Western States 100 Masterclass with Coach AJW #228

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Trail and ultra runners.
What is going on?
Welcome to another episode ofthe coop cast.
As always, I am your humblehost, coach jason coop, and this
episode of the podcast is allabout the iconic western states
100 coming up here in just acouple of weeks, and who better
to discuss all things WesternStates than 10-time finisher

(00:29):
coach AJW?
And we go through it all howathletes and crews should manage
themselves before the race,during the race, a very detailed
course description, pinchpoints that runners will
encounter during the race andhow to problem solve during the
race itself.
Regardless of if you are runningWestern States this year or you

(00:50):
plan to get into the race infuture years, this will be a
podcast you will want to comeback and reference.
And even if you don't plan onWestern States doing Western
States, some of these topics areevergreen and they can be
applied to any race that you aredoing throughout the summer and
, in particular, if you arerunning a hot weather race.
All right, folks, with that outof the way, I am getting right

(01:13):
out of the way.
Here's my conversation withcoach AJW all about the Western
States 100 and how to performyour best.
All right, you ready, I'm ready.
All right, let's's do it.
Let's talk about western states.
I know you're not going to havea problem with that.
You have a problem with that notat all all right cool, we can
talk about western states, but,as we were, uh, kind of joking
off air, some of this stuff isobviously universal.

(01:35):
There are mistakes and thingsthat both of us have gone
through how many hundreds oftimes, if it's so it's a lot of,
it's a lot of filtering thathas to come down to actually
boil these things down and thethings that you need to
concentrate on the most, just sothe audience has a little bit
of a perspective here.
This is like a permutation oftwo different presentations that

(01:59):
you're going to give, so you'regoing to get good at it by the
end of it, at the end of thisOne that you're going to give to
our coaching staff, and anotherone that you're going to give
so you're going to get good atit by the end of it, at the end
of this One that you're going togive to our coaching staff, and
another one that you're goingto give to our athletes that are
running this year's version ofthe Western States 100, right.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, that's right.
So next week with CTS we'redoing a really good and somewhat
sophisticated athlete supportprogram this year.
That we've done in some otherraces Leadville and Javelina and
in the past and so what I'mgoing to do next week, middle of
next week, is we're going tohave a little session with the

(02:33):
coaching staff where I'm goingto talk a little bit about my
experiences at Western Statesand some of the things, some of
the challenges and pitfalls andthings to look out for.
And then that very same eveningwe've opened up a Zoom call to
all the crews and runners andpacers of all the CTS athletes
that are running Western Statesthis year and it's a big number,
it's at least 15, maybe 20.

(02:55):
Yeah, 21.
21 athletes for CTS coachathletes running the race.
So it's a lot of fun.
So this is kind of my dressrehearsal, I guess.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I guess, yeah, okay, we'll get it all out of the way
for the public, right?
We'll get all the kinks out ofthe way, okay?
So I'm going to turn it over toyou, just like you're going to
tell the coaching staff and alsotell the athletes.
What are the things that theathletes need to start thinking
about now?
The race, just for context.
For people it's anywherebetween two and when we're
delivering this content in amultitude of different formats.
So what's the first thing, likewhat's the first thing that

(03:27):
you're going to communicate tothis audience here?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, I want to start with.
The race is on June 29th thisyear.
Now that may sound obvious toeverybody, but that's a very
late Western States, right, it'sabout as late as Western States
can be.
It's about as late as Westernstates can be.
And in addition to that, itmeans it's five weeks between
the Memorial Day weekend andrace day.
It again may seem like a littlething, but a lot of people who

(03:54):
go to Memorial Day training campand train and do those three
days, they think, ok, mytraining is done, I've done
Memorial Day training camp, nowI can just chill out until the
race.
That's five whole weeks.
My training is done, I've doneMemorial Day training camp, now
I can just chill out until therace.
That's five whole weeks.
So the first thing I'm going tosay is no, you know, I've said
this already Like I've gotathletes who have said, no, you
can't just chill out for fiveweeks between Memorial Day and

(04:17):
the race day.
So you know, the first thingI'm going to say is you know you
are still training and most ofall and this is related to the
June 29th start you mustcontinue your heat training,
whatever your heat training is.
And when I think of my group ofathletes.
I have an athlete who lives inthe Bay Area, a cold weather

(04:38):
place.
They're going to have tocontinue going to their sauna
and doing their sauna workouts.
I have another athlete inFlorida.
Obviously she's relatively wellheat acclimated, but she's
going to their sauna and doingtheir sauna workouts.
I have another athlete inFlorida.
Obviously she's relatively wellheat acclimated, but she's
going to need to continue to doher midday runs, you know, 60 to
90 minutes in the middle of theday in the Florida heat and, as
you know, coop, you can dothose heat acclimation protocols

(05:00):
, whatever they are saunarunning all the way up until
about the Wednesday before therace, which is typically when
people start traveling out thereanyway, or maybe they've
traveled out there already.
So I'm going to tell them, youknow to do those two things
Don't stop training andespecially don't stop heat
training.
And then, when it comes tothings like nutrition and your

(05:21):
daily life and what don't, doanything crazy different.
You know, you know.
You know you're in this bigrace, right, you've maybe waited
years to get in it, you'vegotten in by the lottery You've
got.
But don't do anything.
Sleep like you normally do, eatlike you normally do?
I mean, don't take on some hugehouse project, you know,

(05:44):
because you're tapering, youknow.
Don't all of a sudden decide to, you know, renovate your
backyard with a water featureand, you know, carry a bunch of
rocks, you know, from yourpickup truck to the backyard.
But live your life as normallyas possible, because it's going
to get pretty abnormal come raceweek.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And so I was thinking about that timing thing earlier
, because I've got athleteseverywhere, athletes that did
the Western States Memorial Daytraining camp, ones that went
out beforehand, ones that arenot going out at all, ones that
are still in Auburn right nowand we're recording this.
What's the day today?
We're recording this on June7th.
It's been smoking down therefrom a heat perspective and I've

(06:23):
actually had to dial a fewthings down because of the heat
with some athletes.
But I was thinking about thistiming thing in context of all
of that, that the way that itworked out this year and in
other years.
But this is more of the rarity,right, where the timing between
the training camp and the raceis like one week longer than it
normally is and some calendarmath magician is going to come

(06:45):
up with every sixth year orevery other fourth year or
something like that of when thisactually happens.
But I actually think that thattiming for a really big training
camp is the perfect timing toset everything else up, because
you can deload going into thecamp and then you do the camp.
That's the biggest trainingstimulus.
You do that right off of, candeload, going into the camp and
then you do the camp.
That's the biggest trainingstimulus.

(07:05):
You do that right off of thedeload and then you almost have
a whole training cycle that youcan do before you start tapering
.
Whenever the camp is like threeweeks or four weeks away from
the camp, from the actual race,you're always kind of tinkering
around, not that it's bad, butyou're always kind of tinkering
around with the rest of thetraining because that camp is
such a really big trainingimpulse.

(07:26):
So the athletes this year youknow this is water under the
bridge right now, but if youhave that setup it's a really
good setup from a trainingperspective.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
And I would say this, that it's important too and I
did this with all five of myWestern States athletes this
year to let them know ahead ofMemorial Day weekend that you
know, because you've got,because it's a five week year
instead of a four week year,we're going to, we're going to
deload, going into the camp, butwe're going to keep going out

(07:57):
of the camp, yeah.
Yeah, you're, you know you're.
They're going to do that 20miler ish on Monday.
They're going to have a coupleeasy-ish days, but then it's
going to be right back into it,at least for 10 more days.
And for those of those peoplewho've either stayed in Auburn
and I have a couple of those aswell or just live in hot places
Texas, florida, you're right,it's smoking hot in Auburn and

(08:19):
it's one of those I mean, I'm inPhoenix right now,

(09:06):
no-transcript.
Try to leverage that whenyou're still in training mode
rather than in full-blown tapermode.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, because you really never know how the
temperature is going to work outuntil like the Monday before
the race.
I mean maybe you could extendthat until like seven days
before the race, like theSaturday before the race.
I mean maybe you could extendthat until like seven days
before the race, like theSaturday before the race or
something like that.
And by that time the way thatwe set it up and the way that I
set it up is the last two weeksbefore the race is the final

(09:36):
part of the heat acclimationprotocol and with some athletes,
depending upon their situation,that might be the only one.
I don't like to do that all thetimes, but just sometimes.
That's the way that it justworks out due to access and
other training goals and thingslike that.
So you're using that last 14 or15 days leading up into the
race to get all of, or to getthe last part or all of that

(09:58):
heat acclimation process and youdon't need any more than that,
because we know that heatacclimation is a short term
phenomenon.
It's an acute adaptation.
You get most of what you'retrying to achieve in the first.
You know nine to maybe 10 or 11types of exposures, depending
upon how you're actually howyou're actually arranging it.
So the first part of that lastheat acclimation is definitely a

(10:22):
guess.
You're like, guessing, like toyour point.
You're assuming that it's goingto be 110, 110 degrees and I
really honestly, once theweather materializes and there's
unless there's a mitigatingcircumstance, like the athlete
just isn't feeling good orthere's a travel snafu or
something like that I kind ofreally don't change that, change
it all that much.
I'll do the same thing.

(10:42):
I'll run the heat acclimationprocess all the way to either
the Wednesday or the Thursdaybefore the race, depending upon
a couple of different things.
But that's not all thatmaterial.
If anybody thinks that last onesession is magic, or two days
versus one day before it'sactually magic or anything like
that, maybe if it looks supercool you back off just a little

(11:03):
bit, maybe, maybe.
But you're doing it just toyour point.
Like it's going to be 110degree day, you got to assume
it's hot and then let you knowthe weather gods determine what
it's going to actually be.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Well, and we talked about this after last year's
race, which was historicallycool, but even in a historically
cool year, using coolingstrategies, you know, in race,
cooling strategies wasabsolutely essential.
It's still 80.
It's still 85 degrees or 90degrees, right so?
But I agree with you.

(11:35):
I think at this point, the youknow, the plan is set, it's it's
time to execute it.
I think it's important for us,as coaches, to be clear with our
athletes.
Look, I know you're probablysick of sitting in the sauna or
you're sick of going out at noonand running, but it's all going
to be over soon.
So you know, just bear with ushere.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
So for the curious, I'm going to link up a previous
podcast that I did with probablysomebody who knows the heat
acclimation and acclimatizationspace better than anybody and
that's Julian Perriard.
He kind of wrote the seminalpaper that everybody references
in terms of what techniques workand to what extent and what is

(12:19):
better than another one andwhich ones work under certain
circumstances, and all thatother stuff.
I'm going to link up thatpodcast in the show notes and
then from that podcast is thepaper that we that we reference
a lot in coaching to try to totry to organize this, but the
summary of it is really, if youreally wanted to just take the
easiest nickel version is heatacclimation is a short-term

(12:41):
process.
As an acute process thebenefits come really quickly
within several sessions, andthey deteriorate very quickly as
well, and so whenever you'reusing this from a performance
context right before a race,you're kind of like trying to
thread the needle, like just soyou get just such so much
adaptation and then it's not ahuge stress during the tapering
process.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Right, right, which is why and I'm curious to hear
that in some circumstances youmight even have an athlete go
into Thursday and again, in thecontext of this being somewhat
applicable to all races, I knowwe're talking a lot about
Western states, but if you'reother heat I mean when I think
of other athletes that I'mcoaching doing hot races like

(13:21):
Bad is, you know, is probablylikely to be hot this year.
The heat and humidity isalready kind of kicked up in in
the east coast.
You know you want to apply thatsame concept to whatever event.
Even javelina a late seasonrace like javelina will still be
.
It's still going to potentiallybe warm at the end of october.
So these are, you know, I knowwe're talking about western

(13:42):
states, but these are sort ofmaxims that you could apply to,
you know, any sort of race how?

Speaker 1 (13:47):
many.
I've always.
I've been curious to know theanswer to this how many dry
saunas are in Olympic Valley?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I know there's one in the place formerly known as
Squaw Valley Lodge.
I'm not sure what the name ofit is, but I remember sitting in
that dry sauna with Ian Sharmanseveral years in a row and we
would even go in there on Fridayit was before a lot of the

(14:18):
science that's come out but wewould even go in there on the
Friday before the race.
I'm not sure where the otherones are, but I know that one
for sure.
But they're all packed.
They're all packed.
That would even go in there onthe friday before the race.
I'm not sure where the otherones are, but I know that one
for sure but they're all packed.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
They're all packed as my point.
They're all packed like it'sstanding room.
Only you have to get areservation in advance.
It's like a, it's like afive-star.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
You know michelin star restaurant new york city on
a saturday night you gotta like, I know there I know there are
several of the like casinohotels that are just to the east
of Tahoe City, right over theNevada border.
There's a lot of saunas inthere.
People might go in to hit thebuffet and play a few rounds on

(14:58):
the slots and then jump in thesauna.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Okay, all right.
So lesson number one you stillgot time to train.
Don't screw it up and then keepyour sauna training going.
We'll just leave it as kind ofclose to the race you can make a
judgment call.
Whether that's Wednesday,thursday or old school Friday is
what we'll call the last partof it.
Anything else in advance of therace, like leading up into the

(15:22):
race, that always comes to mindto you that you're mentioning to
your athletes.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, again, as I, as I talked about, don't do
anything different.
The other thing I would say isuse this time.
You should have I, they shouldhave done it already.
But if they haven't completelyorganized who's going to be on
their crew, who's going to pace,what vehicles they're going to
have, all of the logistics, allof those things around, are you

(15:53):
going to have two crews?
Are you going to have one crew?
Are you going to have a crewmeeting the night before?
Are you going to make sure allof that stuff is done?
You don't want to get toOlympic Valley on Wednesday or
Thursday and have to do all ofthat.
So it's the, it's just likeeverything in ultra running
control the controllables.
You can control those, thosecommunications.

(16:14):
I have an athlete this weekend,so we're recording on June 7th.
So this weekend she's havingher crew meeting via zoom.
You know I'm going to be onthat and it's just, it's three
weeks out from the race andthey'll.
You know, for some of thosepeople might seem like, oh my
gosh, it's three weeks away.
Why are we worrying about thisnow?

(16:34):
You should be worrying about itnow.
So take care of all of thosethings so that, finally, when
you get on that airplane or youstart that trip to to get up
there to Olympic Valley.
All you have to worry about is,you know, being your best self
on race day, and I think morepeople than you think kind of
make that mistake of sort ofscrambling at the end.
And sometimes there are thingsthat happen where you have to

(16:55):
scramble at the end your luggagegets lost, a pacer that you
were planning on having isinjured, or a life event comes
up or something like that.
So those things could happen.
So the things that you cancontrol okay, you know your
spouse and kids are going to bethere.
You know you have to havesomeone to take care of your dog
when you're away.
Like all of those things.
Do those now.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, I'm a hundred percent with you there.
I kind of forced I'm similar toyou, AJW I kind of forced the
issue with with the athletesthat I'm working with to try to
get that sorted earlier ratherthan later.
I'm kind of in a luxuryposition.
This is the only year wherethis has happened.
By the way, I'm in a luxuryposition this year that all the
athletes that I'm working withare elite athletes, so they

(17:37):
already have like the systemsdialed.
They've kind of done high levelraces before and things like
that.
And so it is a little bit of adifferent context because I do
have to switch lenses when I gofrom an elite athlete to, we'll
call it just a regular athlete.
Right, he's trying to get a 24hour belt buckle or golden hour
finish or whatever it is.
The context of how to preparefor the race is a whole lot

(18:00):
different.
I always arrange my coachathlete meetings in Olympic
Valley on Wednesday or Thursdayspecifically just to protect
Friday.
Friday is sleep, chill, stayaway from everybody, do the bare
minimum amount that you need todo.
There's all the energy andchaos and you want to see all

(18:21):
your friends and things likethat, and I try to hedge that a
little bit by, not by making thefinal prep meeting in advance
of that Friday, so Friday can beas as protective as possible.
So it's a similar theme getyour ducks in a row before you
get there as early as possible,so that when, when you do get

(18:41):
out there, you have more energyand resource and things like
that to just chill.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, coop, you built that transition perfectly,
because the two days before therace or three days before the
race, it's really important forathletes, whether they're elite
or mid or, like my athletes, midor back of the Packers, to not

(19:05):
screw up their race in those twoor three days before the race.
What do I mean If you have notbeen to Olympic Valley on the
week of Western States?
There is so much energy andhype there.
It's more extreme in the lastfive years than it's ever been.
I'm convinced that there are 10times as many people in Olympic

(19:32):
Valley on race weekend than areactually running the race.
There are people who are thereto people watch.
There are people who are thereto obviously help crew and pace
runners.
There are people who are partof the industry, whether they're
sponsors or wannabe sponsors oreverything else.
The hype level is probably onlycomparable in an event like in

(19:55):
the UTMB week, maybe the HardRock week, but it's a lot
smaller event.
I mean, I think in terms of theoverall space of the sport,
some of the big events that takeplace in islands maybe Madeira
or Transvulcania or some of theAsian races Hong Kong might have
this level of energy andexcitement, but for, like a

(20:16):
North American ultra runner whospent seven, eight years trying
to get into Western States, thatexperience can be overwhelming.
So what I do with my athletesall five of them this year, six
of them last year whatever is Iwant to have and I've had these
conversations already like, whatkind of person are you right?

(20:38):
And in general, you know, ifyou want to be overly simplistic
about it, you're going to havean intro.
I'm introverted, I like tostick to myself, I like to do my
own thing.
I'm extroverted.
I get energy from other people.
Whatever everything else, thedays leading up to Western
States and Olympic Valley are anintrovert's nightmare.

(21:00):
So, if I know my athlete is anintrovert and they like to stay
with themselves and you know I'mgoing to say, look, there are
some things you're going to wantto go, you have to go pick up
your number.
You might want to go see someof the panels.
You know your crew and pacersare going to want to see what
the starting line looks like andwhatever else.
But for those two or three days, aside from those kinds of

(21:20):
things that you have to do, youactually want to stay away from
there.
Yeah, all right.
If you're an extrovert, ifyou're somebody like me who gets
energy from other people andloves that, and you know, take
advantage of that, but don'toverdo it either.
Don't overdo it.
And for the extroverts outthere, or the people who are
like, hey, this is my one shotat Western States and I want to

(21:41):
see Jim Wamsley and Katie Scheidand I want to see Craig
Thornley and I want to see allthese famous people that I've
seen on YouTube all these years,that's fine, go ahead and do
that.
But here's my piece of advice Isay to everybody make a
schedule.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Make us.
And it may sound overly geeky,but like, literally, okay, I'm
going to, I'm going to do ashakeout run on the bike trail.
But like, literally, okay, I'mgoing to do a shakeout run on
the bike trail, then we're goingto go up and we're going to
pick up our bib numbers and allour swag and then we're going to
walk around the expo for youknow half an hour, and then
we're going to go back to ourplace and we're going to have

(22:17):
lunch and we're going to do,like, literally, schedule it out
so that you don't get caught upand distracted.
That you don't get caught upand distracted May seem little,
but if, like, one hour going topick up your bib becomes five
hours of hanging out andsocializing and it's Thursday or
Friday before the race, you'repotentially I'm not saying
definitely, but you'repotentially kind of sabotaging a

(22:41):
little bit of that race.
So you have to find thatbalance of the once in a
lifetime savoring the experiencewith hey, I've got a race to
run.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, it's hard for a lot of athletes that haven't
Been there in the capacity ofbeing a pacer crew before,
because you hit the nail on thehead right at the very end.
It is, for many, a once in alifetime experience and also a
first in a lifetime experience,yeah, and whenever that is the
case we see this with, I meanyou're, you know, you're going

(23:11):
to see this year over at UTMB,right, it's going to be a first
in a lifetime experience for you.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
It is the first time you go over there.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, you're like, I want to run every single
fricking trail, I want to meetevery single person, I want to
stop by every single gelato shop, like every short of.
Do it all in a condensed periodof time and I see that with
athletes out there, so beconscious of it.
I really dig the schedule pieceof it.
I've created budgets like timebudgets for people Like listen,

(23:43):
you get two hours to go pick upyour bib and then walk around
the expo or whatever, and thenyou go home and then they're
adults.
They can put it in their iPhonecalendar or watch their watch
or set an alarm or whatever.
But I've done it in a number ofdifferent ways.
The fundamental take-homemessage here is to make sure
that you are leaving enoughresource for the race.
You're not expending resourcein advance of the race at the
expense of the race itself.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, and I think, having advanced conversations
with your whole crew pacer team,because they're going to be
excited too.
You know, many of them areprobably ultra runners.
They want to run the race oneday.
Have advanced conversationswith them that you know they're
to run the race one day.
Have advanced conversationswith them that you know they're
there for you.
Most people know this, but youknow they're there for you and,

(24:25):
yes, they're going to be excited, but they could also, you know,
get you back to your Airbnb orget you back to your hotel room
and then they can go and dowhatever.
I mean one of my most favoritenights in Olympic Valley I don't
do this anymore because I'm outin the field the night before,
but Friday night when all therunners go to bed, it's a huge

(24:46):
party, I know right.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
It is fun, I agree Because we don't have like.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
They're finally like okay, my runner's asleep.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, I'm with you there, man.
The crews and pacers could takea little bit more.
Take a little bit more liberty.
We might get into that in termsof managing the course, cause
I'm sure there are crews andpacers that are also going to be
listening to this that are kindof wondering how they should
manage their day as well,because some of the things that
the athletes have to go throughthe crews and pacers have to go
through as well.

(25:18):
So do you want to move tomanaging the course, or is there
anything left on the managingthe last couple of days leading
in the race?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
No, let's definitely move to managing the course.
I think we covered the.
I think we covered the big oneson both the two weeks out and
in the two days out first.
So I want to start with crewsand pacers.
So there's a.
You need to make an importantdecision right away.
I think everybody knows thisabout Western States Are you
going to have one crew or areyou going to have two crews?

(25:46):
And if you're new to the racelistening to this, there are.
The course essentially has twosides that you know.
Follow a ridge, that follow aridge.
And if you only have one crew,you have to decide are you going
to go to Robinson Flat andMichigan Bluff, which is mile 30
and mile 55?
Or are you going to go toDuncan Canyon and Dusty Corners,

(26:07):
which is mile 24 and 38?
Then those two places meet backup at Forest Hill, which is
mile 62, and you can have onecrew the rest of the way.
So you have to decide right offthe bat if you're going to have
one crew or two crews.
If you're going to have onlyone crew, okay.
So if you're only going to haveone crew, then you have to

(26:28):
decide.
Are you going to have that crewgo to Robinson Flat and
Michigan Bluff, which are thetwo more crowded aid stations
they require shuttle rides, onbuses and so on and so forth or
are you going to go to the morequiet side it's not by any means
quiet, but it's quieter ofDuncan Canyon, mile 24, and

(26:50):
Dusty Corners, mile 38.
Okay, you have to make thatdecision first.
I'm not going to sit here andsay what decision you should
make, but it's an importantdecision to ask you might
runners might want to thinkabout.
Okay, how much time do I want?
Do I want to see my crew?
Or as early as possible, say,mile 24, which would be the
Duncan and Dusty side?

(27:10):
Um, that's decision number onethat you have to make.
Uh, for race day execution foryour crew Once they get to
Forest Hill, whether you haveone or two, it's pretty
straightforward.
You have another decision tomake, however, and you should be
doing this ahead of time.
Also, is your crew going tomeet you at the river crossing?

(27:32):
And if they're going to meetyou at the river crossing, are
they going to meet you on thenear side or the far side?
And I think most people knowthere's a, you know, kind of an
iconic crossing of the Americanriver.
You know, if you're on the nearside you can literally your
crew can drive from Forest Hillabout six miles down the road,

(27:53):
literally six miles down abeautiful paved road.
Park their car, get on ashuttle, get taken three miles
down to the aid station on thenear side of the river.
You can switch pacers there,you can meet your runners there.
The Tomalpa aid state, theTomalpa running club for Marin,
has hosted that aid station forliterally decades.

(28:14):
It's a wonderful place to hangout.
It's a shuttle ride down, ashuttle ride back up, easy peasy
.
If you switch pacers, the newpacer will cross the river with
the athlete and go up to theGreengate side.
That's the easier option, themore difficult option.
But something that people liketo try is to go around to the
far side of the river, which isthe Greengate side.

(28:37):
Far side of the river, which isthe Greengate side.
That requires a mile and a halfhike to the aid station after
parking in kind of a Blair WitchProject kind of place in
Central California.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I love that description.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, and then if you wanted to hike all the way down
to the river crossing, whetherit's pace or crew, that's one of
the unique sections of thecourse where crews crews can
hike, flash, run with theirrunner for two miles.
And this is something again onthe experience of the race.
There are three places on thecourse where and these are

(29:10):
historic rules that have existedfor a long time where crews can
run with their runner, theycan't carry their stuff, and
there's a lot of.
There's been a lot ofconversation, including Coop and
I.
We've had this conversationabout what exactly are the rules
about those places.
But there's almost two miles,for example, going into Forest

(29:30):
Hill and leaving Forest Hill onpaved road, where crews can run
with their pacer, with theirrunners.
That means you can have fivepeople with you if you want, can
have, you know, you can haveyour whole family with you.
Similar on the far side rivercrossing all the way up to green
gate.
That's two miles and it'spretty much straight uphill.
You can have your crew with you.
And then, perhaps the mostfamous section is you can have

(29:54):
your crew with you from robypoint, which is mile 98.9, when
you enter Auburn, all the way tothe finish line around the
track.
So once you've made thosedecisions one crew or two crews
Robinson, flat, michigan Bluffor Duncan or Dusty, and then
nearside or far side of theriver then you just want to have

(30:15):
your crew plan.
And important to think about inyour crew plan is time.
We learned last year that awhole host of reasons there are
aspects of time management forcrews at Western States that are
difficult to predict the waittime to get on a shuttle, the

(30:37):
potential for having difficultyfinding a place to park, those
kinds of issues.
Now there are opportunities,especially on the day before the
race.
There's a wonder, for the raceputs on a very good crewing, a
Western States runner kind of apanel discussion.
But you know you want to havethat crew plan completely dialed

(30:58):
before you even get on theairplane or start the road trip
out there.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Can I ping off of that, getting it dialed
beforehand?
And this goes back to managingthe two days beforehand that we
talked about earlier.
One of the reasons it'simportant to have that ironed
out and also be confident in thedecision is that once you get
to Olympic Valley, everybody hasan opinion.

(31:24):
Everybody has an opinion oneverything.
Should you change shoes atRobinson flat or should you
change shoes once you cross theriver?
And if you only have one crew,should you do the a side or the
B side and should you picksomebody up at the bottom of
bath road and all of theselittle different things.
You presented kind of anambivalent argument for an
athlete that only has one crewwhether to go to the A side or

(31:45):
the B side.
If you're trying to make thatdecision based on consensus in
Olympic Valley, that isconsternation that you don't
need in advance of the race andit's probably not that material.
Anyway, you're probably goingto be oak unless you're in a
really thin performancesituation, meaning like you're

(32:07):
just barely scraping the cogs 1%, right, you're finishing in the
last 15 or 30 minutes orsomething like that.
That's where those decisionsmight come out to be relatively
material.
But it's far better to make toyour point, andy.
Make those decisions might comeout to be relatively material,
but it's far better to make toyour point, andy.
Make those decisions in advance,be confident about them.
And then when somebody asks youcause this is what everybody's
talking about, hey, are youhaving your crew go to the A

(32:29):
side or the B side, are youswitching shoes here?
And like you can just say, hey,I already made the decision,
I'm confident in it, I have myplan in this whole second
guessing game, which hasunraveled a lot of athletes
plans over the years.
You don't have to go throughthat second guessing game.
So think about that in advance.
Have everything solidified sothat people are coming to you

(32:50):
for the answers, not the otherway around, not you going to the
other people and trying tobuild an answer based off the
consensus, because that is worthway.
That is more consternation inthe couple of days before the
race than it's actually worth.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
I agree, I completely agree, and that's a very good
point, because everybody has anopinion in Olympic Valley and I,
intentionally, by the way,didn't share, didn't?
I do not, I won't say to thegeneral public oh, you have to
do Duncan and Dusty, don'tbother with Robinson or Michigan
, I mean because everybody'sdifferent.
But if I think of my fiveathletes and we haven't had this

(33:26):
conversation yet but you know,if I think of my five athletes,
there are certain advantages anddisadvantages to each one, just
as there are certain advantagesand disadvantages to nearside
or farside.
I will say, though, back to myintrovert, extrovert thing, you
know, for those people who mightbe more extroverted and would
just love to have a good chunkof time to talk to their crew

(33:48):
and family going to the far side, even though it's a lot more
work to drive around there andpark and hike down, when you
think about it, you get twomiles, so we were talking 35 to
50 minutes to hike with yourrunner.
You know, on the West, toactually share in the Western
States experience with yourrunner, and if they've made it

(34:10):
to the river crossing mile 78,and they're within the cutoffs,
they're probably going to finish, and so there's something kind
of really tangible and coolabout being able to have that
experience.
And so what I've said to someof my athletes in the past not
this year, because I haven't hadthis conversation yet is, you
know, you might really want tobe able to talk to your husband

(34:33):
for a full two miles going upthat climb, talk about how your
day has gone so far, Talk aboutwhat you're going to need when
you meet them again at pointedrocks and so forth.
I think that could be one ofthose things that impacts that
decision and those things areimportant.
Again, coop, going back to theonce in a lifetime thing, you
know, being able to.
My mom still talks about beingable to walk out of Michigan

(34:55):
Bluff with me in 2005 because itjust meant a lot to her and
they said, oh yeah, you can walkwith him, you know, all the way
down to that sign down thereand I mean, and that was, you
know, 19 years ago, but it wasan experience for her that was,
I think, really important.
So we should think about that.
I want to switch to athletesmanaging the course, because I

(35:16):
think most people have heard meon this podcast or my own
podcast know that I'm a bigsports guy, and one of the
sports I love because it'sreally, you know, a cerebral
sport is golf, and there are afew iconic golf courses that
require that are as much aboutphysical as they're about mental

(35:38):
.
I think specifically of theRoyal and Ancient Golf Club in
St Andrews and Augusta Nationalin Georgia, where the Masters is
played every year.
These are courses that defysort of modern logic.
Right, they're not excessivelylong, they're not excessively

(35:58):
difficult, with long, rough orlots of water hazards or huge
carries over large stretches ofland.
But for whatever reason, theyget in people's heads you know
the 12th hole at AugustaNational, which is 150 yards
long with a small little pond infront of it Invariably you end

(36:19):
up having six to eight peopleplunking their ball in the water
there each and every year.
Western states, along with, Iwould say, leadville, hard Rock,
utmb, these are courses thathave kind of that same effect on
people On paper.
On paper, the Western Statescourse, you know 23,000 feet of

(36:42):
descent, 18,000 feet of climbing, really smooth California trail
.
You know huge amounts ofdaylight because you know it's
one it's usually it's in lateJune where there's, you know, 15
, 16 hours of daylight, not alot of nighttime running.
On paper this should be arelatively easy race to run.

(37:02):
In reality, because of itsmystique, because of the unique
challenges of the way the courseis laid out, it is definitely
not easy to run.
So what I'd like to do is justhighlight I think I'm going to
highlight five sort of flexpoints or points on the actual
course that can kind of make orbreak your race.

(37:23):
And the first one, notsurprisingly, comes right out of
the gate because you have a2,800, you have a 2,800 foot
climb over four miles, you know,up a ski hill.
It's cool in the morning, it'sbeautiful.
You've been waiting all thistime for the race and it's an

(37:45):
old adage at Western StatesNobody can win the race on the
climb over the escarpment, butlots and lots of people can lose
it on the climb over theescarpment.
So that's flex.
Pinchpoint number one is theopening climb.
You can take a look at it theday before or two days before.
It's all pretty much fire road.
There's one little trailsection at the top.

(38:07):
It's a 2,800 foot climb in fourmiles.
You've probably done that agazillion times in training.
But you need to be careful.
You can't, as Gordy Ainsley say, get caught up in the moment of
the morning, because it isreally easy to get caught up in
the moment of the morning.
You see all these elite runnersthere.
You see you're at WesternStates.

(38:28):
Finally, you know, remember,you top out at almost 8,800 feet
, not high for some people, butplenty high for other people.
That is definitely pinch pointnumber one.
Pinch point number two Okay,you're going to crest the hill.
You're going to run through theGranite Chief Wilderness, which

(38:49):
this year it looks likemercifully, in contrast to last
year, we'll have significantlyless snow.
Maybe a patch of snow here orthere.
It'll still be really wet.
It'll be muddy.
Your feet will get wet throughthere.
Don't get me wrong just becauseit's going to potentially be a
low snow year, you'll still begetting wet.
Through the Granite ChiefWilderness.
You'll make your way throughthe first aid station at Lion

(39:12):
Ridge, the second aid station atRed Star Ridge, the third aid
station at Duncan Canyon.
Then you're going to have thisnice little jog down to Duncan
Creek and you're going to crossDuncan Creek, which usually is
knee high up to potentiallywaist high, and you're going to
hit the second pinch point.
I talk about this section a lotbut not everybody pays attention

(39:33):
to it.
Imagine again on the golfanalogy you get to the sixth
hole and all of a sudden there'sthis big dog leg and the
headwinds are blowing and theclouds are coming over the climb
from Duncan Creek to RobinsonFlat.
Okay, it's about a five mileclimb.
You get to the top in four andit's relatively level.
For that last mile.
The bottom section was burnedin the star fire way back in

(39:57):
2001.
It's still completely exposedand, mind you, now you're at
about mile 25 and a half andit's where you're getting the
first hint of the warmth of theday.
The first hint is it going tobe a hot.
Up till this point you've beenrunning in this beautiful Alpine
, high altitude pine trees,everything else.

(40:18):
Now you're in this burn.
You're on this kind of dusty,kind of desiccated trail and
you're making this climb up andthe day is starting to.
Okay, I'm a quarter of the waythrough.
How am I feeling on this climb?
How is everything going?
And you're grinding a littlebit there.
That is a pinch point.
You need to make sure you leaveDuncan Canyon with a lot of

(40:41):
water.
It's 24, it's a six milestretch.
It's almost all uphill.
Once you cross Duncan Creek,that pinch point number two gets
you into Robinson Flat.
So you've gone 30 miles andyou've had two pinch points.
Hopefully and we say this toeverybody all the time it's a
50K.
Hopefully you get to RobinsonFlat as if you're just on a nice

(41:05):
easy training run.
Right, the cutoffs are prettytight at Robinson Flat.
You've got to be able to runthat first 50K in nine hours.
But if you're smart, especiallyin these two pinch points, I
think you're going to be okay.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
I do that run more often than not from Robins and
Flat down to Duncan Canyon themorning of the race for just a
normal training run.
It's a reasonable training run.
Oh yeah, I mean you just dothat section just to kind of
illustrate your point that it'sa pinch point.
If you just do that on freshlegs, that's a reasonable
training run, like an effectivehard training run, just for any

(41:48):
normal person to go and do.
And the fact that you'reexperiencing it almost 50K into
the race, 25 miles into the race, just kind of illustrates like
okay, now it's real.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Well, yeah, and so much as you know Coop, so much
attention.
It's real.
Well, yeah, and so much as youknow coop, so much attention
justifiably so is spent payingattention to the canyons we know
, which we're going to talkabout in a second, that people
don't forget.
I mean in while, technicallyspeaking, the climb from duncan
creek to robinson flat is not acanyon, but it is a long, grindy

(42:15):
climb and it's one, and it'sone of those grades where you
kind of look at it and it's like, especially if you're saying a
26 at 26 ish hour runner, shouldI be running this?
Should I be walking this?
It's and it's also, by the way,a place where invariably I mean
every year I ran it you wouldsee people who especially went
out too fast, you know.

(42:36):
Starting to come back to you,yeah, I mentioned the canyons,
okay, and this may surprise somefolks.
So you get to Robinson Flat.
You have what is essentiallyamounts to a 13 mile, basically
a downhill half marathon, allthe way on beautiful trail, all
the way to the swinging bridgewhich is at the bottom of the

(42:57):
Devil's Thumb climb.
You make the climb up toDevil's Thumb.
You know 2,000, 2,100 feet andjust under two miles you get to
Devil's Thumb, you have a littlebit of flat, you make the
descent down to El Dorado Canyon.
You go up to Michigan Bluff, ifyou have that A crew.
You see, your A crew atMichigan Bluff.

(43:17):
Now you're at mile 55.
That a crew, you see.
Your a crew at michigan bluff.
Now you're at mile 55.
And here, ladies and gentlemen,you're entering what to me is
the third pinch point, andyou're like agw, why isn't
deadwood canyon and el doradocanyon a pinch point?
I was about to say you skipped abig part of the course there I
did, but that is because thepinch point is Volcano Canyon

(44:02):
and part of it is, by the way.
They're seven miles, mile 55 tomile 62, devil's thumb to
Michigan Bluff.
Seven, eight miles, five milesdown, seven and a half, two and
a half up.
These canyons can often make orbreak an athlete's race, but
it's Volcano Canyon and Coop yousent me some splits of some
runners that ran Volcano Canyonin the Canyons race, which was
in early April.
This is a section that can takereally fast runners 50 to 55

(44:29):
minutes to run those seven miles, to back of the Packers taking
two plus hours.
What makes this section so hard?
I'm going to talk it through.
It's seven miles and when Ifirst ran Western States in 2001
, this section just kicked mybutt and I said to my wife I am
not running Western States againuntil I have figured out how to

(44:51):
run Volcano Canyon.
You leave Michigan Bluff on anice smooth dirt road.
You make a right-hand turn andhave a grinding uphill climb.
It's usually exposed.
Depending on what time of day,it can be warm through there.
You make a sharp left-hand turnonto a single track trail that
just drops and drops all the waydown to Volcano Creek.

(45:13):
You cross Volcano Creek, youhave no choice but to get wet
through there.
There's no bridge, there's alittle place where you can dunk
and submerge just a little bitupstream and then you have it's
only a mile climbing up thissteep embankment that then
spills out onto Bath Road andthen Bath Road is a paved road

(45:34):
that takes you up to Forest Hill.
But this is a section thatshould not be overlooked.
Most people are like oh, I madeit to Michigan Bluff, the
canyons are over, they are notespecially crossing Volcano
Creek grinding up that lastclimb.
Even when you get onto BathRoad, people are like oh, okay,
we're on the paved road, I'mjust going to walk up here to

(45:55):
Forest Hill and it's a mile, 1.4miles, up that hill until you
get to Forest Hill.
So don't overlook VolcanoCanyon, pinch point number three
.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I think what fools a lot of people is because the
edges of the or the borders ofthat section are seemingly
benign.
So the exit from Michigan Bluffit's on a dirt road.
That climb that you justmentioned is hard but it's still
a dirt road.
Yeah, people think when you getto Bath Road, oh, I'm almost to
Forest Hill, but that is stilla hard climb, even though it's

(46:27):
on a road right and it's still areasonable, kind of a
reasonable length.
And then they think that thedescent going into Forest Hill,
although it's flat and fast, isfree.
It's still not free and it'sstill actually a pretty decent
chunk of real estate to kind ofcover.
I kind of think that everythingthat you just mentioned
combined, in addition to thefact that Michigan Bluff is from

(46:49):
a distance perspective maybenot from a duration perspective,
but from a distance perspectiveover halfway into the race all
of that combined makes it theforgotten Canyon.
We'll start calling it that andwe'll see if the name will
stick the forgotten Canyon.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
A note on Michigan bluff as well.
Because and again, runners whoare in their planning stages,
everybody knows you're allowedpacers at Western States, you
know, and if you arrive atMichigan bluff at eight o'clock
or later, so 15 hours into therace, you can start with a pacer
at Michigan Bluff.
If you arrive there beforeeight o'clock at night you have

(47:25):
to wait until Forest Hill ortechnically you could have a
runner, you could have a pacerrun down to the bottom of Bath
Road, which is mile 60.6, andhave a pacer pick you up there.
So again, on pre-race planning,you might know right now hey,
I'm a 28 plus hour finisher.
I'm probably going to get toMichigan Bluff after eight
o'clock.
Pacer, be ready and you'regoing to be running.
That Pacer's first assignmentwill be running you through this

(47:49):
pinch point.
So you get to Forest Hill.
This is really the first timeyou're into sort of what feels
like civilization in a long time.
Michigan Bluff is a small town.
There's a lot of crews andpacers there, but in Forest Hill
you're on a road with a yellowline down the middle.
You know there's people livingtheir lives on race day that

(48:10):
live there, that have traveledup to watch the race.
Whatever else.
There's a similar to OlympicValley.
In the first two days beforethe race there is just a lot, a
lot of energy going on at ForestHill.
There's music playing, thereare spectators.
This is a place where actualspectators have come to to watch

(48:31):
the runners come through funplace to be.
My suggestion to runners is youknow to you're going to have
your crew there is to get in andout of the of that sort of high
energy environment as much aspossible.
You've now run a hundred K.
You still have 38 miles to goand and the next 16 is the

(48:55):
California street section and 16miles.
There's three aid stationsalong the way.
You get to Cal 1 after threemiles, cal 2, 5 after that, cal
3, 3 after that and then thefinal five.
That takes you to the RuckieChucky River Crossing.
A lot of it is on single tracktrail, depending on your pace.

(49:16):
If you're a 24 hour hopeful,you need to try to get to the
river crossing by about 11o'clock at midnight at the
latest.
So this is for many runnersthis is nighttime.
You know this is.
You're running at night, you'rerunning in the dark, hopefully.
You know you're perhaps runningwith a pacer and pinch point

(49:36):
number four comes from cal threeto the river crossing oh I
wasn't gonna guess that one soyou get, you go through cal one,
you go through.
You were probably going to saycal one to cal two which is okay
, I will.
I'll give honorable mention tocal one, to cal two, which is a
five mile stretch, the thepeople mistakenly say, once

(49:59):
you're at forest hill, it's alldownhill to the river.
It is not all downhill to theriver.
There are 15 rollers goingthrough there.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
The 15,.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
there's like 35, 15 rollers when you when you get to
Cal three, you're basically atthe level of the river.
You can hear it to your left.
You can hear the river running.
You feel like, oh my gosh,we're going to be there in no
time.
About a mile out of that, youget to a place where ultra
runners go to die.

(50:31):
Locals call it sandy bottom.
It's this sandy, sandy,overgrown, humid, dark.
It feels like you've all of asudden gone into like Lord of
the Rings for some reason, andyou still have four miles to the
river crossing.
All you're thinking about isI'm going to get on this boat or
I'm going to get to you knowthis river crossing and I'm

(50:53):
going to be good.
And guess what?
You're not good.
There's climbs, it switches fromsingle track to road and you
could be starting from Cal 3,feeling great and getting to the
Rucky Chucky River Crossinglike, oh my gosh, this is just
miserable.

(51:14):
Whether your crew meets you onthe near side or the far side
we've talked about already,you're going to make that
wonderful crossing of the river,either on boats or on foot,
going to make that two mileclimb up to Green Gate, and now
you just have 20 miles left togo, just 20.
And so, coop, what are youtelling your runners at this
point?
Because I'm going to run in theother room, by the way, and get

(51:36):
my charging cord real quick,because I realize we're going to
on in the other room by- theway and get my charging cord
real quick.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
And because I've got a stall, you'll read a stall.
We'll see if we can keep thestall live and I can keep the
entertaining going.
Okay, so to piggyback off ofAJW as best I can.
He obviously does it the best.
This cow three section to theriver.
One of the things that a lot ofrunners get tripped up in is the
river is right there.
It is literally right there.

(52:01):
You can see it.
You can actually kind of feelthe humidity coming off the
river, you can smell it, you canhear it and it makes you think,
particularly even if you haverun the race before or done the
training camp or whatever.
It makes you think like you'realmost there.
And then, inevitably you get alittle bit further down the
trail and you're like, oh wait,I'm not almost there.

(52:22):
I'm actually five kilometers orfour miles from actually
getting all the way down to theRucky Chucky aid station.
So there is a little bit of aof psychology that goes on right
there, because you feel likeyou're much, much closer than
you are.
And then you combine that withthe fact that you're so far into
the race.
At that point you're much, muchcloser than you are.
And then you combine that withthe fact that you're so far into
the race, at that point you're75, some odd miles into the race

(52:44):
.
You're definitely fatigued tothis point.
Sure, you have a pacer, youhave done a lot of descending,
almost all of the descending andthe race has come up to this
one point right here, and thatthat mix of all of those
variables it's almost like thevolcano canyon section that AJW
mentioned earlier that mix ofall of those variables takes

(53:05):
what should be a relativelybenign section of the course and
turns it into something thatAJW is describing as a pinch
point.
I did a great job, by the way.
Ajw just came back on the air ofdescribing again this Cal 3
section, and the thing that Iadded to it was the psychology

(53:27):
of thinking that you're close toRuckie Chucky and not.
The river is right there, youcan see it, you can smell it,
you can hear it.
The humidity is actually alittle bit hard.
You can almost touch it at acouple points and reach into the
water and grab it, but then allof a sudden you realize that
you're not close because you'veeither done your homework or
you've done the race before, oryou've done the training camp

(53:48):
and some feature between Calthree and Rucky Chucky hits you,
and for people it's a littlebit different.
Some people it's a Sandy section, some people it's a little
climb that that kind of emergesfrom there.
You all of a sudden realizethat you know what excuse me,
I'm not as close as I thought Iwas, and you are absolutely
right, I have been at RuckyChucky.

(54:09):
I can't, as you have many yearsand we're watching the splits
come through the feed rightthere, cause that's the only
information that you have iswho's where.
And from one section to thenext, runners go from hey,
they're doing great, to whathappened, but like, like they
get there and that's what youactually say to them, like what

(54:29):
happened in the last hour whereyou were running so fantastic.
And now you're here and this isa completely different ball
game.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, and if I could thank you for bearing with me
here, I should have, of course,the golden rule of podcasting.
I should have had my charger onhand ahead of time, but I
didn't.
You know.
If I could just further alongmy golf analogy a little bit,
because I've spoken, you know,western States veterans and
trace and Tim Tweetmeyer, craigThornley We've had conversation.

(54:59):
Megan Canfield, we've hadconversations about this.
What is it?
What on earth is it about thisCal Street section, this 16
miles, and particularly thatlast five that makes it so
difficult?
And it is.
It is analogous to that.
You look at the golf hole and itjust seems like, well, I just
tee the ball up here and I hitit over there, but maybe there's

(55:22):
a little tilt of the green or alittle the wind blows a certain
way.
I don't know, but you're right,coop, a little the wind blows a
certain way, I don't know, butyou're right, coop, a little bit
.
Something different foreveryone that last little kicker
climb, that sandy section, thefact that it's a little bit more
humid, the mental impact andjust hearing the river right
there.
I mean, let's face, many peopleif they know one thing about

(55:42):
western states, they know thatthey're going to get to cross
this river at mile 78, whetherthey're going to do it on a boat
.
They've seen the pictures,they've seen the videos.
They've seen you know you knowanybody who's finished Western
States they'll spend 50 bucks tobuy the picture of them
crossing the river, right.
They know that's coming and yetit's not there yet.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
It's not even close to there, yet it's sometimes two
to there, yet it's sometimestwo hours away.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
it's like two hours away once you cross the river,
once you get up to green gate.
Now you've got as I left youwith, you've got this 20 miles
to go.
Now managing the course here.
Everybody has said, and it'strue, if you were, if you're an
elite runner, a 24 hopeful, a30-hour finisher, if somebody

(56:29):
just and hopefully you did thison training camp weekend, if
somebody just plopped you downat Greengate on fresh legs and
said all you got to do is followthese markers and run the
Western States Trail back toPlacer High School, you would be
like what's?
This race isn't that hard.
I mean there's a, you knowthere's.
It's 20 miles.
There's a bunch of aid stations, there's a few little climbs in

(56:51):
there, but it's nice, smoothCalifornia trail.
It's not at altitude, it is.
It's beautiful.
I mean I've run, I've runGreengate to the finish so many
times.
I love it.
It is just a, you know it's.
There's a couple of sections ofroad, there's a couple little
creek crossings where you canjump on rocks.
There's maybe one sort oftechnical section from the site

(57:12):
of the former Browns Bar aidstation down to the Corey Road.
But really it's a beautiful,wonderful section.
And in fact, if the entirewestern states course was like
the final 20 miles.
You know it probably wouldn'tbe as iconic of a race as it is.
However, it is here that youget the fifth pinch point, the
fifth and final pinch point, andit comes at mile 90.

(57:36):
At mile 90, you begindescending down a relatively
technical section of trail thatspills out onto the Corey Road,
which is a really nicely groomeddirt road that runs right along
the American River.
So now, after climbing up GreenGate and running along for
about 10 miles, you descend backdown to the shores of the

(58:01):
American River.
Again.
There is the Corey Road aidstation, which is manned every
year by the folks from RogueValley running Hal Kerner and
his team down there.
It's a really good aid station.
You've got less than 10 milesto go.
At this point.
You run along the road forabout 1.2 miles and then you

(58:23):
make a left-hand turn.
This is the famous left-handturn that Jim Walmsley missed in
2016, the first time he ran therace.
You go from and I know thesenames are confusing you go from
the Corey Road to the CoreyTrail, and that Corey Trail is
just a butt kicker.
It is a butt kicker.
It was in this exact locationwhen I ran the race in 2004 that

(58:48):
Dean Karnasas some of you mighthave heard of Dean Karnasas who
was running without a pacer andwithout a crew came up behind
me.
He had two bottles filled withice water and it was going.
I turned behind there's DeanKarnasas with his two ice
bottles, his bucket hat on hisred shorts, no shirt.
I was running with my pacer,errol the rocket Jones, and I

(59:10):
was like Errol, we got company.
Errol turns back.
He's like it's Dean.
Dean just flew past us and he'slike he was.
He's kind of turned to me andhe said hey, ajw, be careful,
this climb up here to highway 49is a bitch and he was ripe.
You make that left-hand turnand he, by the way, he was gone.
Dean was gone.

(59:30):
I never saw him again.
He finished a couple placesahead of me that year.
But that climb up to Highway 49,similar to how you can hear the
river when you're going down tothe river crossing you can hear
the cars on Highway 49.
The cars going by.
For most of you it's dark atthis point.
You can hear the cars A bunchof them are probably crews

(59:52):
running back and forth and thecars are there and it's like
Highway 49 has got to be coming,it's got to be coming.
You hear the cars.
Nope, it's not coming, it's notcoming.
You get up, you see the actualquarry.
The road and the trail arenamed after it.
You run right by the Corrie.
Nope, nope, you're not atHighway 49 crossing yet.

(01:00:13):
And you finally come out.
Now there's not even an aidstation at Highway 49, which is
smart.
They've moved it eight-tenthsof the mile up the trail to the
Pointed Rocks location whereCoop goes every year.
Thank goodness for all the CTSrunners Mile 94.7.
But when you cross the Highway49, you still have eight-tenths

(01:00:33):
of a mile of climbing.
So the highway, the Quarry Roadclimb amounts to about 1.8
miles Again, on fresh legs itwould seem like nothing, but if
you're chasing 24 or you'rechasing the cutoff, this climb.
Finally, mercifully, you make itto the pointed rocks aid
station at mile 94.7.

(01:00:55):
You can see your crew again forthe last time.
You haven't seen them since theriver, whether near side or far
side.
So it's been 15 miles probablysince you've seen your crew.
And you make it to PointedRocks and you've completed the
fifth and final pitch point.
You're in a beautiful, coolmeadow up just outside of cool
California.

(01:01:15):
You've got 5.5 miles to go.
A lot of that is downhill.
You're going to go downhill tothe Nohans Bridge.
There's no aid station atNohans Bridge there, and if
there was a sixth pinch point atthis point it would be the
climb from no hands bridge toRoby points, because it will,
especially for those of youchasing the cutoffs.

(01:01:35):
And now it's now.
The sun has risen on day two.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
It's always hotter on now however hot it was on day
one.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
It's always hot on day two, always, always.
You climb up from no handsbridge, you make it to roby
point and you run in on thepaved road to the track so you
mentioned kind of thisanticipatory point, which is a
kind of a common theme.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Right, we had the anticipatory point of forest
hill with all the energy.
We have the anticipatory pointat rucky chucky where you're
going through sandy bottoms andyou know that cal 3 section
where you just can't kind offigure out where the aid station
actually is.
The anticipatory point here isthat crossing over highway 49,
you have the sights, the sounds,the headlights, maybe even if

(01:02:19):
you've uh run the race before,the vision of going by the
actual quarry and then seeingthe road which seems like five
miles later but it's really notthat far.
After that, at what point arethey going to hear you?
Because this is a role that youhave taken on over the course
of the past couple of years tobe a source of inspiration for
people as they're actuallycrossing the road.

(01:02:42):
So you want to take thelisteners through that First off
.
Are you doing that again thisyear?

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for bringing that up,coop the.
So when highway 49, just, it'smile 93 and a half.
Okay, so it's your smell in thebarn.
And for all the years I ran therace there was an aid station at
the.
You would cross this reallybusy highway really and they
would have the aid station rightthere.
It was a really big challengeas the race grew, and especially

(01:03:12):
pacers and crews.
They would park up at cool,take a shuttle down.
It's a really busy road.
There was a police presencedown there with flashing lights
to make sure that people don'tget hit by cars and so on and so
forth, that people don't gethit by cars and so on and so
forth.
So in the infinite wisdom of therace it was about five or six
years ago they moved the aidstation eight, eight tenths of a

(01:03:33):
mile up to a much more pleasantplace.
Crews and pacers still have tohike in about a mile.
It's a relatively flat hike butit's a great location for an
aid station.
It's beautiful.
The same people who used to dothe Highway 49 crossing do that.
They have their RV there, fullystaffed aid station.
But the race realized hey look,we still need people to help

(01:03:56):
the runners get across Highway49.
We still need traffic peoplethere, we still need to have a
policeman there.
It's still a really busy roadand they got this idea of
essentially having like a pepsquad down there, you know,
basically cheerleader squad influorescent vests.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
But please tell me you have pom-poms too.
You've got to complete theensemble.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
So the race organizers had this idea.
For those of you who don't know, I have a relatively scripted
day at Western States.
I park cars at Duncan Canyon, Ido crewing at Michigan Bluff, I
announce for two to three hoursat the finish line at Placer
High School when the 24-hourfinishers have finished.
So I start there at 5 am.
But I have this kind of deadfour or five hours where the

(01:04:41):
race organizer said I got a jobfor you, ajw, we're going to
send you down the Highway 49 andyou're going to be part of the
pep squad.
So Nicole is the person whoorganizes the group down there.
We have four or five peopledown there and the period of
time that I'm doing the hype manthing down there is for those
people who are on the 24 hourbubble, all right.

(01:05:04):
So again, if you're doing themath, it's 93 and a half miles.
So between about two well, two,30,.
If you get there at two, 30 AM,you're in pretty good shape for
making it.
You've got to go.
You've got two and a half hoursto go, six and a half miles,
but two, two, 33, three, 30, youknow you're getting to three,
30.

(01:05:24):
You got to run that in an hourand a half.
You're, you know, and so I'mdown there, I'm giving people
their splits, I'm saying, okay,if you want to get 24, you're on
the silver buckle bubble,you've got to get there in this
time, and so forth.
So it's one of my most funtimes of the whole.
It's the middle of the night,right, it's two, three in the
morning.
We're at this random roadcrossing on the Western States

(01:05:46):
course.
But you can tell when therunners know they're on that
24-hour bubble especially ifthey're like they got to make it
in an hour and a half they'rehauling ass.
They're not going to be able tostop very long.
The Pointed Rocks aid station.
If they want that silver buckle, they're running in the dark.
It's awesome, it's a lot of fun.
No-transcript.

(01:06:33):
Certainly a highlight of raceweekend for me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Well, people will be.
People who are on the bubbleare going to be looking forward
to that.
So you better not disappoint.
We're going to.
We're going to start.
We're going to start.
A poll is where do you hear AJWalong that section of trail,
relative to where the roadcrossing is?
So we'll gather that feedbackfrom all the people that are
right around that 24 hour bubbleand come to some sort of
consensus.
How's that sound?

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Yeah, in in in variably coop, I end up getting
the monsters, uh booth, and, andI have a, a Husky horse voice
already from cheering thosefolks on.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
but uh, that's all good, all good, okay.
So we have this like overviewof the race, and nobody can do
it like you.
That was absolutely brilliant.
But along with that there arealso some common, like decision
making points that pretty muchevery runner, or at least groups
of runners, need to make interms of how they manage the day
, and then different inflectionpoints that can actually occur

(01:07:29):
when it's hot to cold, dark tolight to dark, all those kinds
of things.
Let's move on to that nextpiece.
They now have the race kind ofcemented in their head and
they're going to have to go andexecute that race.
In your experience as a coachand also as an athlete, what are
the major decision-makingpoints or decision-making

(01:07:50):
catalysts that these athletesare going to have to go through?

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
I've actually had a conversation with one of my
athletes about this and then theother four I'm going to
continue to have over the nextcouple of weeks.
When you and I first started inthe sport, we carried a lot
less stuff, and so you knowWestern States doesn't have any
mandatory gear.
You know, the biggest weathercondition issue there is going
to be heat.
You obviously have to beprepared for the nighttime, but

(01:08:17):
I ask athletes relatively earlyon to plan out their what
they're going to carry.
You know, do you have to runall hundred miles with a vest?
Maybe you like wearing yourvest?
You know that your vest worksfor you.
Okay, yes, but do you have touse a two liter bladder the

(01:08:39):
whole time?
Could you use two 500milliliter water bottle?
Could you make that?
Could you switch out?
Could you take your vest off?
For example, at Robinson Flatyou wear your vest for the first
.
Now, this is just an example,by the way.
Wear your vest for the first 30miles, but take it off and
change it out for handheldbottles that you might use

(01:09:02):
between Robinson Flat andMichigan Bluff.
You have aid stations everyfour to five miles through that
section.
There's places where you canfill up your bottles and squirt
it on yourself for dousing, forcooling purposes.
But make those decisions.
Maybe just switching out havingno vest from mile 30 to mile 25
, 55, then putting it back on at55 and running it the rest of

(01:09:25):
the way.
Maybe you get rid of your vestwhen you get to Greengate, your
mile 80, you've been runningwith your vest for 80 miles.
Get that off your back.
Run the final 20.
It's the cool of the night withtwo handhelds or maybe a waist
pack with a hand up.
Make some of those decisions.
Talk about that.
If you have a coach, talk aboutthat with your coach.
Talk about that with otherpeople who've run the race.

(01:09:46):
You know, make those decisionsnow how much stuff you're going
to carry.
You don't need a jacket, I meanyou can.
You might need to switch to aand have a long sleeve shirt
with you through the nighttime.
Obviously, you're going to needto figure out your lighting
system and when you're going topick that up.
Maybe you're going to pick itup at Michigan bluff.
Maybe you're fast enough.
You know I would pick up anemergency light at Forest Hill

(01:10:08):
and then my big light for thenight at Greengate.
You know when I was, you know,moving relatively fast through
the course.
But make those decisions aboutyour gear and how much stuff
you're going to carry.
You're in Western States, youdo not need a lot of stuff.
We've already talked aboutchain shoes or not chain shoes
or, you know, make thosedecisions ahead of time.

(01:10:28):
The other piece I want to talkabout managing the course and,
like I said, you have to assumeit's going to be hot is make
decisions about are you going tosubmerge yourself in cold water
?
Okay, there are some absolutelywonderful garden spots on the
Western States course that takea little work to get to.

(01:10:52):
When you cross the famousswinging bridge at mile 45, if
you want to submerge yourself inthe river, you can.
But I would also say, 200 yardsdown the trail is a spring
coming right out of the rockspouring water out and you can
submerge yourself completelyunder that.
Put your hat under it, fillyour bottle.

(01:11:12):
Now, when you get to El DoradoCanyon, you can go cross the
bridge.
There's a little footpath down.
You can get yourself complete.
Now you're at mile 52 and ahalf.
You can get yourself completelyin that water, submerge
yourself using a couple ofminutes.
Likewise through Volcano Canyon.
But I want to pause because amutual friend of yours yours and

(01:11:36):
mine, topher Gaylord, sharedwith me this I didn't know this.
There was a climb up.
On the climb up to MichiganBluff there are two creek
crossings that look like they'relittle trickles.
But I was running the race oneyear and I knew at the time
Topher had still been ahead ofme and I got up to this point
and I hear, you know, way off tothe right, hey AJW, and I look

(01:12:00):
and there's Topher.
He's laying down, completelythrown in this creek.
It's probably six inches deepbut he's completely, you know,
completely covered in water andeverything else.
So I know this is sort of funnybut sort of not.
There are a lot of places alongthe course and if you have
decided ahead of time yes, I'mgoing to take three minutes and

(01:12:23):
submerge myself in this coldwater you make that decision
ahead of time and you just do it.
So you do it about gear, you doit about soaking, you do it
about shoe changes and thosekinds of things.
You know those are kind of thekey and lighting system.
You know you don't want to, youdon't want to err on the side
of oh, I'm sure I'll make it tothe river and it'll still be

(01:12:44):
daylight.
Don't do that, you know, forlighting air on the side of of
of earlier rather than later,but but those are the kinds of
decisions that, I think, allowyou to control the controllables
on race day.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
Okay, or make the lighting decision of I'm just
going to leave my lights at home, which some people have been
known to do, and then they endup using the glow what was the
technology called on the Timexwatches before we all had GPS
watches like the glow nowtechnology or whatever, to try
to light the trail.
That's another story foranother day.
The common theme that keepscoming up is make the decisions

(01:13:19):
ahead of time so that the fewdays before the race and then
during the race you're basicallyspending less brain cycles
determining what you actuallyneed to do, because, I mean,
ultra running is inevitably akind of like an intellectual
game as well, going back to yourgolf analogy and it's a lot of
very small decisions that youconstantly have to make.

(01:13:40):
Should I eat?
Should I run harder?
Should I stay in the shade?
Should I go slower?
Do I need to douse myself?
Do I need to shift this littlething that's itching me, you
know, in the back and like,should I take my shoes off and
empty the rocks out?
Like all of those differentdecisions, some of them you have
to make in the middle of therace.
Do I speed up, do I slow down?
Right, that's a race daydecision that you just have to

(01:14:00):
kind of like figure out, for themost part during the actual
course of the race.
But the more you can take yourbrain out of it during the race
by planning and kind ofpre-programming these things, it
frees up the energy that youhave to locomote down the trail,
hike, run, douse yourself,whatever you're doing down the

(01:14:21):
trail, because those braincycles actually do matter.
I mean, we've all heard thestory of the athlete that quote
unquote, over, overthought whatthey were doing on race day.
And sometimes that overthinkingis not just like second
guessing yourself.
Some of that overthinkingactually impacts the energy that
you're expending, not thatmaybe not so much the caloric
energy, but the total energythat you have available in terms

(01:14:44):
of all the resources that youhave to manage the heat and
manage the intensity and managethe physical pain and the
muscular breakdown and thingslike that.
The more energy that you havetowards those by taking those
decisions kind of out of thelike, automating them right,
like making the decisionbeforehand, the better off your
race is going to be once, onceyou're actually down to the
execution piece.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
And related to execution.
I didn't.
One of the.
The last piece ofdecision-making I think that's
important and this involves thecrew as well is around nutrition
right.
We're, we as coaches, areworking with our athletes to
create nutrition plans for them.
We are working in, obviously,collaboratively with them.
What works, what doesn't, youknow, and some of those

(01:15:26):
decisions are.
You know, I'm going to takethis here, I'm going to take
this there, I'm going to takethis there.
But this also is a time to putsome of that decision-making in
the hands of the crew.
And I'm reminded, coop, of theexperience you had a couple of
years ago crewing your athlete,katie Scheid, at UTMB, where her

(01:15:46):
nutrition plan, as it was laidout, was at some point in the
race it was clear it was notworking and you, as a crew, you
had to spring into action and goto some of the local stores
that were fortunately open lateinto the night and purchase a
variety of products and figureout how to problem solve.
You know, problem solve thenutrition plan from there.

(01:16:07):
I tell that story a lot to myathletes and to their crews that
it's like okay, you might havethe.
Okay, two gels an hour and I'mgoing to drink this and I'm
going to eat a sandwich at thisaid station and everything else.
But you also could get to thepoint where it's.
You know it's the forest hilland you're at forest hill and
nothing, none of this stuff isworking, and so on and so forth.
You know there's Wharton'sgrocery store right down the

(01:16:28):
street.
You know there's down in Auburnthere is a huge Raley's that's
open 24 hours, you know.
So the crews might need to makethat sort of game day decision
of you know we're going to godown and get.
You know you're in my favoriteoatmeal, cream pies and cosmic
brownies and we're going to, youknow, or maybe it's got to be
something.
You know you've gone withsomething sugary and it's going

(01:16:51):
to have to be savory, so we'regoing to try, and you know, find
something savory and problemsolve with avocados or whatever
else.
So I think those you know cause, cause you want to be, you want
to be able to make those arethe decisions that are going to
still have to be made on thefloor.
I just cannot possibly stomachanother gel, or I cannot get
down another bottle of tailwindor Roctane or whatever the case

(01:17:13):
may be, and hopefully theathlete and the crew have maybe
had those conversations before.
Maybe even the crew has alittle bag of stuff.
You know that they haven't eventold the runner about you know
in the back of their crewvehicle.
you know that.
You know maybe there's a sliceof pizza back there, or you know
a McDonald's hamburger orsomething, cause you never know

(01:17:34):
in the heat of the moment what'sgoing to kind of turn that
thing around.
So you know nutrition decisions, you make a lot of them ahead
of time and you know if we'relucky, the nutrition plan works
out and it's all great.
But those are invariably areaswhere things go south Likewise,
and you and I both spend a lotof time with this, with care
right.

(01:17:54):
You might you know there, therewe.
You know you might have adecision of like, oh no, I don't
need to bring any other socksor I don't need to bring a foot.
You know, probably a good ideato have something you know foot
care related, whether it's inyour crew vehicle or even in
your you know a little, you know, on the road a foot care thing.
If you have to pop a blister,if you have to, you know, put a

(01:18:15):
patch on your foot.
You know, do that stuff aheadof time as well.
So again, the ahead of timetheme controllables is huge and
it really is magnified.
At a big race like WesternStates, because of the once in a
lifetime thing, because it'ssuch a unique course, because
it's such a big event, I thinkall of those things can be
magnified and it's important forrunners and crews to really

(01:18:35):
zero in on that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Well, also, one of the unique pieces of it is the
environment.
So in most hot years you'reexposed to a really hot
environment where you'reconstantly dousing yourself with
water and you're constantly wetfrom sweat and water and
everything for longer than youwould be in training.
So the shoe sock combinationthat you had for all of your

(01:18:57):
training, that you have 100%confidence in, might only be
valid to Forest Hill or down tothe river or whatever.
And then you've got to kind offigure out one solution that
period of unknown from yourlongest long run or your
previous experience or theprevious time that you've been
exposed to the temperature orthe environment or whatever, to

(01:19:17):
what you're actually going toexperience on race day.
Forecasting what's going tohappen during that unknown, you
kind of have to be honest withyourself that you're really
providing educated guesses right.
And even if you do have theexperience I mean AJW 10 times
doing Western States even thenwhen you've been through the
race time and time again, stillsomething is different from one

(01:19:40):
year to the next.
Still some there's some problemsolving elements.
Still there's something thatyou have to kind of manage that
was unforeseen or not to yourplan or kind of whatever.
I want to like leave this askind of like a final note on the
foot care side of things,because it is a.
It is something that is it'snot completely unique to western

(01:20:01):
states, but I do think thatit's amplified at a race like
western states, especially inthe hot years where everybody's
like just wet the entire time.
The other analogy would be likebad water right, where you're
just constantly dousing yourselfwith water and your normal
everyday shoe sock combinationsjust act a whole lot differently
.
There's this point ofconsternation of when do I

(01:20:22):
ignore a small problem and justrun through it, versus when do I
take a few minutes to pop theblister, to patch it, to maybe
get some professional help at anaid station or something like
that, and spend three or fourminutes actually managing
something before it gets bigger.
I'm wondering how do youcounsel your athletes in advance

(01:20:43):
for that inevitability, whenthey're noticing that they might
have to take a little bit ofdowntime to either manage
something or just suck it up andrun through it?

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Yeah, excellent.
And I do think foot care is,yeah, excellent, and I do think

(01:21:12):
foot care is, I don't want tosay, overlooked at Western
States, but people worry abouttrashing their quads on the
downhills and the stomach issuesthat, invari or not, as I
mentioned at the outset, yourfeet are wet by mile eight, you
know, and you're and they're,and it's wet with a very kind of
gritty.
You know decomposed granitekind of stuff that's in the high
country, okay.
Then you drop down and they andthe decomposed granite, the wet

(01:21:34):
feet, are replaced by dusty,almost sandpapery, you know,
moon dust that gets into yourfeet, that stuff.
As I was talking about pinchpoint number two, the climb up
to Robinson Flat, I mean there'sjust this dusty kind of.
So right out by mile 30, yourfeet have been soaked and

(01:21:54):
exposed to a couple of differentabrasive elements into your
feet.
So I mean it's the age oldthing.
If it feels like a pebble inyour shoe, it's probably a
pebble in your shoe or a hotspotor a blister starting, and I
don't care, if you know.
And the biggest oh, I got anaid station in four miles.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
I'll just take care of it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
There's a stump right over there you can sit on.
You can sit, you know, early,and often you know take care of
those issues.
Then I'm going to go to theother side, though, because
there does come a time when I'mnot going to say, you know, it's
not, it could be the rivercrossing, it could be later, but

(01:22:37):
there does come a time whereit's like you're so close to the
finish that and your feet areso trashed that you know taking
the 10 minutes to take yourshoes off and do your socks and
whatever is probably going to bea fool's errand.
So somewhere there's a prettybig Delta, there's a pretty big
Delta at Western States andBadwater.
Between the time where you'relike, okay, as soon as you feel
something, deal with it, versusthe time where it's like, okay,

(01:23:01):
forget it.
I'm just going to get thisthing done, and it's different
for every athlete, but a hundredpercent and I'll say this
specifically for Western States,because they are so good at it
there is expert foot care out onthe course and when you need it
most.
I had an athlete who finishedthe race last year sub 24 hours.

(01:23:22):
He won.
He had bigger dreams.
He probably wanted to do sub 22.
He's a relative local, lives inTracy, california, but his feet
going through the canyons wereshot.
He got to Michigan Bluff.
He's like Andy I don't know ifI can finish, I can hardly feel
my feet blah, blah, blah.

(01:23:42):
I walked him over.
I said meet my friend TanyaOlson.
Everybody knows Tanya Olson.
She does feet at Michigan Bluffand he sat there.
It was probably 40 minutes toget full.
His feet were macerated.
He had two blisters on both ofhis heels.
He needed the foot care.
He saw the clock ticking away,ticking.

(01:24:04):
He got it done.
He didn't do sub 22, but he gotsub 24.
And it was that 40 minutes atMichigan Bluff getting the
professional foot care thatsaved his race.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
That's a big downtime , by the way, especially for a
potential 22-hour finisher.
In terms of percentage of therace there's not a lot of people
that will take that amount oftime.
I don't know if he knew it wasgoing to be that long kind of
getting into it.
He probably thought it was twoor three minutes right and not
40 minutes.
But I mean your point to managethings early and often, I think

(01:24:38):
is probably the one that's likethe best taken.
So anything before Robinson flat, you notice something that
might become a big problem.
It is going to become a bigproblem.
It's not a win.
Or if it is going to become abig problem If you're already
having some sort of foot issueat that point in time and if you
have, if you know you've got alittle bit of buffer between

(01:24:59):
what you want to accomplish andwhere you're at, take the time
to take care of stuff.
You know there are really goodprofessionals out there.
If somebody in your crew knowshow to do it really well, you
can assign a crew person to that.
That's normally myresponsibility when I'm on these
crews is you know I get footcare duty because I have.

(01:25:21):
I don't have Tanya's level ofexperience or skill, but I've
got you know more than somebodysticking a bandaid on it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Certainly, oh, you're and you're, and your foot care,
your foot kit, is incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
I have no excuse.
I've got the right equipmentand the right products.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
Yeah, you've got the right gear, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
But there still is.
I mean to the expertise pieceof it.
The people who do it a lot, youknow, and the physical
therapists that are used toworking with the tapes and
things like that.
They just have a differentlevel of skill when doing that.
They're you know all the littlefolds that you create with.
We've only done it once ortwice.
Those people have just done itso many times that they're good
at it.
But, to echo your point, ajw,use the expertise that's

(01:25:55):
actually out on the course.
They want to help, they wantthey trust me, they like that's
like their highlight of the year.
They're like oh my God, I getto deal with blistered feet, you
know, all day today and theyget super jazzed about it.
They get super jazzed about it.
So don't feel bad about usingthat expertise.
They're there for a reason andthey enjoy doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
Absolutely doing it.
Absolutely, and it's.
It is the Western Statesorganizers know, you know that
this is what's going to bringpeople down their stomach, their
quads or their feet and stomach.
Often it takes time, quads,it's just a matter of how bad it
is.
And you know, are you on, areyou in the risk, or you're in a
major risk category, or you knowpotentially on a on sort of
heading towards rhabdomyolysis,but with feet, there are things
that you can do, are mitigationstrategies.

(01:26:41):
There are and and butdefinitely using those.
I cannot tell you how manytimes you know people, I've seen
people getting there, gettingbrought back to life with their
feet at Michigan bluff, andthey've beelined straight into
the medical tent at the finishline to thank the crew that
helped them get out of there.
I mean it's yeah, it'sincredible.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Well, and to that point on the feet, I know Tanya
does this and I'm sure otherpeople do this as well.
They check up on you afterwardsbecause they want to see their
handiwork.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
They want to see if they're here.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
They want to see if their handiwork, like held up
throughout the race, and thenwhen you said they're like yep,
I did a good job, you know it'sjust like a surgeon looking
after, you know, their patient.
Afterwards they're like yeah, Idid a good job, a hundred
percent, a hundred percent.
Okay.
So I I'd be remiss if I didn'tturn the floor like back over to
you for like the final word.
You know this is something thatthe race is really emotional.

(01:27:31):
You know for you.
You've been a part of the familyfor a long period of time and
one of the things that you dothe best is to bring that kind
of emotion out to the listenersfor this once in a lifetime, or
maybe first in a lifetime reallygrandiose type of opportunity.
So for all the listeners thatare out there, I'm going to give
Andy the last few I don't knowhow long this is going to last

(01:27:52):
few minutes to the floor here.
We might have a five hourpodcast, the last few minutes of
the floor here to listen to nowas you're preparing for the
last couple of weeks of the race.
But if you want to rewind thispodcast in the last couple of
days of the race, specificallyto this point here, I think it
would be a good rallying pointfor you.
So the floor is yours, ajw.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
Thanks Scoop, thanks Scoop, thanks Scoop.
You know this is.
It is emotional.
Western States has always beenemotional for me.
I went to Western States forthe first time as a runner in
2001.
So this will be 23 years ofgoing to the race.
But it's particularly impactingme this spring because it's
been this'll be the 10th yearsince I last ran the race.

(01:28:37):
I ran the race for the 10thtime in 2014.
And and this is the 2024 racethere wasn't a race in 2020, as
we all know.
You know, for me, the way inwhich Western States combines
history and the absolutechallenge of crossing that

(01:28:59):
course and mixing it in with allthe things that go wrong, and
then thinking about those peoplewho've spent it's getting
towards a decade of trying toget in.
There's, there's the mat.
There's something magical thathappens each year on the fourth

(01:29:20):
weekend in June and I've beenfortunate enough to experience
it as a runner and now goinginto my my ninth time.
You know, as a volunteer andyou see the human endeavor kind
of raw Western states.
It gets turned inside out,whether it's a course record

(01:29:45):
performance, like we saw lastyear, or a down to the second
golden hour finish before theclock strikes 30 hours, you see
just a human condition turnedinside out, and it happens each
and every year.
So I would say to people Iwould say I say this to people

(01:30:07):
all the time If you're one ofthose people out there who is
like wondering, you know whereyour meaning in life is, where
you might find a little bit morepurpose in life.
If you're one of those peoplewho's out there just being
frustrated, in kind, of the waythe world is, you know whether
it's you're frustrated at thedivisiveness of the world, or
you're frustrated atenvironmental destruction, or

(01:30:29):
you're frustrated with corporategreed, or you're frustrated
with any number of things.
Lord knows, there's plenty ofthings that we can be frustrated
by these days.
Go to Western States, buy aplane ticket and go.
Go.
Buy a plane ticket toSacramento and rent a car and
drive up to Forest Hill on raceday and sit in your lawn chair

(01:30:50):
and watch these runners gothrough for six or seven hours
and then back up your lawn chairand go to the track and sit
there from about eight in themorning until 11 in the morning.
You will be inspired.
You will find a sense of hopein the world where there might
be despair.
You know, I know I'm biased.
I've been going there for 23years, but I brought up three

(01:31:11):
kids who went there every year.
We dragged them to all my racesand they feel the same way
every year, even though I'm notrunning it every year anymore.
They're like hey dad, it'sWestern States weekend, you know
, and they want me to sendpictures.
They're inspired by it and andI know there are folks out there
that all the lottery it takesforever to get into or, oh, the

(01:31:32):
entry fee is so much it's goingto cost me like $5,000 between
Airbnbs and flights andeverything else.
When you do it, when you do it,it'll all be worthwhile, and so
that's what I want to leave youwith Coop.
It's just, you know, I happenedupon Western States.
I moved to the Bay Area in 2001.

(01:31:55):
States I moved to the Bay Areain 2001.
I moved there a couple monthsbefore 9-11, which was a kind of
a very disruptive thing, and Iimmediately fell into this group
of people who were all aboutWestern States John Mettinger,
ann Trayson and Tim Tweetmeyerand Craig Thornley, and the rest
is history.
And that's the other thing aboutthis weekend is it's like a

(01:32:16):
homecoming and a reunion, kindof all rolled into one.
And even though every year now80% of the people running
Western States are running itfor the very first time which is
good, by the way.
It's good that the race ismaking it available for so many
first timers you know it's thefamily coming back together, you

(01:32:37):
know, and whether it's parkingcars at Duncan Canyon or hanging
out and crewing at MichiganBluff, or or, you know, doing
the highway crossing at 49 orsitting with John and Lisa and
announcing, you know, finisherscome through the finish line, it
is.
It never ceases to inspire andamaze me how the human condition
is on display every year on thefourth Sunday in June.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
Here's to the human condition.
Nobody says it better, Andy.
Thank you for coming on thepodcast today.
Man, we're going to leave itthere.
I always appreciate you.
We hope to see everybody atOlympic Valley and then back in
Auburn on the fourth week ofJune, right?

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Thanks, coop.
Yes, indeed, it's the best timeof year.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:18):
All right, folks, there you have it.
There you go.
Much thanks to Coach AJW forlending his depth of expertise
and knowledge to help yourunners that are preparing for
the Western States 100 get justa little bit more motivated and
have a little bit more insightinto the course.
I encourage all of you to checkout AJW's podcast.

(01:33:39):
Crack a Brew with AJW, which iscoming back in July, and I hear
through the grapevine that isgoing to be a 200 miler theme
for the next several weeks, soy'all be sure to check that out.
I'm going to drop a link in theshow notes.
I always get a lot of intel andinfo from that podcast as well.
All right, folks, hope youenjoyed this podcast.

(01:34:01):
For those of you that arerunning the Western States 100
or participating as a fan or acrew, have fun out there,
protect yourself from the heat,enjoy this iconic race and this
iconic weekend.
I always have a great time whenI'm out there.
We are coming out there in fullforce to support all of our CTS
athletes, as we were talkingabout during the course of this
podcast.
Can't wait to see you all thereand, as always, we will see you

(01:34:25):
out on the trails.

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