history of the Western States 100 Mile Trail Run

Ultramarathons - any race longer than the standard marathon of 26.2 miles - has become a major sport in the United States. Any serious ultramarathon veteran can offer war stories from 100-mile races such as Old Dominion, Wasatch, Leadville, Hardrock or Arkansas Traveller. But it all started with the Western States Endurance Run, this year celebrating its twenty-fifth running. And the Western States started out as a horse race.

Back in 1955 a group of horsemen were sitting around a campfire, debating the toughness of their mounts compared to the legendary horses of bygone days. It was generally agreed that in the past, in the time of the Pony Express, a horse could carry a rider for 100 miles in a single day and night. One of those around the campfire, Wendell Robie, suggested they attempt to replicate that feat. The Western States Trail Ride was born. A prominent California horseman named Will Tevis was intrigued by the concept, and donated a trophy cup to the event; it has been called the Tevis Cup Ride ever since.

Then enter Gordy Ainsleigh. In 1974 Ainsleigh was a 27-year-old woodcutter by trade, a rather independent man by character. He had ridden the Tevis Cup a couple of times, but in '74 his horse had foot problems and Ainsleigh spent most of his time running alongside the animal during training sessions to prevent his mount from going lame. Drucilla Barner, the first woman to win the Tevis Cup, watched Ainsleigh running and offered the observation that Ainsleigh might have better luck if he left his horse at home during the actual race. Ainsleigh agreed. She probably wasn't serious, but Ainsleigh certainly was.

Ainsleigh began stashing water and food along the race course three weeks in advance of the event, and at the start line of the race, he lined up in his running shoes with 198 riders and their horses. The riders must have been amused. But not for long. The Tevis Cup wasn't geared for a biped of the human variety, so at Michigan Bluff, 55.7 miles into the race, a veterinarian checked Ainsleigh's vital signs, declared him fit, and let him continue his historic run. He finished in 23 hours, 42 minutes. In the process of proving horses were, for the most part, just as tough as they ever were, it was discovered at least one man was a hell of a lot tougher than anyone had imagined.

The year after Ainsleigh started the whole thing, Ron Kelley decided to give it a go and ran the first ninety-seven miles before inexplicably walking off the course, getting in his pickup truck and driving home, a mere three miles short of the finish. Kelley later explained he simply couldn't bear the thought of running one more step. In 1976 Ken "Cowman" Shirk finished the race just thirty minutes over the alloted twenty-four hours, with Ainsleigh pacing him along the final stretch.

In the world of endurance sports, this was clearly a novelty, and the magazine Runner's World published a short blurb on Ainsleigh's precedent- setting feat, which caught the attention of the more adventurous element of the running community. In 1977 fourteen runners from four different states showed up to challenge Ainsleigh's record. Only three finished the race, and only Andy Gonzales did it under twenty-four hours, establishing a new record of 22:57:00.

Enter Shannon Weil. "I moved to Auburn in 1976," explains Weil, "and trained my horse for the Tevis Cup Ride the following year. I was quite focused on getting my own buckle. And lo and behold, fourteen runners showed up that year to run the race. So I rode my horse and watched these runners, and I was quite fascinated by what they were doing. I said 'This is going to be a hit and I'm going to make sure it is.'"

Wendell Robie decided it was time to make the run a separate event from the ride, and in 1978 a board of governors was created to oversee the event. Mo Livermore, who had also ridden the Tevis Cup and who helped with the ride organization, was given the task of developing the foot race along with Weil. "Shannon and I developed the organization from then on," remembers Livermore, "and created the format and structure for the race." They didn't know it at the time, but they were creating a new sport. "I had never even been to a running race," admits Livermore. "We organized this predicating everything on the endurance horse riding. So the medical checks that the runners had really were veterinary checks."

There are now twenty-eight stations staffed with medical personnel, and the runners are weighed as they check in. "The weigh-in is critical," says Twietmeyer, "the 3-5-7 rule." If a runner loses three percent of their body weight, they are put on "watch". If they lose five percent, they must stay at the the aid station until they gain some weight back. "If you go down seven," explains Twietmeyer, "you're out of the race."

In 1978 sixty-three runners, including the first female, Pat Smythe, ran the race, which for the first time was held separately from the ride. "The history is sketchy," says Weil, "and I'm not going to say we were the first ones." But the running community generally accepts that year as the official genesis for the sport of ultrarunning in the United States, and the first official 100-mile footrace in the world.

The race went international in 1979, with runners from three foreign countries represented in the field of 143 competitors. By 1983 there were so many applicants for the race that it became necessary, due to logistics and safety concerns, to limit the race to 250 runners, chosen through a lottery system. Livermore, who had still never run a race in her life, decided to participate in the event she was helping to promote. "1983 was my fastest time," she says laughing, "a blazing 23:53. It was the first race I ever ran." But not the last. She ran the WS100 four more times. The lottery system is still used, but by1997, 420 runners were allowed to enter.

This year, 63 finished the course in less than twenty-four hours. Along the route they had negotiated seven major canyons on the up-and-down race course for a total elevation drop of 23,000 feet and an elevation gain of 18,000. And this year they had had to run through snow and ice across the mountain pass above Squaw Valley. They passed through habitat occupied primarily by rattlesnakes, bears and cougars, not your usual race hazards. Other potential hazards listed in the race brochure include, "hypothermia, dehydration, heat stroke, renal failure, seizure, hypoglycemia, disorientation, total mental and physcial exhaustion." On the higher reaches of the course, altitude sickness could be a problem.

Surely the rewards for such self-imposed torture must justify the pain. After all, the winner of the 56-mile Comrades Race in South Africa took home of purse of $187,000 this year. And the Western States ? Well... For finishing the race in under thirty hours, runners receive a decorative brass belt buckle, those who finish under twenty-four hours receive the more prestigious sterling silver buckle. And bragging rights, of course. "As a runner, you want to run the Western States" says Twietmeyer, "it's the oldest hundred miler and it started the sport. It's the classic event of the sport. Western States is the one that got all the others going."

But according to Twietmeyer, the Western States differs from other ultras in a particular way. "This race is really not focused on the people who win, but the people who finish," he says. People like Will Burkhart and Cathy Tibbetts. The combined running resumes of those two would fill several pages, and would include scores of ultramarathons. But until last year only Burkhart had ever run a full 100-miler. Tibbetts had never run anything over fifty miles.

Tibbetts, who has run marathons in such remote and diverse locales as the North Pole, Antarctica, and the Sahara Desert, knows that part of doing well in a race is doing your homework. The Western States 100 is not only a race of extreme distance, but of extreme trail conditions. In the first four miles out of Squaw Valley the runners climb 2,500 feet to Emigrant Pass at 8,750 feet. Then, after having run over fifty miles, the competitors must descend 2,600 feet to El Dorado Creek and climb 1,800 feet back up the other side of the canyon to Michigan Bluff. In 1995, the first four miles of the course was under a blanket of snow, yet the temperature in El Dorado Canyon reached 107 degrees; during the race two years later the temperature in El Dorado reached 114. "Everybody who had ever run had told me to just take it easy and walk at first," explains Tibbetts. "Everybody. So I did. I walked the first four or five miles. I talked to a number of people who had done it," she says, "some of the advice was to go really, really slow. I forced myself to run slowly on the downhill twenty miles. It killed me, but I did it." Training is obviously critical for athletes who participate in such events, but how does one train to run all day and all night? You don't, according to Burkhart. "Ultimately you just subject your body to it," he says. "The thing you can train for is to minimize the aftereffect. That determines whether you'll be able to go out and run another one of these things in a couple of weeks, or whether you'll be out for a month recovering."

Both in 1997 and 1998 Ann Trason ran the grueling 56-mile Comrades Race in South Africa less than two weeks prior to running--and winning--the Western States, a physical feat that is difficult to comprehend to us mere mortals. With the exception of a couple of short dirt road sections and three miles of paved road, the race course is a trail through the wilderness of the High Sierra. And "solely as a safety consideration for fatigued runners in the remote and rugged territory" runners are allowed to be accompanied by a pacer; runners over the age of sixty can have a pacer for the entire 100 miles, most of the rest of the pack pick up their pacer at Foresthill, sixty-two miles into the race.

A good marathon runner can finish 26.2 miles in less than three hours, which works out to almost nine miles per hour. To finish the WS100 in twenty-four hours the pace is a mere four miles per hour. But that is deceiving. 100 miles is about four times longer than 26.2, but twenty-four hours is eight times longer than three. Throw in the altitude gain and loss and you've got a completely different race dynamic.

David Kelly is arguably the most successful American adventure racer, and despite having run a 200-mile race in Alaska just two weeks prior to the Western States in 1998, he joined Burkhart at Foresthill that year to pace him through the final thirty-eight miles. "My job is to be really aware of what is going on with him and to anticipate when he's bonking," explains Kelly, "when he's fading, and to stay right with him." Or to offer rational advice to someone a bit addled after having already run nearly seventy miles and looking at still thirty more to go.

Most veterans of the Western States agree 68 miles is the barrier, a mental barrier perhaps, but a very real barrier. "At 68 miles you come out of what can be considered the extreme terrain into stuff that is actually pretty runable," explains Twietmeyer. "When you get to Foresthill you've just conquered 14 miles of steep up and downs. And if you can get out of there and still feel semi-human, then the California Street Loop is one of the most runable, enjoyable downhill sections in the race."

Burkhart became violently ill at Foresthill, the result of eating too many grapes at one of the aid stations as it turned out, and Kelly talked him through it. "I didn't know what was going on," says Burkhart. "All I knew was I was getting sick. The value of having him there was that he could objectively stand back and reassure me that everything was okay. Whereas if I had been alone and freaking out, there is a good chance I would have talked myself out of the race."

Tibbetts, who claims to exist on a diet of Coke and PowerBars during ultras, never got sick, but began to feel the inevitable effects of fatigue. "Coming out of Foresthill I just bonked," says Tibbetts. "It hit me instantly." In a race as demanding as the Western States, a pacer is a good idea, according to Tibbetts. "You lose your common sense, you lose your ability to make wise decisions. You're just not thinking." One of the duties of the pacer is to make sure the runner eats, and more importantly, drinks properly. "You have to drink about 16 ounces of fluid every half hour," according to Twietmeyer. "You have to get enough calories in to keep your energy level up. And you've got to get enough salt into your system so that water does you some good. I eat pretzels and M&Ms, and I keep cookies in my fanny pack. But mostly liquids."

This year Ann Trason got ill just across the river at Rucky Chucky and vomited repeatedly. Most years the runners ford the river on foot with the aid of a safety rope. Sometimes, like this year, the water is high enough that the runners are ferried across on a raft--something that doesn't sit well with Trason. "It's always hard for me to stop," she says. "I hate taking the boat across. I've done it three times, and it's the stopping or something." Just ten minutes behind Twietmeyer at the river, she lost some 45 minutes to him after being sick and dropped from second place to fourth overall by the end of the race.

And then there is the darkness. By the time most runners have reached Foresthill, the sun has long since set and they find themselves in the paranoid-inducing, suffocating darkness of the wilderness, running by the anemic light of a headlamp. "At night time, on a technical trail, with limited light, your mind starts playing games," says Kelly. "When you're trying to carry a flashlight or headlamp, it's dancing all over the trail. It just creates a whole different element to it."

It's a bit like skiing in whiteout conditions, according to Tibbetts. "You're running along on this trail, and all of a sudden it can go off, or drop down with no warning, because there's no visual clues. And all of a sudden you're skidding down this trail on gravel because there's a drop-off." The pacer can often point out such hazards to the tired runner. Or bolster their courage. "The other thing is it's scary being out there in the middle of the night," admits Tibbetts laughing. "There's mountain lions, and you hear little noises."

Livermore believes completing the Western States is mostly mental. "You have to want this," she says, "you have to want to finish. Every runner has at least one point in the race, maybe more, where they're so low they think, 'What is the point? Why am I doing this?' And there has to be something that overrides that and makes you want to finish. It's there for some people some years, and it's not there some years." For both Burkhart and Tibbetts in 1997 it was there. And for Twietmeyer it has been there for seventeen consecutive years, for Trason ten.

From Squaw Valley to Emigrant Pass at mile 4.7, to Lyon Ridge at mile 11, to Duncan Canyon at mile 24.2, to Robinson Flat at mile 30.2, to Deep Canyon#1 at mile 35.8, to Last Chance at mile 43.3, to Deadwood Canyon at mile 46.1, to Devil's Thumb at mile 47.8, to El Dorado Creek at mile 52.9, to Michigan Bluff at mile 55.7, to Foresthill at mile 62.0, across the American River at Rucky Chucky at mile 78.0, to Highway 49 at 93.5, to No Hands Bridge at mile 96.8 and finally--finally after hours and hours and miles and miles, the last three uphill--to Auburn, for a total of 100.2 miles. When Burkhart crossed the finish line he promptly drove to his motel room for a badly needed nap. Tibbetts didn't even bother to leave the area once she finished the race, she simply lay down on the track's infield and fell immediately to sleep. But they had finished.

Tibbetts puts it this way. "Quit? No. Never. That was never even a question. No. No." Tibbetts finished the race with a total time of 27 hours, 46 mintues, 16 seconds. And Burkhart offers a similar assessment, although with a nod to his pacer. "It never entered my mind that I wouldn't be able to finish," he says, "the only question was was I going to be able to break the twenty-four hours. And that's where David was invaluable. I don't think I would have broken twenty-four hours without him." Burkhart crossed the finish line just as the sky began to lighten slightly. The race clock showed his time at 23 hours, 32 minutes and 19 seconds.

In 1997 he race was won by Mike Morton, a 25-year-old US Navy diver from Stevensville, Maryland, who completed the course in 15 hours, 40 mintues, 41 seconds, a new course record, which stunned the locals. Western States folklore always held that no out-of-state runner could win, nor could anyone younger than thirty. Morton proved everyone wrong on both counts. Tweitmeyer finished second with a time of 17:14:00. The women's division was won by Trason for the ninth consecutive year, who came in 8th overall with a time of 19:19:49.

But this year Morton, who reportedly was recovering from injuries, was a no- show. Tim Twietmeyer won the event in 17 hours, 51 minutes, 20 seconds, his fifth win and his seventeenth consecutive finish under twenty-four hours. Ann Trason turned in a time of 18 hours, 46 minutes, 16 seconds, for her tenth consecutive win in the women's division. To acknowlege Trason's incredible record at the race--ten runs, ten victories--the women's cup was retired in her name at the post-race awards ceremony and a new cup for the women's division will be designed for next year. Trason says she may take a couple of years off.

And Gordy Ainsleigh, the man who started it all, recorded his thirteenth finish with a time of 29 hours, 30 minutes.

Livermore will tell you that anyone who enters the Western States Endurance Run is a winner, even those who don't cross the finish line. "Sometimes your finish line is miles before Auburn," she says. "Failure is only when someone has failed to give their best effort."

Admittedly running for twenty-four hours is difficult, or, as Twietmeyer says, it's harder than it looks. Burkhart puts it this way, "You can't possibly know what it's like to run 100 miles until you get off your ass and do it." On the other hand, believe it or not, there is joy in the effort. "I really love the course, I love the trail," says Trason. "I probably love the trail more than I love the race. There's something magical about starting at Squaw Valley and running through the Sierras. This trail provides enough challenge and beauty, and there's a lot of history behind it."