Picture it: still dark, cold, a few hundred people standing at the base of a California ski mountain about to run to a town a hundred miles away. A gun goes off. They start climbing — 2,500 feet of it in the first four miles, straight up an icy wall called the Escarpment, headlamps bobbing into the black like the world's most inadvisable congregation. Somewhere in that line of lights is the next winner of the Western States Endurance Run. Also in it: a 55-year-old dentist who spent nine years trying to get into this race and isn't going to waste it. Same mountain, same dark, same gun. That's the whole magic of the thing.
You, meanwhile, are on your couch — possibly in pajamas, possibly with a pile of unfolded laundry nearby, quietly judging you. Good. That's the correct way to experience Western States, and I say that as a card-carrying professional spectator: I've never run it and almost certainly never will, since getting in requires a Golden Ticket, a lottery with worse odds than things I'd be embarrassed to admit I've gambled on, or volunteering for the better part of a decade. So I'm not here to tell you how to run it. I'm here to tell you how to watch it — because this is the one ultra worth blocking off a weekend for even if your longest run this month was to the mailbox. Here's how to follow along without feeling lost.
The two-minute version
Western States is a 100-mile trail race from Olympic Valley, California (up near Lake Tahoe) to the town of Auburn. It's the oldest 100-miler in the world — it started in 1974 when a guy named Gordy Ainsleigh ran the course on foot after his horse went lame, mostly to prove a person could. People have been suffering on purpose out there ever since.
The runners start Saturday at 5:00 a.m. Pacific, in the dark, and have 30 hours to reach the finish — a quarter-mile lap of the Placer High School track in Auburn, which after a hundred miles of mountains must feel like the most beautiful 400 meters on Earth. The fast humans finish Saturday night. Most of the field is still out there Sunday morning. The clock closes at 11:00 a.m. Sunday.
The runners start Saturday at 5:00 a.m. Pacific, in the dark, and have 30 hours to reach the finish — a quarter-mile lap of the Placer High School track in Auburn, which after a hundred miles of mountains must feel like the most beautiful 400 meters on Earth. The fast humans finish Saturday night. Most of the field is still out there Sunday morning. The clock closes at 11:00 a.m. Sunday.
The prize is a belt buckle. Finish under 30 hours, you get a bronze one. Finish under 24 hours and you get the silver buckle, which in this sport is roughly the equivalent of a knighthood. Nobody out there is running for money. They're running for a piece of metal and the right to never shut up about it, which, honestly, is relatable.
Where to actually watch it
You don't need to be in California. The race runs a genuinely excellent live webcast all day from their website, with cameras at the big aid stations — it's the rare ultra broadcast that's actually fun to have on in the background. Pair that with the live tracker on the Western States site, which shows you where every runner is on the course, and iRunFar's live blog, which is the play- by-play written by people who actually understand what they're looking at. Run all three at once and you've basically built yourself a sports bar for a foot race.
A tip: have the tracker open on your phone and the webcast on the big screen. The tracker tells you who's where; the webcast tells you how bad they look about it.
The moments that matter (so you know when to pay attention)
A hundred miles is a long time to stare at a screen. You don't have to. Here's when it actually gets good:
- The gun, 5:00 a.m. That Escarpment climb from the opening — 2,500 feet before sunrise, often through snow. Watch how calmly the leaders take it. The ones charging up a mountain in the dark are writing checks the canyons will cash later.
- The canyons (afternoon). This is where the race is won and lost. Around the middle of the course the trail drops into a series of deep canyons that bake at over 100°F — including a climb out of one called Devil's Thumb that has ended more good days than every other mile combined. When you see the leaders walking, hunched, dumping ice down their shorts, that's not weakness. That's the course collecting what it's owed. (If you want the why strong runners fall apart here, that's its own rabbit hole — see durability.)
- Foresthill, mile 62 (early evening). The big crew-and-pacer party. Runners can pick up a pacer here, and it's the clearest read on who's still got a race in their legs versus who's just trying to finish. Body language at Foresthill tells you everything.
- The river crossing, mile 78. They cross the cold American River — wading on a cable in a low- water year, ferried by raft in a high one. It's the postcard shot of the whole event, and yes, this is the "man sitting in a creek" moment. It looks miserable. It is. They love it.
- Robie Point and the track. The last climb before Auburn, then that quarter-mile on the high school track to the finish. Watch a few of these, fast and slow. They hit different.
Watch the back of the pack, not just the front
Here's the thing most first-time spectators get wrong: they tune in for the winner Saturday night and turn it off. Don't. The best show is Sunday morning, near the cutoff.
The front of the race is a sport — extraordinary athletes doing extraordinary things, and worth watching. But the soul of Western States is the runner limping toward Auburn at 10:50 a.m. with ten minutes to spare, after 29 hours and 50 minutes of moving, while strangers scream like it's the Olympics. Nobody's filming that person for a sponsor. They're just trying to beat a clock before it beats them. If that doesn't get you a little choked up, check your pulse — you may be the laundry.
When watching turns into wanting one
Fair warning: a day of this tends to end with you quietly opening a new tab and wondering what your hundred-miler would be. That's the whole sport's recruitment strategy and it works every single year.
You won't be running Western States anytime soon — almost nobody does, that's rather the point. But there's a trail race out there with your name on it, probably closer and saner than you'd guess. When the itch hits, trailrace is built for exactly this: find the races near you, see what you'd actually have to train for, and map a season backward from one goal instead of signing up for everything in a fit of inspiration you'll regret by August.
For now, though, just put the webcast on. Pour something cold in solidarity with people who can't have one for another 80 miles. And when that last runner staggers onto the track Sunday morning, yell at your screen like they can hear you. It helps. Probably not them. Definitely you.
