Jay Swan writes about his brother Mike at the Western States 100:

I've been lurking on this list for a while now, but not having yet run my first ultra, I don't feel qualified to post. My attendance at WS100 has inspired me to momentarily de-lurk.

Through strange coincidence, I found myself working in Sacramento the week before the Western States 100. So I extended my stay through the weekend to go see my brother run his first 100 miler.

After work on Friday I drove into the mountains through heavy Sacramento traffic and met my brother and his friends at a restaurant in Truckee. After an excellent meal we went to Squaw Valley and got a disturbingly small amount of sleep before rising at 4am Saturday morning. Since I was a last-minute addition to the group, my job was to tag along with two of Mike's pacers who were going to meet him at Robinson Flats before one of them picked him up at Foresthill. He wasn't planning to have crew assistance except at a couple of check points.

Seeing the crowds at the start line, we decided to skip the start and get going to Robinson Flats. We left about 10-20 minutes ahead of the rest of the crowd and were among the first to get there, despite getting slightly lost. We even got to park at the top of the hill. The first runners came through at 8:30am or so. All of them looked like they had just gotten off a bus. I was amazed at how fresh everyone looked after 25 miles of mountain trail running.

My brother was not far behind, running in 8th place through the first checkpoint and looking fresh. He is an extremely fast 50-mile runner, but had no prior experience at this distance, something which I think was probably the cause of his later undoing, along with the extreme heat... Not too long after, we saw Ann Trason come through. Wow! I've never seen calves like that on a woman before...

Our next meeting point was to be much later at Foresthill, so we drove back to Auburn for breakfast & to get checked into the hotel before heading back. At Foresthill we somehow ended up hanging out with a guy who was going to pace for Scott Jurek; pretty interesting to talk to him. We heard later that Jurek was moving so fast that the pacer couldn't keep up, so the pacer dropped!

Mike showed up much later than expected. His wife had met him at Michigan Bluff and returned with the news that he had been as high as 5th or 6th place before bonking big-time somewhere around 50 miles--reports said that it was up to 115 degrees on parts of the trail near there. The aid station people forced him to stop for a long break at Michigan Bluff. I guess his weight was OK, but he looked so bad they wouldn't let him continue until he'd rested and eaten a bunch of food. He considered dropping, but one of the other front-runners who had already dropped convinced him to keep going. He later said that he had never felt anywhere near that bad during any race, which is saying a lot considering some of his Ironman-Hawaii experiences. He arrived at Foresthill looking pale, but feeling much better than previously. He had somehow lost his gel flask and electrolytes, but fortunately we had more of the latter. After a 10 minute rest he was off with his first pacer, still in the top 30 or so but not looking great. At this point we also learned that Mike's training partner had dropped, after getting way off course, getting behind on electrolytes, gaining 12 pounds (!!!), swelling up like a balloon, and ending with severe blisters. Scott Jurek had blown through a long time before with a huge lead, stopping only long enough to switch bottles and eat some fruit, and Ann Trason was now probably over 1 hour ahead of the second place woman.

Our next meeting was not until much later at the 93 mile aid station at Highway 49. While we were waiting, a wildfire started not far down the road, closing highway 49 and blocking many crew who were trying to get through. Eventually the Cool fire department put it out. After the highway reopened, Mike's first pacer found us after handing him off to another pacer at Rucky Chucky. He told us that Mike was walking all the uphills slowly, but was running well on the downhills. We started to get worried when the radio operator told us that he had passed an aid station 6 miles from Highway 49 over 2.5 hours earlier, but not much later he showed up. He was still doing well mentally, but his legs were so trashed that he was forced to a slow walk on anything resembling an uphill or downhill. He had also taken a serious fall in the dark and injured his shoulder and opened a gash on his leg.

After a 15 minute rest he headed out again and finished in about 23:30, much slower than his 20 hour goal, but a finish nonetheless! It took him around 8 hours to do the first 50 and 15:30 to do the second 50. I haven't talked to him about it, but I'm guessing the biggest reason for this was trying to hold a fast pace during the hottest part of the day, and crashing as a result. This may have been a calculated gamble, since I know he wanted to see how he compared to the elite runners in something over 50 miles. It was a pretty educational experience for me, since I'm hoping to eventually run ultras, though I'll never be competitive. The importance of steady pacing, nutrition, planning, etc. were all obvious.

Some observations:
--many runners had much bigger legs than I expected. Time to hit the weights again.
--good lighting seemed to make a difference. A number of runners had 3 lights: a headlamp, a second LED headlamp around the torso or waist, and a handheld flashlight. This looked like a good strategy. One guy had one of those super-bright mountain bike lights and lit up the whole hillside as he came down.
--I was amazed at how many runners looked like they were ready for more at the finish line. I'd say that 50% didn't even look seriously fatigued. Another 40% were beat, but were still going pretty strong. Only maybe 10% of the finishers I saw were really hurting. I suppose if I stuck around until the 30 hour mark I would have seen a lot more pain.
--even the front runners took longish rests at the aid stations, except for Jurek and Trason. Many of the top 10 runners took 5-10 minutes at the Highway 49 aid station.
--after reading this list for a while, I was a bit surprised at how little people ate at aid stations. The posts on this list make it sound like most people hit the aid stations like a football player at a breakfast buffet, but it really didn't look that way.

This is probably no news to any of the folks on this list, but it was
interesting to me.

I posted some not-particularly-good pictures to
http://kahloke.org/westernstates03. Not sure who all the people are, but I know that Scott Jurek and Ian Torrence are in there.

Jay Swan
Durango, CO