Episode 446: WSER 100 - What We Learned
WSER 100 is becoming one of the most recognized and high stakes 100 mile ultramarathons for both professionals and ultramarathon participants. we can learn a lot about how participants are preparing and completing this event. Here are some things to consider from what we learned at the 2025 WSER 100.
Heat adaptation and in race management
The power of race day expectations
The psychology around group and competitive pressure
Considerations around varied weather events
The role of super shoes on the trails
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Timestamps/Topics:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:40 The Western States Endurance Run
00:04:24 The Challenges of Qualifying for Elite Races
00:08:23 Optimizing Training in Heat
00:12:22 Optimizing Body Cooling During Endurance Events
00:16:22 Strategies for Race Performance Improvement
00:20:26 Strategies for Race Readiness
00:24:46 Optimizing Hydration and Electrolyte Balance for Hot Weather Races
00:28:45 The Impact of Premium Shoe Foams on Trail Running
Episode Transcript:
Alright everyone, I want to do an episode here where I sort of unpack a little bit about the Western States Endurance Run, which is a 100 mile run that starts in Olympic Valley and goes all the way to Auburn, California. So it's a pretty unique course in that you can kind of cut it into three main categories, one being the high country, which is the first section, then the canyon section, where you're going up and down through some hot, dusty canyons that are very steep. And then finally a very runnable kind of gradual descent back to Auburn from there. So the reason I want to do this with this particular event is because we just have so much attention on this event now that all the media within kind of the ultrarunning world, essentially, at least in the United States, sort of descends upon this one, does a ton of pre-race interviews with different participants, the elites, the average entrant, the race directors and all sorts of different stuff that kind of comes into it. That gives us probably a higher level of access to information about things like how people are preparing, what stuff is being done specific to the course and everything that's going into the race day execution and things like that as well. On top of that, we sometimes get access to information about the coaches that are working with some of these participants and what their philosophies are, their approaches, and how that's kind of been built into individual training while preparing for a course like this. On top of all of that, and the uniqueness of the course itself, it's also a very temperature course, meaning that you start off usually in pretty cool temps, but then it can get quite hot up to 100 degrees in some spots, of course, too. So you're dealing with a pretty wide range of weather over the course, which is going to dictate to some degree what you're doing in different spots to make the race goals and things remain sustainable for you. And the other thing that's really unique about this one too, is since it's one of the most competitive hundred milers, if not the most competitive in the world, you get one of the deepest fields of elite talent, and it's a bit of a kingmaker, an event in that you see people like jump starting or continuing or building upon their careers based on their performances here, and that makes it kind of high stakes and a type of event where if you're on the top end of the pointy end of the spear, it just incentivizes you to really focus on this one and kind of make sure you're thoroughly going through all the processes you can in training and race day execution. But it isn't just this narrow focus on the top with that regard. It's also a high consequence for the participants being that the field is limited to 369 runners because of a section on the course through the Granite Wilderness area where you. Cannot have more than a certain amount of people on there at a given time. So what that ends up doing is you have a lot of people who want to get in this race, very few that actually can. So it could take you ten years of running qualifier races entering the lottery before you actually get into this one. So that kind of gives that aspect of high stakes, high pressure to everyone on that entrance list, regardless of whether they're going for the win or just trying to finish ahead of the cutoffs. Because for a person who's not an elite athlete who can maybe race in or get in through a sponsor exemption and things like that, you may only get to do it once. So I feel like it's sort of got that same level of pressure on everyone in the field, not just the top end, which also incentivizes somebody who is maybe targeting, say, a 24 hour finish at Western States or just simply trying to finish to try to do as much as they possibly can to optimize for race day there. So for this episode, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at this as like, we're going to take this year's Western states, and then maybe some of the characteristics of that event historically, and look at it through the lens of what can we learn from the fact that this is a race where we're probably seeing a higher than average amount of attention put on it by both the preparation and then just the awareness of things out there. So to get into it, I want to talk on a topic that was kind of a feature topic I think this year going into the race and then during the race, which is just heat acclimation and cooling protocols. So heat acclimation is something that's going to be, I think, important just in general for performance because there's a lot of value in leveraging heat acclimation, regardless of whether you're going to race in hot conditions or not. But when the temperatures can get as hot as they do at Western states. It just makes that even that much more important to be considering these things. So just so folks have some background information, I'm not going to go into the weeds with this, but some of the things you can expect from doing heat acclimation protocols is things like improved thermoregulation, enhanced cardiovascular efficiency, reduced perceived effort, increased VO2 max in the heat, and then better hydration management. So those are some of the bullet points of things that can improve. You can improve or expect to get some progress made simply from acclimating to the heat on top of the training that you're doing to also influence some of those things. the interesting thing I'll find about this is there is this sort of trade off or this negotiation you have to have with yourself between heat acclimation by doing some of the protocols that may be beneficial to that, but also thinking about, okay, I need to be also preserving quality of my training so that I'm not necessarily putting myself in a situation where I'm getting exposed to heat and I'm getting those benefits, but it's coming at the cost of the quality of my training. So the way I like to look at this one is first, let's look at what is required for heat acclimation so that we can kind of decide when and where, maybe to have those trade offs or make those potential trade offs. And then how do you actually maybe go and maybe not make any trade offs and try to get the best of both worlds with that? So if we're looking at just the acclimation, it's actually really quick, which is both good and bad. It means you can get it quickly, but you can also lose it quickly. So this just tells me that it's probably for someone who's maybe a little more time crunched, or don't have as much access to some of the stuff that could be used for heat acclimation. Your best off doing these things closer to the race, if you're going to be doing it in a short time frame, versus leveraging this throughout your entire training. But heat acclimation typically can take like 7 to 14 days if heat exposure. An example of a way to do this would be 60 to 90 minutes of daily exercise in warmer conditions. A target for that would be like 30 to 40°C, or 86 to 140°F. There's going to be diminishing returns beyond 60 to 90 minutes. So you don't necessarily do yourself any favors saying, okay, well, I'm going to go and do this three, four hour long run in blazing hot temperatures and expect to get the same amount of benefit in the second half of that session as you did in the first half. So usually if we're looking at it from an opportunity cost standpoint in terms of heat acclimation and preserving quality of training, I would be targeting sessions that are maybe more in that 60 to 90 range. If you're going to be doing that in the heat in order to get that benefit versus kind of skewing your your long runs that direction by doing things like heat suit training with your long run or doing long sessions in the heat on the indoors manipulated environment, things like on bikes or treadmills and things like that. So that's the way I would start with that. The other thing is. If you don't have access to hot weather and heat suit type stuff and things, those tools that you can maybe use for that. But you do have access to a sauna. Another way you could do this is you could just say, do a 60 minute workout and then hop in for 20 to 30 minutes. After that, You do that a few times a week for a few weeks leading into the race. You're also going to get some of those heat adaptation benefits and things like that. So that sort of is something where we saw a lot more people and a lot of highlighted athletes kind of doing those sort of things in their training, leading into the race to give themselves an edge on race day, to better tolerate and move more quickly, more efficiently through those hot sections of the course, as well as possibly also just moving better in general due to those sort of adaptations that they got from that. Then we get to the other side of things, which is, okay, we're in the race. It's really hot. How do I keep my core temperature down? And this is a topic that's been around western states for quite a while now. But I think every year we get a little bit better through just new products, new techniques, better access to resources and things like that in order to benefit from topical cooling or core temperature reduction when you're out there doing that. So what you often see at Western states now is a runner will go through an aid station, whether it's crewed or uncrewed. They'll be focusing at least one of their aspects on that transition of getting themselves cooled down. So the best way to cool down is to get yourself as cold as possible with lots of cold water. If you can submerge yourself entirely, that's like the best possible path forward. But most people aren't going to have access to that sort of stuff. So a lot of times seeing people doing things like dumping ice water on the runner or in some circumstances taking advantage of certain spots on the course where you have a stream where it's cool and you can submerge your whole body. Or the most notable part of the course is the river crossing at around mile 78, where you can essentially soak yourself for a little bit of a longer period of time in nice, cool water and kind of bring that core temperature down a little bit quickly, more quickly. but other things people are doing, too, is like trying to mitigate that between aid stations with things like ice bandanas. We saw a new product be debuted essentially, this week at Western States by Nike. That was almost like this. Net type croc top that. We don't really have a lot of information on what the mechanisms behind the cooling are. But there's been claims made about how that's just keeping core temp down by simply wearing that shirt. My suspicion there. Is there something to do with the way that the, the the fabric on that kind of holds on to the, the, the water that gets poured on it or sweat that gets into it to help with kind of that, that topical cooling or that evaporative cooling process without necessarily kind of suffocating you with like, you know, full on fabric over your skin and things like that. But I'm sure we'll get data on that as it comes out, so I won't speculate too much. The other thing I like to think about when it comes to topical cooling is just surface area, because really a lot of the cooling that's happening when you're out there is if we don't do anything, our body's just going to produce sweat, and that sweat is going to evaporate off of our skin, and that sweat being evaporated is actually pulling heat with it. So it's sort of pulling that heat away from your body while that sweat is being evaporated. So you can sort of enhance that process by just applying fluids to your skin in order to get that process. So then this just sort of becomes a surface area game where people try to think of it like, okay, well, I'll put ice on the back of my neck, I'll put ice on my forehead, or I'll put ice on my wrist and things like that. And those are more like perception based things where you're kind of like your body is perceiving cooling versus actually bringing core temperature down. Bringing core temperature down is going to be done by surface area coverage, which means getting fluids, liquids all on, on your body and places that are going to have the most amount of surface area that you can get, that pulling or that pulling of heat off through that evaporative process. And I think sometimes people forget that, like, you actually have more surface area on your arms and legs than you do on your core. So like your back and your chest and things like that. It's not to say that you don't necessarily want to still put fluid, liquid and stuff on, on, on all spots that you can. But, don't neglect those other areas where you can. You can cover a lot of surface area with topical cooling on arms and legs and things like that too. So we're just seeing like, better protocols being done, more frequent attention paid to that so that it's not something that you're just doing a few times over the course of the race, doing it in almost every aid station once the temperatures start to get up, and then at times even doing it in or in between aid stations, so that you can continue that process and keep that temperature down while you're running. one really interesting thing that I found is, Jim Walmsley was interviewed for prior to the race, and he was talking a bit about some of that process and things like that over the years that he's done Western states and other runners that he has talked to to around just the cooling process and things like that about like finding the spots on the course where you can submerge your body, but also making sure that you're taking care of yourself with fluid, with topical cooling and things like that in aid stations and between aid stations. and he actually said like, it's, it's that it's such a big deal with the temperature at Western states where he suspects that if you could move that course to a time of year or essentially, like build out a hypothetical where you run that course in optimal temperatures versus just the temperatures you end up getting and. Like he thinks he'd be seeing under 13 hours on that course with just the weather adjustment there. Which maybe he's right, that it can play a really big role. And I think part of the reason why we're seeing times get faster at Western states, especially kind of up front, where the athletes have a lot more access to resources, larger crews to help out with some of these processes and things like that, be able to really leverage that ability to stay cooler or sort of more or less create a microclimate around them. So they're moving through this harsh climate, but their bodies aren't necessarily in that because they've created this microclimate around themselves that's going to be relatively better or cooler than it would be if they didn't do these practices. And I think we're just getting better and more specific and more deliberate with those processes. I think this is something that's going to continue to progress. I think we're going to see tech that's easier to use, tech that's easier to use without a ton of extra resources, extra people as dominant with ice and water, which is a big lift, which Western states do a lot of for you at the aid stations. But again, you know, there's the spaces between those. And in a dry climate like Western states, it's just going to be something where whatever cooling you do in the aid station is going to be sucked off of you pretty quickly in that dry air, especially in the heat of the day. So that's something where I think it is worthwhile for all of us to look at things like, what are people doing for these pre-race and intra-race strategies to help improve performance? Is irrelevant to kind of where your actual training fitness puts you at. So how do you get that extra, that extra time off your finishing time without actually getting any faster, even though that is going to be one of the big movers in your training, is just training to be faster. But get yourself there. Get yourself a smaller step forward after that with some of those types of protocols. It is a really good strategy that I think we're learning more and more from Western states. The next one is race day expectations. I think this was an interesting topic this year, because you have a field of people who are going to have a variety of different goals, from the first finisher to the last finisher. Everyone's going into that event with different expectations, so you can have expectations where it's like, I'm either going to try to win this thing or I'm going to drop out super polarizing. That's as polarizing as it gets, right? Not finishing or winning the race. It really doesn't get any more extreme than that, all the way down to people who are like, okay, I have these tiered expectations where if I have the day I want to have, this is what I'm going to get out of it. If that ends up not being my reality on race day for one reason or the other, this is the next stage that I'm going to focus on. If that isn't and they just have multiple tiers all the way to getting to that finish line at the last possible second if they have to. So the reason I bring this up is I think it ends up being something where we see a little bit of a dichotomy here between the top tier runners and the rest of the field, because the a lot of times when you have a professionalization of this, there's a preservation of the body and future attempts and things like that. So if the goal that you've determined to be beneficial for your career is no longer on the table, there may not be as big of an incentive to stay out there and kind of die March your way to the finish. Now, we still see that at times. I think Adam Peterman is a perfect example of that. This year. Former winner had a bit of a rough patch midway through the race and then ended up not having the day he was looking for. But he and his crew worked together. And I think he mentioned in a post-race interview that at three points, he was. Determined to drop out and his crew kept him going. So he kept. There was enough of a Y there that he got to the finish line, despite not coming anywhere near his potential or his previous performances, which is first place for him. but that's not going to be the reality for everyone. So we're going to see a mix of that, and we're going to see likely a higher dropout rate from the top end, because one, if you're a really talented runner, maybe you're thinking to yourself, hey, I'll race myself back into this, and if I can get into next year and then I'll shoot for the goal I actually want versus the person who's got to go through the lottery as the only way through. They may never get in again. Or if they do, it could be ten more years down the road and then performance that they have available to their abilities ten years later, maybe quite a bit different. And then whatever, whatever expectations they would have for the race is just going to be different versus being able to get in in the next year or two. So my point with this one is just like when you're going into these races, whether it's Western states or any race for that, just be honest with yourself, with what you're willing to accept, if you're willing to accept a DNF or something, if you're willing, if you're willing to accept a DNF over finishing at a lower quality goal and it doesn't make a difference to you there. I think that's perfectly fine. But you do want to make sure that you're actually in that space. Because what I see a lot of times with these races is you go in with the mindset of, I want my goal. If I don't reach my goal, I'll drop out. And then you get to that point in the race and you're kind of like, well, maybe I'll try to come up with another goal to stay in this. It rarely works. Like you're coming up with a Y on the fly, is what I'll call it is almost impossible in these $100. I won't say it's impossible. I'm sure people have done it. But when you've gone in there without a strategy of what you're going to do, when that goal in front of you is no longer a possibility. It's just way more easy to drop out if you're not looking into something that you kind of preconceived before, to kind of keep that momentum going, keep that that progress going, even if it means finishing in a tear down or a couple tiers down from what you originally thought you wanted to try to get out of it. So sit down before the race and ask yourself, like, what are the stages of acceptability before it's no longer worth to me at the individual level, to still be out there and make sure you have all those accounted for before, so that you're not trying to come up with a Y on the fly. If you change your mind out there midway through the race, if things don't go according to plan. The other interesting thing I think I find about Western states is kind of like the psychology around group pressure. So there's. A really interesting thing. I think when we look at this through training, where you have a lot of people who are training either by themselves or with groups, with training partners or some combination of both. And I always look at this as like, there's this performance benefit you can get by training with other people and creating a group atmosphere. And then there's also sort of this group pressure and performance boost. Perhaps when you have that same sort of pressure of I'm working with or against this person as a driver when you're out there. On the event itself. So I think we've seen this really, really develop in the, the men's and women's top end of the Western states field because it's just gotten tighter where you have scenarios like this year where there's just not a lot of time between the first place and the second, third and sometimes further, positions where you have a situation this year where essentially it was inside a ten minutes between 1 and 3 on the men's side. So at no point were those three guys ever really able to take their foot off the gas pedal, and they were like, okay, I'm sitting in a comfortable spot. I just need to maintain it. They were always either chasing or running from someone who was right. Up right. Right, right near them. Last year was actually maybe even a better example of this, where I think that last year the top ten were just over an hour spread apart from one another, which is a really tight time frame for Western states to have ten people that are close to one another. This year is a little more spread out, and I think that's just because we maybe had a little bit more of a like field where people thought it was a little bit more open and they had a better chance at going for a higher position or the win. And then that just creates risk taking. That's going to ultimately be a numbers game at the end of the day of who survives that and who doesn't. So I think this year we probably saw maybe a little bit more pressure from that. And what that did is it really highlighted the kind of the podium, maybe in terms of people who survived that sort of breakneck pacing and then people who kind of struggled a little bit because of that. And then we just get a little bit of a bigger gap across that top ten thing. But that sort of pressure is going to be impactful on performance. So thinking about that in your own training and racing is how do you maybe leverage the community or leverage your friends, or leverage other people in the race to kind of help give you that sort of camaraderie of competition or in some cases, maybe teamwork to keep yourself moving when by yourself. You maybe wouldn't quite reach for that potential that you have available to you. This works in training. This works in racing. I think it's highlighted very nicely at Western states basically every year and will continue to probably get even more, more, more obvious as, as the growth, growth of the sport and that specific event continues to do. The other interesting thing I think is like considerations around varied, weathered races. So this one's really interesting to me at Western States because we have this emphasis of topical cooling, hydration and things like that as being a really important piece to the puzzle when you're out on these long races in general, but also maybe even more so in hot weather, climate races, because fluid loss is going to be greater. You're going to get up against and maybe beyond your processing limitations of taking in fluid. So there's this incentive to be on top of those things a little bit more. But I think you want to be careful about maybe applying what is going to work in a training setting or an extreme setting to the entirety of the course, versus looking at it through phases of where you're going to be at and what that weather is going to be like. So, for example, here, if I went out and I tested my fluid loss rates in hot weather and determined, okay, I'm going to need about this much fluid and electrolytes per hour in those temperatures. And then I go and I apply that to the first stage of Western states where the weather is a little bit cooler. I may be overloading the system unnecessarily with that, and then creating a problem that I have to try to climb my way out of, and ultimately lose some level of my opportunity that day to perform at the highest level, versus a scenario where, all right, in training, I'm going to test where my fluid loss rates are at in cool temps, moderate temps and hot temps and give myself sort of a range. So as I'm going through the course and through the different stages of the day and getting exposed to those different ranges of temperatures, I've got at least some starting point targets to go after when it comes to kind of the fluid and electrolyte needs and, and then evolve those as you kind of transition through those different stuff. So you get people on Western States courses where if you're out there long enough, you know, you're going to be going through the cool morning, the hot late morning, early afternoon. Early evening, and then you might even get the temperature start to come down a little bit near the end, where you kind of have a system where you might be ramping up your fluid and electrolytes into the day, and then maybe as you get closer to the late evenings and things like that, you might be tapering back a little bit just because now your needs are starting to shift back again a little bit, and you don't need as much of that. These are all things I think are worth paying attention to, and kind of considering when you're kind of looking at it, it's not just sort of like a one figure estimate. You want that range of courses like this. And a lot of ultramarathons have some element of this too, because of how long they are. You end up just going through multiple stages of the day, and then you're going to usually be exposed to a variety of weather in those circumstances. So that's another thing that I think is just a really interesting consideration around the weather and the planning and things like that, because to some degree to these all this all also plays into kind of like crew planning. If you're going to bring a crew out there, it's always great if you can have a crew that is set up in a way where they have a plan that is structured enough so they have some kind of basic expectations or roles that they know they're going to do, but are also like able to be a little bit flexible within them so that they can respond to what actually happens on the day. And if your crew kind of knows, all right, in these weather conditions, I'm going to be targeting roughly this in these weather conditions, I'm going to be targeting roughly that. And then they can have that setup ready and waiting for you when you get to them, based on what that is that you're going to need ahead of time. And then any changes you make are just going to be like smaller deviations versus starting to kind of start the planning process, so to speak. When you get into the aid station, which just tends to waste a little more time, and then you end up with inflated, non-moving time and costing you finishing potential there with that sort of thing. So those are some takeaways along the lines. Another interesting kind of topic along Western states that's sort of been evolving is just tack around like shoe foams and things like that, where, you know, we've seen the advantage of performance tech and foams on the roads, specifically along the Olympic type distances a lot of times. And this sort of stuff is starting to bleed over into the trails now, where a lot of the trail shoes are starting to put more premium foams, sometimes even carbon plates, into these products. And there's a discussion around that of just how much of a benefit does that make for a person on the trail? My personal thought about that is I think we're probably overestimating a little bit at this point how much of a value that has for most people. I think courses like Western states or even more runnable ones, it starts to become something that's you're going to want to consider, especially if we're looking at margins of like a few minutes between you and the next person, getting on the podium and things like that, and also moving places so you can have a scenario where. Are like because someone is running X minute mile. Minute per mile on a pretty hard packed dirt trail. They're going to get a lot of the similar benefits from a premium foam as, as you maybe would expect to see on the roads. But if we look at it more broadly and introduce this to the entirety of the field versus just those top performers, we have to ask ourselves, well, how does pace impact that? And how does the mechanics that you're going to actually be using on race day actually impact that? So things like hiking up steep canyon walls, running down more, more technical descents and things like that, or just having an average pace that's maybe closer to like 12, 13, 14, 15 minutes per mile or even slower at times. Is the super shoe foam really going to be doing you any favors there? You know, I think we really get into the area of, kind of cost benefit with that sort of a topic where when, when we're looking at kind of those, those more average paces versus the winning paces, podium paces. I think the best thing to do with footwear with that one is don't get too hung up on premium foams and plates and things like that at this time. Think of it still through the lens of comfort. Like what shoe is going to feel the most comfortable on your foot? Which shoe is going to put you in a position where you're less likely to have a non fitness related issue come up, like blistering and stuff like that, where you feel like that shoe is going to be an extension of your body versus something you're going to have to tolerate out there. because to some degree, when we start introducing performance into footwear, we also make compromises on things like stability. At times, the trail shoes tend to make less of those compromises because they're built for the demands of varied terrain versus flat roads and tracks and things like that. But there's still compromises made there that you might want to consider. So I still think, looking at it through the lens of comfort on my foot, natural extension for me is going to be the best path forward when it comes to kind of picking the shoe versus just looking at the market and thinking, oh, what's the most premium, fast, efficient super shoe model that I can get? And then expecting to have that make a meaningful change to the race, finishing time when your goals may be more near the middle of, say, like a sub 24 hour, or somewhere in that neighborhood of like, of the moving paces being a little bit closer to, you know, 13 to 15 minute mile pace and things like that. So those are my thoughts about, like, what we can think about from the topics that came out of Western states this last week. I'm sure these topics are just going to evolve and grow, and we're going to get even more access to information, maybe more research on some of these things so we can firm up some of our suspicions or some of the things that we think that the direction is going and ultimately see how far and how fast all of us can go on courses like the Western States 100.