KoopCast
Western States 100 Masterclass with Coach AJW #228
Coach AJW discuss all things Western States 100 including how to manage before and during race. This podcast is a must have for any athlete and crew preparing for the Western States 100.
Crack a Brew with AJW
Heat Acclimation Strategies with Julién Periard
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Coach AJW discuss all things Western States 100 including how to manage before and during race. This podcast is a must have for any athlete and crew preparing for the Western States 100.
Crack a Brew with AJW
Heat Acclimation Strategies with Julién Periard
Additional resources:
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Buy Training Essentials for Ultrarunning on Amazon or Audible.
Information on coaching-
www.trainright.com
Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Trail and ultra runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the coop cast. As always, I am your humble host, coach jason coop, and this episode of the podcast is all about the iconic western states 100 coming up here in just a couple of weeks, and who better to discuss all things Western States than 10-time finisher coach AJW? And we go through it all how athletes and crews should manage themselves before the race, during the race, a very detailed course description, pinch points that runners will encounter during the race and how to problem solve during the race itself.
Speaker 1:Regardless of if you are running Western States this year or you plan to get into the race in future years, this will be a podcast you will want to come back and reference. And even if you don't plan on Western States doing Western States, some of these topics are evergreen and they can be applied to any race that you are doing throughout the summer and, in particular, if you are running a hot weather race. All right, folks, with that out of the way, I am getting right out of the way. Here's my conversation with coach AJW all about the Western States 100 and how to perform your 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 have a problem with that.
Speaker 1:You have a problem with that not at all all right cool, we can talk about western states, but, as we were, uh, kind of joking off air, some of this stuff is obviously universal.
Speaker 1:There are mistakes and things that both of us have gone through how many hundreds of times, if it's so it's a lot of, it's a lot of filtering that has to come down to actually boil these things down and the things that you need to concentrate on the most, just so the audience has a little bit of a perspective here. This is like a permutation of two different presentations that you're going to give, so you're going to get good at it by the end of it, at the end of this One that you're going to give to our coaching staff, and another one that you're going to give so you're going to get good at it by the end of it, at the end of this One that you're going to give to our coaching staff, and another one that you're going to give to our athletes that are running this year's version of the Western States 100, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So next week with CTS we're doing a really good and somewhat sophisticated athlete support program this year. That we've done in some other races Leadville and Javelina and in the past and so what I'm going to do next week, middle of next week, is we're going to have a little session with the coaching staff where I'm going to talk a little bit about my experiences at Western States and some of the things, some of the challenges and pitfalls and things to look out for. And then that very same evening we've opened up a Zoom call to all the crews and runners and pacers of all the CTS athletes that are running Western States this year and it's a big number, it's at least 15, maybe 20. Yeah, 21. 21 athletes for CTS coach athletes running the race. So it's a lot of fun. So this is kind of my dress rehearsal, I guess.
Speaker 1:I guess, yeah, okay, we'll get it all out of the way for the public, right? We'll get all the kinks out of the way, okay? So I'm going to turn it over to you, just like you're going to tell the coaching staff and also tell the athletes. What are the things that the athletes need to start thinking about now? The race, just for context. For people it's anywhere between two and when we're delivering this content in a multitude of different formats. So what's the first thing, like what's the first thing that you're going to communicate to this audience here?
Speaker 2:Well, I want to start with. The race is on June 29th this year. Now that may sound obvious to everybody, but that's a very late Western States, right, it's about as late as Western States can be. It's about as late as Western states can be. And in addition to that, it means it's five weeks between the Memorial Day weekend and race day. It again may seem like a little thing, but a lot of people who go to Memorial Day training camp and train and do those three days, they think, ok, my training is done, I've done Memorial Day training camp, now I can just chill out until the race. That's five whole weeks. My training is done, I've done Memorial Day training camp, now I can just chill out until the race. That's five whole weeks. So the first thing I'm going to say is no, you know, I've said this already Like I've got athletes who have said, no, you can't just chill out for five weeks between Memorial Day and the race day. So you know, the first thing I'm going to say is you know you are still training and most of all and this is related to the June 29th start you must continue your heat training, whatever your heat training is.
Speaker 2:And when I think of my group of athletes. I have an athlete who lives in the Bay Area, a cold weather place. They're going to have to continue going to their sauna and doing their sauna workouts. I have another athlete in Florida. Obviously she's relatively well heat acclimated, but she's going to their sauna and doing their sauna workouts. I have another athlete in Florida. Obviously she's relatively well heat acclimated, but she's going to need to continue to do her midday runs, you know, 60 to 90 minutes in the middle of the day in the Florida heat and, as you know, coop, you can do those heat acclimation protocols, whatever they are sauna running all the way up until about the Wednesday before the race, which is typically when people start traveling out there anyway, or maybe they've traveled out there already. So I'm going to tell them, you know to do those two things Don't stop training and especially don't stop heat training.
Speaker 2:And then, when it comes to things like nutrition and your daily life and what don't, do anything crazy different. You know, you know. You know you're in this big race, right, you've maybe waited years to get in it, you've gotten in by the lottery You've got. But don't do anything. Sleep like you normally do, eat like you normally do? I mean, don't take on some huge house project, you know, because you're tapering, you know. Don't all of a sudden decide to, you know, renovate your backyard with a water feature and, you know, carry a bunch of rocks, you know, from your pickup truck to the backyard. But live your life as normally as possible, because it's going to get pretty abnormal come race week.
Speaker 1:And so I was thinking about that timing thing earlier, because I've got athletes everywhere, athletes that did the Western States Memorial Day training camp, ones that went out beforehand, ones that are not going out at all, ones that are still in Auburn right now and we're recording this. What's the day today? We're recording this on June 7th. It's been smoking down there from a heat perspective and I've actually had to dial a few things down because of the heat with some athletes. But I was thinking about this timing thing in context of all of that, that the way that it worked out this year and in other years. But this is more of the rarity, right, where the timing between the training camp and the race is like one week longer than it normally is and some calendar math magician is going to come up with every sixth year or every other fourth year or something like that of when this actually happens.
Speaker 1:But I actually think that that timing for a really big training camp is the perfect timing to set everything else up, because you can deload going into the camp and then you do the camp. That's the biggest training stimulus. You do that right off of, can deload, going into the camp and then you do the camp. That's the biggest training stimulus. You do that right off of the deload and then you almost have a whole training cycle that you can do before you start tapering. Whenever the camp is like three weeks or four weeks away from the camp, from the actual race, you're always kind of tinkering around, not that it's bad, but you're always kind of tinkering around with the rest of the training because that camp is such a really big training impulse. So the athletes this year you know this is water under the bridge right now, but if you have that setup it's a really good setup from a training perspective.
Speaker 2:And I would say this, that it's important too and I did this with all five of my Western States athletes this year to let them know ahead of Memorial 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, but we're going to keep going out of the camp, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're, you know you're. They're going to do that 20 miler ish on Monday. They're going to have a couple easy-ish days, but then it's going to be right back into it, at least for 10 more days. And for those of those people who've either stayed in Auburn and I have a couple of those as well or just live in hot places Texas, florida, you're right, it's smoking hot in Auburn and it's one of those I mean, I'm in Phoenix right now, no-transcript. Try to leverage that when you're still in training mode rather than in full-blown taper mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you really never know how the temperature is going to work out until like the Monday before the race. I mean maybe you could extend that until like seven days before the race, like the Saturday before the race. I mean maybe you could extend that until like seven days before the race, like the Saturday before the race or something like that. And by that time the way that we set it up and the way that I set it up is the last two weeks before the race is the final part of the heat acclimation protocol and with some athletes, depending upon their situation, that might be the only one. I don't like to do that all the times, but just sometimes. That's the way that it just works out due to access and other training goals and things like that. So you're using that last 14 or 15 days leading up into the race to get all of, or to get the last part or all of that heat acclimation process and you don't need any more than that, because we know that heat acclimation is a short term phenomenon. It's an acute adaptation. You get most of what you're trying to achieve in the first. You know nine to maybe 10 or 11 types of exposures, depending upon how you're actually how you're actually arranging it.
Speaker 1:So the first part of that last heat acclimation is definitely a guess. You're like, guessing, like to your point. You're assuming that it's going to be 110, 110 degrees and I really honestly, once the weather materializes and there's unless there's a mitigating circumstance, like the athlete just isn't feeling good or there's a travel snafu or something like that I kind of really don't change that, change it all that much. I'll do the same thing. I'll run the heat acclimation process all the way to either the Wednesday or the Thursday before the race, depending upon a couple of different things. But that's not all that material. If anybody thinks that last one session is magic, or two days versus one day before it's actually magic or anything like that, maybe if it looks super cool you back off just a little bit, maybe, maybe. But you're doing it just to your point. Like it's going to be 110 degree day, you got to assume it's hot and then let you know the weather gods determine what it's going to actually be.
Speaker 2:Well, and we talked about this after last year's race, which was historically cool, but even in a historically cool year, using cooling strategies, you know, in race, cooling strategies was absolutely essential. It's still 80. It's still 85 degrees or 90 degrees, right so? But I agree with you. I think at this point, the you know, 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 probably sick of sitting in the sauna or you're sick of going out at noon and running, but it's all going to be over soon. So you know, just bear with us here.
Speaker 1:So for the curious, I'm going to link up a previous podcast that I did with probably somebody who knows the heat acclimation and acclimatization space better than anybody and that's Julian Perriard. He kind of wrote the seminal paper that everybody references in terms of what techniques work and to what extent and what is better than another one and which ones work under certain circumstances, and all that other stuff. I'm going to link up that podcast in the show notes and then from that podcast is the paper that we that we reference a lot in coaching to try to to try to organize this, but the summary of it is really, if you really wanted to just take the easiest nickel version is heat acclimation is a short-term process. As an acute process the benefits come really quickly within several sessions, and they deteriorate very quickly as well, and so whenever you're using this from a performance context right before a race, you're kind of like trying to thread the needle, like just so you get just such so much adaptation and then it's not a huge stress during the tapering process.
Speaker 2:Right, right, which is why and I'm curious to hear that in some circumstances you might even have an athlete go into Thursday and again, in the context of this being somewhat applicable to all races, I know we're talking a lot about Western states, but if you're other heat I mean when I think of other athletes that I'm coaching doing hot races like Bad is, you know, is probably likely to be hot this year. The heat and humidity is already kind of kicked up in in the east coast. You know you want to apply that same concept to whatever event. Even javelina a late season race like javelina will still be. It's still going to potentially be warm at the end of october. So these are, you know, I know we're talking about western states, but these are sort of maxims that you could apply to, you know, any sort of race how?
Speaker 1:many. I've always. I've been curious to know the answer to this how many dry saunas are in Olympic Valley?
Speaker 2:I know there's one in the place formerly known as Squaw Valley Lodge. I'm not sure what the name of it is, but I remember sitting in that dry sauna with Ian Sharman several years in a row and we would even go in there on Friday it was before a lot of the science that's come out but we would even go in there on the Friday before the race. I'm not sure where the other ones are, but I know that one for sure. But they're all packed. They're all packed. That would even go in there on the friday before the race. I'm not sure where the other ones are, but I know that one for sure but they're all packed.
Speaker 1:They're all packed as my point. They're all packed like it's standing room. Only you have to get a reservation in advance. It's like a, it's like a five-star.
Speaker 2: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 casino hotels that are just to the east of Tahoe City, right over the Nevada border. There's a lot of saunas in there. People might go in to hit the buffet and play a few rounds on the slots and then jump in the sauna.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. So lesson number one you still got time to train. Don't screw it up and then keep your sauna training going. We'll just leave it as kind of close 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 part of it. Anything else in advance of the race, like leading up into the race, that always comes to mind to you that you're mentioning to your athletes.
Speaker 2:Well, again, as I, as I talked about, don't do anything different. The other thing I would say is use this time. You should have I, they should have done it already. But if they haven't completely organized who's going to be on their crew, who's going to pace, what vehicles they're going to have, all of the logistics, all of those things around, are you going to have two crews? Are you going to have one crew? Are you going to have a crew meeting the night before? Are you going to make sure all of that stuff is done? You don't want to get to Olympic Valley on Wednesday or Thursday and have to do all of that. So it's the, it's just like everything in ultra running control the controllables. You can control those, those communications. I have an athlete this weekend, so we're recording on June 7th. So this weekend she's having her crew meeting via zoom. You know I'm going to be on that and it's just, it's three weeks out from the race and they'll.
Speaker 2:You know, for some of those people might seem like, oh my gosh, it's three weeks away. Why are we worrying about this now? You should be worrying about it now. So take care of all of those things so that, finally, when you get on that airplane or you start 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 more people than you think kind of make that mistake of sort of scrambling at the end. And sometimes there are things that happen where you have to scramble at the end your luggage gets lost, a pacer that you were planning on having is injured, or a life event comes up or something like that. So those things could happen. So the things that you can control okay, you know your spouse and kids are going to be there. You know you have to have someone to take care of your dog when you're away. Like all of those things. Do those now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a hundred percent with you there. I kind of forced I'm similar to you, AJW I kind of forced the issue with with the athletes that I'm working with to try to get that sorted earlier rather than later. I'm kind of in a luxury position. This is the only year where this has happened. By the way, I'm in a luxury position this year that all the athletes that I'm working with are elite athletes, so they already have like the systems dialed. They've kind of done high level races before and things like that.
Speaker 1:And so it is a little bit of a different context because I do have to switch lenses when I go from an elite athlete to, we'll call it just a regular athlete. Right, he's trying to get a 24 hour belt buckle or golden hour finish or whatever it is. The context of how to prepare for the race is a whole lot different. I always arrange my coach athlete meetings in Olympic Valley on Wednesday or Thursday specifically just to protect Friday. Friday is sleep, chill, stay away from everybody, do the bare minimum amount that you need to do. There's all the energy and chaos and you want to see all your friends and things like that, and I try to hedge that a little bit by, not by making the final prep meeting in advance of that Friday, so Friday can be as as protective as possible. So it's a similar theme get your ducks in a row before you get there as early as possible, so that when, when you do get out there, you have more energy and resource and things like that to just chill.
Speaker 2:Well, coop, you built that transition perfectly, because the two days before the race or three days before the race, it's really important for athletes, whether they're elite or mid or, like my athletes, mid or back of the Packers, to not screw up their race in those two or three days before the race. What do I mean If you have not been to Olympic Valley on the week of Western States? There is so much energy and hype there. It's more extreme in the last five years than it's ever been. I'm convinced that there are 10 times as many people in Olympic Valley on race weekend than are actually running the race. There are people who are there to people watch. There are people who are there to obviously help crew and pace runners. There are people who are part of the industry, whether they're sponsors or wannabe sponsors or everything else.
Speaker 2:The hype level is probably only comparable in an event like in the UTMB week, maybe the Hard Rock week, but it's a lot smaller event. I mean, I think in terms of the overall space of the sport, some of the big events that take place in islands maybe Madeira or Transvulcania or some of the Asian races Hong Kong might have this level of energy and excitement, but for, like a North American ultra runner who spent seven, eight years trying to get into Western States, that experience can be overwhelming. So what I do with my athletes all five of them this year, six of them last year whatever is I want to have and I've had these conversations already like, what kind of person are you right? And in general, you know, if you want to be overly simplistic about it, you're going to have an intro. I'm introverted, I like to stick to myself, I like to do my own thing. I'm extroverted. I get energy from other people. Whatever everything else, the days leading up to Western States and Olympic Valley are an introvert's nightmare.
Speaker 2:So, if I know my athlete is an introvert and they like to stay with themselves and you know I'm going to say, look, there are some things you're going to want to go, you have to go pick up your number. You might want to go see some of the panels. You know your crew and pacers are going to want to see what the starting line looks like and whatever else. But for those two or three days, aside from those kinds of things that you have to do, you actually want to stay away from there. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:If you're an extrovert, if you're somebody like me who gets energy from other people and loves that, and you know, take advantage of that, but don't overdo it either. Don't overdo it. And for the extroverts out there, or the people who are like, hey, this is my one shot at Western States and I want to see Jim Wamsley and Katie Scheid and I want to see Craig Thornley and I want to see all these 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 I say to everybody make a schedule.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Make us. And it may sound overly geeky, but like, literally, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to do a shakeout run on the bike trail. But like, literally, okay, I'm going to do a shakeout run on the bike trail, then we're going to go up and we're going to pick up our bib numbers and all our swag and then we're going to walk around the expo for you know half an hour, and then we're going to go back to our place and we're going to have lunch and we're going to do, like, literally, schedule it out so that you don't get caught up and distracted. That you don't get caught up and distracted May seem little, but if, like, one hour going to pick up your bib becomes five hours of hanging out and socializing and it's Thursday or Friday before the race, you're potentially I'm not saying definitely, but you're potentially kind of sabotaging a little bit of that race. So you have to find that balance of the once in a lifetime savoring the experience with hey, I've got a race to run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard for a lot of athletes that haven't Been there in the capacity of being a pacer crew before, because you hit the nail on the head right at the very end. It is, for many, a once in a lifetime experience and also a first in a lifetime experience, yeah, and whenever that is the case we see this with, I mean you're, you know, you're going to see this year over at UTMB, right, it's going to be a first in a lifetime experience for you.
Speaker 2:It is the first time you go over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're like, I want to run every single fricking trail, I want to meet every single person, I want to stop by every single gelato shop, like every short of. Do it all in a condensed period of time and I see that with athletes out there, so be conscious of it. I really dig the schedule piece of it. I've created budgets like time budgets for people Like listen, you get two hours to go pick up your bib and then walk around the expo or whatever, and then you go home and then they're adults. They can put it in their iPhone calendar or watch their watch or set an alarm or whatever. But I've done it in a number of different ways. The fundamental take-home message here is to make sure that you are leaving enough resource for the race. You're not expending resource in advance of the race at the expense of the race itself.
Speaker 2: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 are probably ultra runners. They want to run the race one day. Have advanced conversations with them that you know they're to run the race one day. Have advanced conversations with them that you know they're there for you. Most people know this, but you know they're there for you and, yes, they're going to be excited, but they could also, you know, get you back to your Airbnb or get you back to your hotel room and then they can go and do whatever. I mean one of my most favorite nights in Olympic Valley I don't do this anymore because I'm out in the field the night before, but Friday night when all the runners go to bed, it's a huge party, I know right.
Speaker 1:It is fun, I agree Because we don't have like.
Speaker 2:They're finally like okay, my runner's asleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm with you there, man. The crews and pacers could take a little bit more. Take a little bit more liberty. We might get into that in terms of managing the course, cause I'm sure there are crews and pacers that are also going to be listening to this that are kind of wondering how they should manage their day as well, because some of the things that the athletes have to go through the crews and pacers have to go through as well. So do you want to move to managing the course, or is there anything left on the managing the last couple of days leading in the race?
Speaker 2:No, let's definitely move to managing the course.
Speaker 2:I think we covered the. I think we covered the big ones on both the two weeks out and in the two days out first. So I want to start with crews and pacers. So there's a. You need to make an important decision right away. I think everybody knows this about Western States Are you going to have one crew or are you going to have two crews? And if you're new to the race listening to this, there are. The course essentially has two sides that you know. Follow a ridge, that follow a ridge. And if you only have one crew, you have to decide are you going to go to Robinson Flat and Michigan Bluff, which is mile 30 and mile 55? Or are you going to go to Duncan Canyon and Dusty Corners, which is mile 24 and 38? Then those two places meet back up at Forest Hill, which is mile 62, and you can have one crew the rest of the way. So you have to decide right off the bat if you're going to have one crew or two crews. If you're going to have only one crew, okay. So if you're only going to have one crew, then you have to decide. Are you going to have that crew go to Robinson Flat and Michigan Bluff, which are the two more crowded aid stations they require shuttle rides, on buses and so on and so forth or are you going to go to the more quiet side it's not by any means quiet, but it's quieter of Duncan Canyon, mile 24, and Dusty Corners, mile 38. Okay, you have to make that decision first. I'm not going to sit here and say what decision you should make, but it's an important decision to ask you might runners might want to think about. 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? Um, that's decision number one that you have to make. Uh, for race day execution for your crew Once they get to Forest Hill, whether you have one or two, it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2:You have another decision to make, however, and you should be doing this ahead of time. Also, is your crew going to meet you at the river crossing? And if they're going to meet you at the river crossing, are they going to meet you on the near side or the far side? And I think most people know there's a, you know, kind of an iconic crossing of the American river. You know, if you're on the near side you can literally your crew can drive from Forest Hill about six miles down the road, literally six miles down a beautiful paved road. Park their car, get on a shuttle, get taken three miles down to the aid station on the near side of the river. You can switch pacers there, you can meet your runners there.
Speaker 2:The Tomalpa aid state, the Tomalpa running club for Marin, has hosted that aid station for literally decades. It's a wonderful place to hang out. It's a shuttle ride down, a shuttle ride back up, easy peasy. If you switch pacers, the new pacer will cross the river with the athlete and go up to the Greengate side. That's the easier option, the more difficult option. But something that people like to try is to go around to the far side of the river, which is the Greengate side. Far side of the river, which is the Greengate side. That requires a mile and a half hike to the aid station after parking in kind of a Blair Witch Project kind of place in Central California.
Speaker 1:I love that description.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then if you wanted to hike all the way down to the river crossing, whether it's pace or crew, that's one of the unique sections of the course where crews crews can hike, flash, run with their runner for two miles. And this is something again on the experience of the race. There are three places on the course where and these are historic rules that have existed for a long time where crews can run with their runner, they can't carry their stuff, and there's a lot of. There's been a lot of conversation, including Coop and I. We've had this conversation about what exactly are the rules about those places. But there's almost two miles, for example, going into Forest Hill and leaving Forest Hill on paved road, where crews can run with their pacer, with their runners. That means you can have five people with you if you want, can have, you know, you can have your whole family with you.
Speaker 2:Similar on the far side river crossing all the way up to green gate. That's two miles and it's pretty much straight uphill. You can have your crew with you. And then, perhaps the most famous section is you can have your crew with you from roby point, which is mile 98.9, when you enter Auburn, all the way to the finish line around the track. So once you've made those decisions one crew or two crews Robinson, flat, michigan Bluff or Duncan or Dusty, and then nearside or far side of the river then you just want to have your crew plan.
Speaker 2:And important to think about in your crew plan is time. We learned last year that a whole host of reasons there are aspects of time management for crews at Western States that are difficult to predict the wait time to get on a shuttle, the potential for having difficulty finding 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 race puts on a very good crewing, a Western States runner kind of a panel discussion. But you know you want to have that crew plan completely dialed before you even get on the airplane or start the road trip out there.
Speaker 1:Can I ping off of that, getting it dialed beforehand? And this goes back to managing the two days beforehand that we talked about earlier. One of the reasons it's important to have that ironed out and also be confident in the decision is that once you get to Olympic Valley, everybody has an opinion. Everybody has an opinion on everything. Should you change shoes at Robinson flat or should you change shoes once you cross the river? And if you only have one crew, should you do the a side or the B side and should you pick somebody up at the bottom of bath road and all of these little different things.
Speaker 1:You presented kind of an ambivalent argument for an athlete that only has one crew whether to go to the A side or the B side. If you're trying to make that decision based on consensus in Olympic Valley, that is consternation that you don't need in advance of the race and it's probably not that material. Anyway, you're probably going to be oak unless you're in a really thin performance situation, meaning like you're just barely scraping the cogs 1%, right, you're finishing in the last 15 or 30 minutes or something like that. That's where those decisions might come out to be relatively material. But it's far better to make to your point, andy. Make those decisions might come out to be relatively material, but it's far better to make to your point, andy.
Speaker 1:Make those decisions in advance, be confident about them. And then when somebody asks you cause this is what everybody's talking about, hey, are you having your crew go to the A side or the B side, are you switching shoes here? And like you can just say, hey, I already made the decision, I'm confident in it, I have my plan in this whole second guessing game, which has unraveled a lot of athletes plans over the years. You don't have to go through that second guessing game. So think about that in advance. Have everything solidified so that people are coming to you for the answers, not the other way around, not you going to the other people and trying to build an answer based off the consensus, because that is worth way. That is more consternation in the couple of days before the race than it's actually worth.
Speaker 2:I agree, I completely agree, and that's a very good point, because everybody has an opinion in Olympic Valley and I, intentionally, by the way, didn't share, didn't? I do not, I won't say to the general public oh, you have to do Duncan and Dusty, don't bother with Robinson or Michigan, I mean because everybody's different. But if I think of my five athletes and we haven't had this conversation yet but you know, if I think of my five athletes, there are certain advantages and disadvantages to each one, just as there are certain advantages and disadvantages to nearside or farside. I will say, though, back to my introvert, extrovert thing, you know, for those people who might be more extroverted and would just love to have a good chunk of time to talk to their crew and family going to the far side, even though it's a lot more work to drive around there and park and hike down, when you think about it, you get two miles, so we were talking 35 to 50 minutes to hike with your runner.
Speaker 2:You know, on the West, to actually share in the Western States experience with your runner, and if they've made it 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 cool about being able to have that experience. And so what I've said to some of my athletes in the past not this year, because I haven't had this conversation yet is, you know, you might really want to be able to talk to your husband for a full two miles going up that climb, talk about how your day has gone so far, Talk about what you're going to need when you meet them again at pointed rocks and so forth. I think that could be one of those things that impacts that decision and those things are important. Again, coop, going back to the once in a lifetime thing, you know, being able to.
Speaker 2:My mom still talks about being able to walk out of Michigan Bluff with me in 2005 because it just meant a lot to her and they said, oh yeah, you can walk with him, you know, all the way down to that sign down there and I mean, and that was, you know, 19 years ago, but it was an experience for her that was, I think, really important. So we should think about that. I want to switch to athletes managing the course, because I think most people have heard me on this podcast or my own podcast know that I'm a big sports guy, and one of the sports I love because it's really, you know, a cerebral sport is golf, and there are a few iconic golf courses that require that are as much about physical as they're about mental. I think specifically of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St Andrews and Augusta National in Georgia, where the Masters is played every year. These are courses that defy sort of modern logic. Right, they're not excessively long, they're not excessively difficult, with long, rough or lots of water hazards or huge carries over large stretches of land. But for whatever reason, they get in people's heads you know the 12th hole at Augusta National, which is 150 yards long with a small little pond in front of it Invariably you end up having six to eight people plunking their ball in the water there each and every year.
Speaker 2:Western states, along with, I would say, leadville, hard Rock, utmb, these are courses that have kind of that same effect on people On paper. On paper, the Western States course, you know 23,000 feet of descent, 18,000 feet of climbing, really smooth California trail. You know huge amounts of daylight because you know it's one it's usually it's in late June where there's, you know, 15, 16 hours of daylight, not a lot of nighttime running. On paper this should be a relatively easy race to run. In reality, because of its mystique, because of the unique challenges of the way the course is laid out, it is definitely not easy to run. So what I'd like to do is just highlight I think I'm going to highlight five sort of flex points or points on the actual course that can kind of make or break your race. And the first one, not surprisingly, comes right out of the gate because you have a 2,800, you have a 2,800 foot climb over four miles, you know, up a ski hill.
Speaker 2:It's cool in the morning, it's beautiful. You've been waiting all this time for the race and it's an old adage at Western States Nobody can win the race on the climb over the escarpment, but lots and lots of people can lose it on the climb over the escarpment. So that's flex. Pinchpoint number one is the opening climb. You can take a look at it the day before or two days before. It's all pretty much fire road. There's one little trail section at the top. It's a 2,800 foot climb in four miles. You've probably done that a gazillion 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 is really easy to get caught up in the moment of the morning. You see all these elite runners there. You see you're at Western States. Finally, you know, remember, you top out at almost 8,800 feet, not high for some people, but plenty high for other people. That is definitely pinch point number one. Pinch point number two Okay, you're going to crest the hill.
Speaker 2:You're going to run through the Granite Chief Wilderness, which this year it looks like mercifully, in contrast to last year, we'll have significantly less snow. Maybe a patch of snow here or there. It'll still be really wet. It'll be muddy. Your feet will get wet through there. Don't get me wrong just because it's going to potentially be a low snow year, you'll still be getting wet. Through the Granite Chief Wilderness. You'll make your way through the first aid station at Lion Ridge, the second aid station at Red Star Ridge, the third aid station at Duncan Canyon. Then you're going to have this nice little jog down to Duncan Creek and you're going to cross Duncan Creek, which usually is knee high up to potentially waist high, and you're going to hit the second pinch point.
Speaker 2:I talk about this section a lot but not everybody pays attention to it. Imagine again on the golf analogy you get to the sixth hole and all of a sudden there's this big dog leg and the headwinds are blowing and the clouds are coming over the climb from Duncan Creek to Robinson Flat. Okay, it's about a five mile climb. You get to the top in four and it's relatively level. For that last mile. The bottom section was burned in the star fire way back in 2001. It's still completely exposed and, mind you, now you're at about mile 25 and a half and it's where you're getting the first hint of the warmth of the day. The first hint is it going to be a hot. Up till this point you've been running in this beautiful Alpine, high altitude pine trees, everything else. Now you're in this burn. You're on this kind of dusty, kind of desiccated trail and you're making this climb up and the day is starting to.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm a quarter of the way through. How am I feeling on this climb? How is everything going? And you're grinding a little bit there. That is a pinch point. You need to make sure you leave Duncan Canyon with a lot of water. It's 24, it's a six mile stretch. 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 and you've had two pinch points. Hopefully and we say this to everybody all the time it's a 50K. Hopefully you get to Robinson Flat as if you're just on a nice easy training run. Right, the cutoffs are pretty tight at Robinson Flat. You've got to be able to run that first 50K in nine hours. But if you're smart, especially in these two pinch points, I think you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1:I do that run more often than not from Robins and Flat down to Duncan Canyon the morning of the race for just a normal training run. It's a reasonable training run. Oh yeah, I mean you just do that section just to kind of illustrate your point that it's a pinch point. If you just do that on fresh legs, that's a reasonable training run, like an effective hard training run, just for any normal person to go and do. And the fact that you're experiencing it almost 50K into the race, 25 miles into the race, just kind of illustrates like okay, now it's real.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and so much as you know Coop, so much attention. It's real. Well, yeah, and so much as you know coop, so much attention justifiably so is spent paying attention to the canyons we know, which we're going to talk about in a second, that people don't forget. I mean in while, technically speaking, the climb from duncan creek to robinson flat is not a canyon, but it is a long, grindy climb and it's one, and it's one 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, should I 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 would see people who especially went out too fast, you know. Starting to come back to you, yeah, I mentioned the canyons, okay, and this may surprise some folks.
Speaker 2:So you get to Robinson Flat. You have what is essentially amounts to a 13 mile, basically a downhill half marathon, all the way on beautiful trail, all the way to the swinging bridge which is at the bottom of the Devil's Thumb climb. You make the climb up to Devil's Thumb. You know 2,000, 2,100 feet and just under two miles you get to Devil's Thumb, you have a little bit of flat, you make the descent down to El Dorado Canyon. You go up to Michigan Bluff, if you have that A crew. You see, your A crew at Michigan Bluff. 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, and you're like agw, why isn't deadwood canyon and el dorado canyon a pinch point?
Speaker 2:I was about to say you skipped a big part of the course there I did, but that is because the pinch point is Volcano Canyon and part of it is, by the way. They're seven miles, mile 55 to mile 62, devil's thumb to Michigan Bluff. Seven, eight miles, five miles down, seven and a half, two and a half up. These canyons can often make or break an athlete's race, but it's Volcano Canyon and Coop you sent me some splits of some runners that ran Volcano Canyon in the Canyons race, which was in early April. This is a section that can take really fast runners 50 to 55 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 I first ran Western States in 2001, this section just kicked my butt and I said to my wife I am not running Western States again until I have figured out how to run Volcano Canyon.
Speaker 2:You leave Michigan Bluff on a nice smooth dirt road. You make a right-hand turn and have 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 turn onto a single track trail that just drops and drops all the way down to Volcano Creek.
Speaker 2:You cross Volcano Creek, you have no choice but to get wet through there. There's no bridge, there's a little place where you can dunk and submerge just a little bit upstream and then you have it's only a mile climbing up this steep embankment that then spills out onto Bath Road and then Bath Road is a paved road that takes you up to Forest Hill. But this is a section that should not be overlooked. Most people are like oh, I made it to Michigan Bluff, the canyons are over, they are not especially crossing Volcano Creek grinding up that last climb. Even when you get onto Bath Road, people are like oh, okay, we're on the paved road, I'm just going to walk up here to Forest Hill and it's a mile, 1.4 miles, up that hill until you get to Forest Hill. So don't overlook Volcano Canyon, pinch point number three.
Speaker 1:I think what fools a lot of people is because the edges of the or the borders of that section are seemingly benign. So the exit from Michigan Bluff it's on a dirt road. That climb that you just mentioned is hard but it's still a dirt road. Yeah, people think when you get to Bath Road, oh, I'm almost to Forest Hill, but that is still a hard climb, even though it's on a road right and it's still a reasonable, kind of a reasonable length. And then they think that the descent going into Forest Hill, although it's flat and fast, is free. It's still not free and it's still actually a pretty decent chunk of real estate to kind of cover. I kind of think that everything that you just mentioned combined, in addition to the fact that Michigan Bluff is from a distance perspective maybe not from a duration perspective, but from a distance perspective over halfway into the race all of that combined makes it the forgotten Canyon. We'll start calling it that and we'll see if the name will stick the forgotten Canyon.
Speaker 2:A note on Michigan bluff as well. Because and again, runners who are in their planning stages, everybody knows you're allowed pacers at Western States, you know, and if you arrive at Michigan bluff at eight o'clock or later, so 15 hours into the race, you can start with a pacer at Michigan Bluff. If you arrive there before eight o'clock at night you have to wait until Forest Hill or technically you could have a runner, you could have a pacer run down to the bottom of Bath Road, which is mile 60.6, and have 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 to Michigan Bluff after eight o'clock. Pacer, be ready and you're going to be running. That Pacer's first assignment will be running you through this pinch point. So you get to Forest Hill. This is really the first time you're into sort of what feels like civilization in a long time.
Speaker 2:Michigan Bluff is a small town. There's a lot of crews and pacers there, but in Forest Hill you're on a road with a yellow line down the middle. You know there's people living their lives on race day that live there, that have traveled up to watch the race. Whatever else. There's a similar to Olympic Valley. In the first two days before the race there is just a lot, a lot of energy going on at Forest Hill. There's music playing, there are spectators. This is a place where actual spectators have come to to watch the runners come through fun place to be. My suggestion to runners is you know to you're going to have your crew there is to get in and out of the of that sort of high energy environment as much as possible.
Speaker 2:You've now run a hundred K. You still have 38 miles to go and and the next 16 is the California street section and 16 miles. There's three aid stations along the way. You get to Cal 1 after three miles, cal 2, 5 after that, cal 3, 3 after that and then the final five. That takes you to the Ruckie Chucky River Crossing. A lot of it is on single track trail, depending on your pace. If you're a 24 hour hopeful, you need to try to get to the river crossing by about 11 o'clock at midnight at the latest. So this is for many runners this is nighttime. You know this is. You're running at night, you're running in the dark, hopefully. You know you're perhaps running with a pacer and pinch point number four comes from cal three to the river crossing oh I wasn't gonna guess that one so you get, you go through cal one, you go through.
Speaker 2:You were probably going to say cal one to cal two which is okay, I will. I'll give honorable mention to cal one, to cal two, which is a five mile stretch, the the people mistakenly say, once you're at forest hill, it's all downhill to the river. It is not all downhill to the river. There are 15 rollers going through there.
Speaker 1:The 15,.
Speaker 2:there's like 35, 15 rollers when you when you get to Cal three, you're basically at the 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, you get to a place where ultra runners go to die.
Speaker 2:Locals call it sandy bottom. It's this sandy, sandy, overgrown, humid, dark. It feels like you've all of a sudden gone into like Lord of the Rings for some reason, and you still have four miles to the river crossing. All you're thinking about is I'm going to get on this boat or I'm going to get to you know this river crossing and I'm going to be good. And guess what? You're not good.
Speaker 2:There's climbs, it switches from single track to road and you could be starting from Cal 3, feeling great and getting to the Rucky Chucky River Crossing like, oh my gosh, this is just miserable. Whether your crew meets you on the 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 mile climb up to Green Gate, and now you just have 20 miles left to go, just 20. And so, coop, what are you telling your runners at this point? Because I'm going to run in the other room, by the way, and get my charging cord real quick, because I realize we're going to on in the other room by- the way and get my charging cord real quick.
Speaker 1:And because I've got a stall, you'll read a stall. We'll see if we can keep the stall live and I can keep the entertaining going. Okay, so to piggyback off of AJW as best I can. He obviously does it the best. This cow three section to the river.
Speaker 1:One of the things that a lot of runners get tripped up in is the river is right there. It is literally right there. You can see it. You can actually kind of feel the humidity coming off the river, you can smell it, you can hear it and it makes you think, particularly even if you have run the race before or done the training camp or whatever. It makes you think like you're almost there. And then, inevitably you get a little bit further down the trail and you're like, oh wait, I'm not almost there. I'm actually five kilometers or four miles from actually getting all the way down to the Rucky Chucky aid station. So there is a little bit of a of psychology that goes on right there, because you feel like you're much, much closer than you are. And then you combine that with the fact that you're so far into the race. At that point you're much, much closer than you are. And then you combine that with the fact that you're so far into the race, at that point you're 75, some odd miles into the race. You're definitely fatigued to this point. Sure, you have a pacer, you have done a lot of descending, almost all of the descending and the race has come up to this one point right here, and that that mix of all of those variables it's almost like the volcano canyon section that AJW mentioned earlier that mix of all of those variables takes what should be a relatively benign section of the course and turns it into something that AJW is describing as a pinch point. I did a great job, by the way.
Speaker 1:Ajw just came back on the air of describing again this Cal 3 section, and the thing that I added to it was the psychology of thinking that you're close to Ruckie Chucky and not. The river is right there, you can see it, you can smell it, you can hear it. The humidity is actually a little bit hard. You can almost touch it at a couple points and reach into the water and grab it, but then all of a sudden you realize that you're not close because you've either done your homework or you've done the race before, or you've done the training camp and some feature between Cal three and Rucky Chucky hits you, and for people it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Some people it's a Sandy section, some people it's a little climb that that kind of emerges from there. You all of a sudden realize that you know what excuse me, I'm not as close as I thought I was, and you are absolutely right, I have been at Rucky Chucky. I can't, as you have many years and we're watching the splits come through the feed right there, cause that's the only information that you have is who's where. And from one section to the next, runners go from hey, they're doing great, to what happened, but like, like they get there and that's what you actually say to them, like what happened in the last hour where you were running so fantastic. And now you're here and this is a completely different ball game.
Speaker 2: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 on hand ahead of time, but I didn't. You know. If I could just further along my golf analogy a little bit, because I've spoken, you know, western States veterans and trace and Tim Tweetmeyer, craig Thornley We've had conversation.
Speaker 2:Megan Canfield, we've had conversations about this. What is it? What on earth is it about this Cal Street section, this 16 miles, and particularly that last five that makes it so difficult? And it is. It is analogous to that.
Speaker 2:You look at the golf hole and it just seems like, well, I just tee the ball up here and I hit it over there, but maybe there's a little tilt of the green or a little 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, but you're right, coop, a little bit. Something different for everyone that last little kicker climb, that sandy section, the fact that it's a little bit more humid, the mental impact and just hearing the river right there. I mean, let's face, many people if they know one thing about western states, they know that they're going to get to cross this river at mile 78, whether they're going to do it on a boat. They've seen the pictures, they've seen the videos. They've seen you know you know anybody who's finished Western States they'll spend 50 bucks to buy the picture of them crossing the river, right. They know that's coming and yet it's not there yet.
Speaker 1:It's not even close to there, yet it's sometimes two to there, yet it's sometimes two hours away.
Speaker 2: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 you with, you've got this 20 miles to go. Now managing the course here. Everybody has said, and it's true, if you were, if you're an elite runner, a 24 hopeful, a 30-hour finisher, if somebody just and hopefully you did this on training camp weekend, if somebody just plopped you down at Greengate on fresh legs and said all you got to do is follow these markers and run the Western States Trail back to Placer High School, you would be like what's? This race isn't that hard. I mean there's a, you know there's. It's 20 miles. There's a bunch of aid stations, there's a few little climbs in there, but it's nice, smooth California trail. It's not at altitude, it is. It's beautiful. I mean I've run, I've run Greengate to the finish so many times. I love it. It is just a, you know it's. There's a couple of sections of road, there's a couple little creek crossings where you can jump on rocks. There's maybe one sort of technical section from the site of the former Browns Bar aid station down to the Corey Road. But really it's a beautiful, wonderful section. And in fact, if the entire western states course was like the final 20 miles. You know it probably wouldn't be as iconic of a race as it is. However, it is here that you get the fifth pinch point, the fifth and final pinch point, and it comes at mile 90. At mile 90, you begin descending down a relatively technical section of trail that spills out onto the Corey Road, which is a really nicely groomed dirt road that runs right along the American River. So now, after climbing up Green Gate and running along for about 10 miles, you descend back down to the shores of the American River. Again. There is the Corey Road aid station, which is manned every year by the folks from Rogue Valley running Hal Kerner and his team down there. It's a really good aid station. You've got less than 10 miles to go. At this point. You run along the road for about 1.2 miles and then you make a left-hand turn. This is the famous left-hand turn that Jim Walmsley missed in 2016, the first time he ran the race. You go from and I know these names are confusing you go from the Corey Road to the Corey Trail, and that Corey Trail is just a butt kicker. It is a butt kicker.
Speaker 2:It was in this exact location when I ran the race in 2004 that Dean Karnasas some of you might have heard of Dean Karnasas who was running without a pacer and without a crew came up behind me. He had two bottles filled with ice water and it was going. I turned behind there's Dean Karnasas with his two ice bottles, his bucket hat on his red shorts, no shirt. I was running with my pacer, errol the rocket Jones, and I was like Errol, we got company. Errol turns back. He's like it's Dean. Dean just flew past us and he's like he was. He's kind of turned to me and he said hey, ajw, be careful, this climb up here to highway 49 is a bitch and he was ripe. You make that left-hand turn and he, by the way, he was gone. Dean was gone. I never saw him again. He finished a couple places ahead of me that year.
Speaker 2:But that climb up to Highway 49, similar to how you can hear the river when you're going down to the river crossing you can hear the cars on Highway 49. The cars going by. For most of you it's dark at this point. You can hear the cars A bunch of them are probably crews running back and forth and the cars 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 not coming.
Speaker 2:You get up, you see the actual quarry. The road and the trail are named after it. You run right by the Corrie. Nope, nope, you're not at Highway 49 crossing yet. And you finally come out. Now there's not even an aid station at Highway 49, which is smart. They've moved it eight-tenths of the mile up the trail to the Pointed Rocks location where Coop goes every year. Thank goodness for all the CTS runners Mile 94.7. But when you cross the Highway 49, you still have eight-tenths of a mile of climbing. So the highway, the Quarry Road climb amounts to about 1.8 miles Again, on fresh legs it would seem like nothing, but if you're chasing 24 or you're chasing the cutoff, this climb.
Speaker 2:Finally, mercifully, you make it to the pointed rocks aid station at mile 94.7. You can see your crew again for the last time. You haven't seen them since the river, whether near side or far side. So it's been 15 miles probably since you've seen your crew. And you make it to Pointed Rocks and you've completed the fifth and final pitch point. You're in a beautiful, cool meadow up just outside of cool California. You've got 5.5 miles to go. A lot of that is downhill. You're going to go downhill to the Nohans Bridge. There's no aid station at Nohans Bridge there, and if there was a sixth pinch point at this point it would be the climb from no hands bridge to Roby points, because it will, especially for those of you chasing the cutoffs. And now it's now. The sun has risen on day two.
Speaker 1:It's always hotter on now however hot it was on day one.
Speaker 2:It's always hot on day two, always, always. You climb up from no hands bridge, you make it to roby point and you run in on the paved road to the track so you mentioned kind of this anticipatory point, which is a kind of a common theme.
Speaker 1:Right, we had the anticipatory point of forest hill with all the energy. We have the anticipatory point at rucky chucky where you're going through sandy bottoms and you know that cal 3 section where you just can't kind of figure out where the aid station actually is. The anticipatory point here is that crossing over highway 49, you have the sights, the sounds, the headlights, maybe even if you've uh run the race before, the vision of going by the actual quarry and then seeing the road which seems like five miles later but it's really not that far. After that, at what point are they going to hear you? Because this is a role that you have taken on over the course of the past couple of years to be a source of inspiration for people as they're actually crossing the road. So you want to take the listeners through that First off. Are you doing that again this year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for bringing that up, coop the. So when highway 49, just, it's mile 93 and a half. Okay, so it's your smell in the barn.
Speaker 2:And for all the years I ran the race there was an aid station at the. You would cross this really busy highway really and they would have the aid station right there. It was a really big challenge as the race grew, and especially pacers and crews. They would park up at cool, take a shuttle down. It's a really busy road. There was a police presence down there with flashing lights to make sure that people don't get hit by cars and so on and so forth, that people don't get hit by cars and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So in the infinite wisdom of the race it was about five or six years ago they moved the aid station eight, eight tenths of a mile up to a much more pleasant place. Crews and pacers still have to hike in about a mile. It's a relatively flat hike but it's a great location for an aid station. It's beautiful. The same people who used to do the Highway 49 crossing do that. They have their RV there, fully staffed aid station. But the race realized hey look, we still need people to help the runners get across Highway 49. We still need traffic people there, we still need to have a policeman there. It's still a really busy road and they got this idea of essentially having like a pep squad down there, you know, basically cheerleader squad in fluorescent vests.
Speaker 1:But please tell me you have pom-poms too. You've got to complete the ensemble.
Speaker 2: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, I do crewing at Michigan Bluff, I announce for two to three hours at the finish line at Placer High School when the 24-hour finishers have finished. So I start there at 5 am. But I have this kind of dead four or five hours where the race organizer said I got a job for you, ajw, we're going to send you down the Highway 49 and you're going to be part of the pep squad. So Nicole is the person who organizes the group down there. We have four or five people down there and the period of time that I'm doing the hype man thing down there is for those people who are on the 24 hour bubble, all right. So again, if you're doing the math, 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 hours to go, six and a half miles, but two, two, 33, three, 30, you know you're getting to three, 30. You got to run that in an hour and a half. You're, you know, and so I'm down 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 fun times of the whole.
Speaker 2:It's the middle of the night, right, it's two, three in the morning. We're at this random road crossing on the Western States course. But you can tell when the runners know they're on that 24-hour bubble especially if they're like they got to make it in an hour and a half they're hauling ass. They're not going to be able to stop 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. Certainly a highlight of race weekend for me.
Speaker 1:Well, people will be. People who are on the bubble are 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 AJW along that section of trail, relative to where the road crossing is? So we'll gather that feedback from all the people that are right around that 24 hour bubble and come to some sort of consensus. How's that sound?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in in in variably coop, I end up getting the monsters, uh booth, and, and I have a, a Husky horse voice already from cheering those folks on.
Speaker 1:but uh, that's all good, all good, okay. So we have this like overview of the race, and nobody can do it like you. That was absolutely brilliant. But along with that there are also some common, like decision making points that pretty much every runner, or at least groups of runners, need to make in terms of how they manage the day, and then different inflection points that can actually occur when it's hot to cold, dark to light to dark, all those kinds of things. Let's move on to that next piece. They now have the race kind of cemented in their head and they're going to have to go and execute that race. In your experience as a coach and also as an athlete, what are the major decision-making points or decision-making catalysts that these athletes are going to have to go through?
Speaker 2:I've actually had a conversation with one of my athletes about this and then the other four I'm going to continue to have over the next couple of weeks. When you and I first started in the sport, we carried a lot less stuff, and so you know Western States doesn't have any mandatory gear. You know, the biggest weather condition issue there is going to be heat. You obviously have to be prepared for the nighttime, but I ask athletes relatively early on to plan out their what they're going to carry. You know, do you have to run all hundred miles with a vest? Maybe you like wearing your vest? You know that your vest works for you. Okay, yes, but do you have to use a two liter bladder the whole time? Could you use two 500 milliliter water bottle? Could you make that? Could you switch out? Could you take your vest off? For example, at Robinson Flat you wear your vest for the first. Now, this is just an example, by the way. Wear your vest for the first 30 miles, but take it off and change it out for handheld bottles that you might use between Robinson Flat and Michigan Bluff. You have aid stations every four to five miles through that section. There's places where you can fill up your bottles and squirt it on yourself for dousing, for cooling purposes. But make those decisions. Maybe just switching out having no vest from mile 30 to mile 25, 55, then putting it back on at 55 and running it the rest of the way. Maybe you get rid of your vest when you get to Greengate, your mile 80, you've been running with your vest for 80 miles. Get that off your back. Run the final 20. It's the cool of the night with two handhelds or maybe a waist pack with a hand up. Make some of those decisions. Talk about that. If you have a coach, talk about that with your coach. Talk about that with other people who've run the race. You know, make those decisions now how much stuff you're going to carry. You don't need a jacket, I mean you can. You might need to switch to a and have a long sleeve shirt with you through the nighttime. Obviously, you're going to need to figure out your lighting system and when you're going to pick that up. Maybe you're going to pick it up at Michigan bluff. Maybe you're fast enough. You know I would pick up an emergency light at Forest Hill and then my big light for the night at Greengate. You know when I was, you know, moving relatively fast through the course. But make those decisions about your gear and how much stuff you're going to carry. You're in Western States, you do not need a lot of stuff. We've already talked about chain shoes or not chain shoes or, you know, make those decisions ahead of time.
Speaker 2:The other piece I want to talk about managing the course and, like I said, you have to assume it's going to be hot is make decisions about are you going to submerge yourself in cold water? Okay, there are some absolutely wonderful garden spots on the Western States course that take a little work to get to. When you cross the famous swinging bridge at mile 45, if you want to submerge yourself in the river, you can. But I would also say, 200 yards down the trail is a spring coming right out of the rocks pouring water out and you can submerge yourself completely under that. Put your hat under it, fill your bottle. Now, when you get to El Dorado Canyon, you can go cross the bridge. There's a little footpath down. You can get yourself complete. Now you're at mile 52 and a half. You can get yourself completely in that water, submerge yourself using a couple of minutes. Likewise through Volcano Canyon.
Speaker 2:But I want to pause because a mutual friend of yours yours and mine, topher Gaylord, shared with me this I didn't know this. There was a climb up. On the climb up to Michigan Bluff there are two creek crossings that look like they're little trickles. But I was running the race one year and I knew at the time Topher had still been ahead of me and I got up to this point and I hear, you know, way off to the right, hey AJW, and I look and there's Topher. He's laying down, completely thrown in this creek. It's probably six inches deep but he's completely, you know, completely covered in water and everything else. So I know this is sort of funny but sort of not.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of places along the course and if you have decided ahead of time yes, I'm going to take three minutes and submerge myself in this cold water you make that decision ahead of time and you just do it. So you do it about gear, you do it about soaking, you do it about shoe changes and those kinds of things. You know those are kind of the key and lighting system. You know you don't want to, you don't want to err on the side of oh, I'm sure I'll make it to the river and it'll still be daylight. Don't do that, you know, for lighting air on the side of of of earlier rather than later, but but those are the kinds of decisions that, I think, allow you to control the controllables on race day.
Speaker 1: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 end up using the glow what was the technology called on the Timex watches before we all had GPS watches like the glow now technology or whatever, to try to light the trail. That's another story for another day. The common theme that keeps coming up is make the decisions ahead of time so that the few days before the race and then during the race you're basically spending less brain cycles determining what you actually need to do, because, I mean, ultra running is inevitably a kind of like an intellectual game as well, going back to your golf analogy and it's a lot of very small decisions that you constantly have to make. 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 little thing 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 different decisions, some of them you have to make in the middle of the race. Do I speed up, do I slow down?
Speaker 1:Right, that's a race day decision that you just have to kind of like figure out, for the most part during the actual course of the race.
Speaker 1:But the more you can take your brain out of it during the race by planning and kind of pre-programming these things, it frees up the energy that you have to locomote down the trail, hike, run, douse yourself, whatever you're doing down the trail, because those brain cycles actually do matter. I mean, we've all heard the story of the athlete that quote unquote, over, overthought what they were doing on race day. And sometimes that overthinking is not just like second guessing yourself. Some of that overthinking actually impacts the energy that you're expending, not that maybe not so much the caloric energy, but the total energy that you have available in terms of all the resources that you have to manage the heat and manage the intensity and manage the physical pain and the muscular breakdown and things like that. The more energy that you have towards those by taking those decisions kind of out of the like, automating them right, like making the decision beforehand, the better off your race is going to be once, once you're actually down to the execution piece.
Speaker 2:And related to execution. I didn't. One of the. The last piece of decision-making I think that's important and this involves the crew as well is around nutrition right. We're, we as coaches, are working with our athletes to create nutrition plans for them. We are working in, obviously, collaboratively with them. What works, what doesn't, you know, and some of those decisions are. You know, I'm going to take this here, I'm going to take this there, I'm going to take this there. But this also is a time to put some of that decision-making in the hands of the crew.
Speaker 2:And I'm reminded, coop, of the experience you had a couple of years ago crewing your athlete, katie Scheid, at UTMB, where her nutrition plan, as it was laid out, was at some point in the race it was clear it was not working and you, as a crew, you had to spring into action and go to some of the local stores that were fortunately open late into the night and purchase a variety of products and figure out how to problem solve. You know, problem solve the nutrition plan from there. I tell that story a lot to my athletes and to their crews that it's like okay, you might have the. Okay, two gels an hour and I'm going to drink this and I'm going to eat a sandwich at this aid station and everything else. But you also could get to the point where it's. You know it's the forest hill and you're at forest hill and nothing, none of this stuff is working, and so on and so forth. You know there's Wharton's grocery store right down the street. You know there's down in Auburn there is a huge Raley's that's open 24 hours, you know.
Speaker 2:So the crews might need to make that sort of game day decision of you know we're going to go down and get. You know you're in my favorite oatmeal, cream pies and cosmic brownies and we're going to, you know, or maybe it's got to be something. You know you've gone with something sugary and it's going to have to be savory, so we're going to try, and you know, find something savory and problem solve 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 are the decisions that are going to still have to be made on the floor. I just cannot possibly stomach another gel, or I cannot get down another bottle of tailwind or Roctane or whatever the case may be, and hopefully the athlete and the crew have maybe had those conversations before. Maybe even the crew has a little bag of stuff. You know that they haven't even told the runner about you know in the back of their crew vehicle.
Speaker 2:you know that. You know maybe there's a slice of pizza back there, or you know a McDonald's hamburger or something, cause you never know in the heat of the moment what's going 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're lucky, the nutrition plan works out and it's all great. But those are invariably areas where things go south Likewise, and you and I both spend a lot of time with this, with care right.
Speaker 2:You might you know there, there we. You know you might have a decision of like, oh no, I don't need to bring any other socks or I don't need to bring a foot. You know, probably a good idea to have something you know foot care related, whether it's in your 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 patch on your foot. You know, do that stuff ahead of time as well. So again, the ahead of time theme controllables is huge and it really is magnified. At a big race like Western States, because of the once in a lifetime thing, because it's such a unique course, because it's such a big event, I think all of those things can be magnified and it's important for runners and crews to really zero in on that.
Speaker 1:Well, also, one of the unique pieces of it is the environment. So in most hot years you're exposed to a really hot environment where you're constantly dousing yourself with water and you're constantly wet from sweat and water and everything for longer than you would be in training. So the shoe sock combination that you had for all of your training, that you have 100% confidence in, might only be valid to Forest Hill or down to the river or whatever. And then you've got to kind of figure out one solution that period of unknown from your longest long run or your previous experience or the previous time that you've been exposed to the temperature or the environment or whatever, to what you're actually going to experience on race day. Forecasting what's going to happen during that unknown, you kind of have to be honest with yourself that you're really providing educated guesses right. And even if you do have the experience I mean AJW 10 times doing Western States even then when you've been through the race time and time again, still something is different from one year to the next. Still some there's some problem solving elements. Still there's something that you have to kind of manage that was unforeseen or not to your plan or kind of whatever.
Speaker 1:I want to like leave this as kind of like a final note on the foot care side of things, because it is a. It is something that is it's not completely unique to western states, but I do think that it's amplified at a race like western states, especially in the hot years where everybody's like just wet the entire time. The other analogy would be like bad water right, where you're just constantly dousing yourself with water and your normal everyday shoe sock combinations just act a whole lot differently. There's this point of consternation of when do I ignore a small problem and just run through it, versus when do I take a few minutes to pop the blister, to patch it, to maybe get some professional help at an aid station or something like that, and spend three or four minutes actually managing something before it gets bigger. I'm wondering how do you counsel your athletes in advance for that inevitability, when they're noticing that they might have to take a little bit of downtime to either manage something or just suck it up and run through it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, excellent. And I do think foot care is, yeah, excellent, and I do think foot care is, I don't want to say, overlooked at Western States, but people worry about trashing their quads on the downhills and the stomach issues that, invari or not, as I mentioned at the outset, your feet 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 granite kind of stuff that's in the high country, okay. Then you drop down and they and the decomposed granite, the wet feet, are replaced by dusty, almost sandpapery, you know, moon dust that gets into your feet, that stuff.
Speaker 2:As I was talking about pinch point number two, the climb up to Robinson Flat, I mean there's just this dusty kind of. So right out by mile 30, your feet have been soaked and exposed to a couple of different abrasive elements into your feet. So I mean it's the age old thing. If it feels like a pebble in your shoe, it's probably a pebble in your shoe or a hotspot or a blister starting, and I don't care, if you know. And the biggest oh, I got an aid station in four miles.
Speaker 1:I'll just take care of it.
Speaker 2: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 the other side, though, because there does come a time when I'm not going to say, you know, it's not, it could be the river crossing, it could be later, but there does come a time where it's like you're so close to the finish that and your feet are so trashed that you know taking the 10 minutes to take your shoes off and do your socks and whatever is probably going to be a fool's errand. So somewhere there's a pretty big Delta, there's a pretty big Delta at Western States and Badwater. Between the time where you're like, okay, as soon as you feel something, deal with it, versus the time where it's like, okay, forget it. I'm just going to get this thing done, and it's different for every athlete, but a hundred percent and I'll say this specifically for Western States, because they are so good at it there is expert foot care out on the course and when you need it most.
Speaker 2:I had an athlete who finished the race last year sub 24 hours. He won. He had bigger dreams. He probably wanted to do sub 22. He's a relative local, lives in Tracy, california, but his feet going through the canyons were shot. He got to Michigan Bluff. He's like Andy I don't know if I can finish, I can hardly feel my feet blah, blah, blah. I walked him over. I said meet my friend Tanya Olson. Everybody knows Tanya Olson. She does feet at Michigan Bluff and he sat there. It was probably 40 minutes to get full. His feet were macerated. He had two blisters on both of his heels. He needed the foot care. He saw the clock ticking away, ticking. He got it done. He didn't do sub 22, but he got sub 24. And it was that 40 minutes at Michigan Bluff getting the professional foot care that saved his race.
Speaker 1:That's a big downtime, by the way, especially for a potential 22-hour finisher. In terms of percentage of the race there's not a lot of people that will take that amount of time. I don't know if he knew it was going to be that long kind of getting into it. He probably thought it was two or three minutes right and not 40 minutes. But I mean your point to manage things early and often, I think is probably the one that's like the best taken.
Speaker 1:So anything before Robinson flat, you notice something that might become a big problem. It is going to become a big problem. It's not a win. Or if it is going to become a big problem If you're already having some sort of foot issue at that point in time and if you have, if you know you've got a little bit of buffer between what you want to accomplish and where you're at, take the time to take care of stuff. You know there are really good professionals out there. If somebody in your crew knows how to do it really well, you can assign a crew person to that. That's normally my responsibility when I'm on these crews is you know I get foot care duty because I have. I don't have Tanya's level of experience or skill, but I've got you know more than somebody sticking a bandaid on it.
Speaker 2:Certainly, oh, you're and you're, and your foot care, your foot kit, is incredible.
Speaker 1:I have no excuse. I've got the right equipment and the right products.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got the right gear, for sure.
Speaker 1:But there still is. I mean to the expertise piece of it. The people who do it a lot, you know, and the physical therapists that are used to working with the tapes and things like that. They just have a different level of skill when doing that. They're you know all the little folds that you create with. We've only done it once or twice. Those people have just done it so many times that they're good at it. But, to echo your point, ajw, use the expertise that's actually out on the course. They want to help, they want they trust me, they like that's like their highlight of the year. They're like oh my God, I get to deal with blistered feet, you know, all day today and they get super jazzed about it. They get super jazzed about it. So don't feel bad about using that expertise. They're there for a reason and they enjoy doing it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely doing it. Absolutely, and it's. It is the Western States organizers know, you know that this is what's going to bring people 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, are you in the risk, or you're in a major risk category, or you know potentially on a on sort of heading towards rhabdomyolysis, but with feet, there are things that you can do, are mitigation strategies. There are and and but definitely using those. I cannot tell you how many times you know people, I've seen people getting there, getting brought back to life with their feet at Michigan bluff, and they've beelined straight into the medical tent at the finish line to thank the crew that helped them get out of there. I mean it's yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Well, and to that point on the feet, I know Tanya does this and I'm sure other people do this as well. They check up on you afterwards because they want to see their handiwork.
Speaker 2:They want to see if they're here.
Speaker 1:They want to see if their handiwork, like held up throughout the race, and then when you said they're like yep, I did a good job, you know it's just like a surgeon looking after, you know, their patient.
Speaker 1:Afterwards they're like yeah, I did a good job, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Okay. So I I'd be remiss if I didn't turn the floor like back over to you for like the final word. You know this is something that the race is really emotional. You know for you.
Speaker 1:You've been a part of the family for a long period of time and one of the things that you do the best is to bring that kind of emotion out to the listeners for this once in a lifetime, or maybe first in a lifetime really grandiose type of opportunity. So for all the listeners that are out there, I'm going to give Andy the last few I don't know how long this is going to last few minutes to the floor here. We might have a five hour podcast, the last few minutes of the floor here to listen to now as you're preparing for the last couple of weeks of the race. But if you want to rewind this podcast in the last couple of days of the race, specifically to this point here, I think it would be a good rallying point for you. So the floor is yours, ajw.
Speaker 2:Thanks Scoop, thanks Scoop, thanks Scoop. You know this is. It is emotional. Western States has always been emotional for me. I went to Western States for the first time as a runner in 2001. So this will be 23 years of going to the race. But it's particularly impacting me this spring because it's been this'll be the 10th year since I last ran the race. I ran the race for the 10th time in 2014. And and this is the 2024 race there wasn't a race in 2020, as we all know.
Speaker 2:You know, for me, the way in which Western States combines history and the absolute challenge of crossing that course and mixing it in with all the things that go wrong, and then thinking about those people who've spent it's getting towards a decade of trying to get in. There's, there's the mat. There's something magical that happens each year on the fourth weekend in June and I've been fortunate enough to experience it as a runner and now going into my my ninth time. You know, as a volunteer and you see the human endeavor kind of raw Western states. It gets turned inside out, whether it's a course record performance, like we saw last year, or a down to the second golden hour finish before the clock strikes 30 hours, you see just a human condition turned inside out, and it happens each and every year. So I would say to people I would say I say this to people all the time If you're one of those people out there who is like wondering, you know where your meaning in life is, where you might find a little bit more purpose in life. If you're one of those people who's out there just being frustrated, in kind, of the way the world is, you know whether it's you're frustrated at the divisiveness of the world, or you're frustrated at environmental destruction, or you're frustrated with corporate greed, or you're frustrated with any number of things. Lord knows, there's plenty of things that we can be frustrated by these days.
Speaker 2:Go to Western States, buy a plane ticket and go. Go. Buy a plane ticket to Sacramento and rent a car and drive up to Forest Hill on race day and sit in your lawn chair and watch these runners go through for six or seven hours and then back up your lawn chair and go to the track and sit there from about eight in the morning until 11 in the morning. You will be inspired. You will find a sense of hope in the world where there might be despair. You know, I know I'm biased. I've been going there for 23 years, but I brought up three kids who went there every year. We dragged them to all my races and they feel the same way every year, even though I'm not running it every year anymore. They're like hey dad, it's Western States weekend, you know, and they want me to send pictures. They're inspired by it and and I know there are folks out there that all the lottery it takes forever to get into or, oh, the entry fee is so much it's going to cost me like $5,000 between Airbnbs and flights and everything else. When you do it, when you do it, it'll all be worthwhile, and so that's what I want to leave you with Coop.
Speaker 2:It's just, you know, I happened upon Western States. I moved to the Bay Area in 2001. States I moved to the Bay Area in 2001. I moved there a couple months before 9-11, which was a kind of a very disruptive thing, and I immediately fell into this group of people who were all about Western States John Mettinger, ann Trayson and Tim Tweetmeyer and Craig Thornley, and the rest is history.
Speaker 2:And that's the other thing about this weekend is it's like a homecoming and a reunion, kind of all rolled into one. And even though every year now 80% of the people running Western States are running it for the very first time which is good, by the way. It's good that the race is making it available for so many first timers you know it's the family coming back together, you know, and whether it's parking cars at Duncan Canyon or hanging out and crewing at Michigan Bluff, or or, you know, doing the highway crossing at 49 or sitting with John and Lisa and announcing, you know, finishers come through the finish line, it is. It never ceases to inspire and amaze me how the human condition is on display every year on the fourth Sunday in June.
Speaker 1:Here's to the human condition. Nobody says it better, Andy. Thank you for coming on the podcast today. Man, we're going to leave it there. I always appreciate you. We hope to see everybody at Olympic Valley and then back in Auburn on the fourth week of June, right?
Speaker 2:Thanks, coop. Yes, indeed, it's the best time of year. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, there you have it. There you go. Much thanks to Coach AJW for lending his depth of expertise and knowledge to help you runners that are preparing for the Western States 100 get just a little bit more motivated and have a little bit more insight into the course. I encourage all of you to check out AJW's podcast. Crack a Brew with AJW, which is coming back in July, and I hear through the grapevine that is going to be a 200 miler theme for the next several weeks, so y'all be sure to check that out. I'm going to drop a link in the show notes. I always get a lot of intel and info from that podcast as well.
Speaker 1:All right, folks, hope you enjoyed this podcast. For those of you that are running the Western States 100 or participating as a fan or a crew, have fun out there, protect yourself from the heat, enjoy this iconic race and this iconic weekend. I always have a great time when I'm out there. We are coming out there in full force to support all of our CTS athletes, as we were talking about during the course of this podcast. Can't wait to see you all there and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.