I have a confession to make. I’m not really interested in running Western States. I feel like a bad ultrarunner even thinking something along these lines. Western States is The hundred miler so it’s more than a little ironic for someone hoping to finish a hundred of them not having WSER100 at the tippy top of their list of races they want to run.
I guess I should qualify that sentiment a bit more. It’s not that I don’t want to run the race. I do. Eventually. I just don’t want to run the race now. I’m drawn to the history of the race, however pretty much everything else about it pushes it down my bucket list. First off, it’s on the complete other side of the country (bother). It’s also a huge race where I prefer lower key affairs. And then the course tops out at an elevation of 8,750 feet above sea level when I have been known to have issues with higher elevation courses.
Thankfully, they recently changed the lottery so you no longer lose your accumulated tickets if you skip a year. The first two years I ran hundreds, I finished WSER qualifiers, however didn’t enter the lottery as I wanted to get good at running hundreds before toeing the line. Then once I started entering the lottery each year, I basically had to stay in whether I wanted to run the race the next year or not. If I had gotten in, I would have gone out and run the race. Hopefully I would have had a good time. But it wouldn’t have been on my own terms when I wanted to run the race.
Now I have the luxury of waiting until the time is right for me to run it. I plan to be in this sport for quite a while so I’m not in any rush. And if it comes to pass that the opportunity never presents itself, then I’m fine with that as well. There’s plenty of other bucket list worthy hundreds out there for me to do. Even one in Vermont next month.