The podium was littered with First Endurance athletes all who endorse and use the First Endurance system of products. Anita Ortiz, running for LaSportiva is sponsored by First Endurance. Previously sponsored or associated with First Endurance is men’s winner Hal Koerner, who still uses the products extensively in his training and racing. Women’s 2nd and 3rd place finishers Krissy Moehl and Beverly Anderson-Abbs are also users of First Endurance products in their preparation for this gruelling race.5.00 AM on Saturday around 400 runners (there were a bunch of DNS) lined up to face the endurance test. Cool temps that would rise up to triple digits during the day. Expectations of top positions for some, of winning the sub-24hrs silver buckle for others and hopes of just finishing for many of them.
5 minutes after the start, the top 40 runners went off course. Nothing that would decisively affect the final results. Quickly, the favorites took the lead: at Red Star Ridge station (mile 16) Dave Mackey and Hal Koerner were running together (a partnership that would last many miles) and Scott Jurek came in right after. Canadian Gary Robbins was the unexpected 4th placed, spot he would keep for quite some miles. “I will leave it all out there and am already certain and confident that I could not have done anything further to prepare for this event”, said Gary in a pre-race interview.
First abandonments started around mile 23. A few of the top runners dind’t step the start line ( Anton Krupicka, Max king or Mike Wolfe) and around 70 would not make it into half the race. But the first shock of the day was to see seven-time champion Scott Jurek dropping at Devils Thumb around 8.00 PM PST. While Mackey and Koerner emerged from the canyon looking strong, the seven-time champion, who had not run Western States since 2005, dropped 47.8 miles into the race. He simply stated “I went to the well, and the well was dry”.
On the women’s side, Anita Ortiz was the leader early on. She pulled into the Michigan Bluff aid station (55.7 miles) only an hour behing the overall leaders. Beverly Anderson-Abbs was about 15 minutes behind Ortiz, and Nikki Kimball more than an hour away.
After Michigan Bluff aid station, Koerner opened up a 19-minute lead by the time he reached Foresthill 6.3 miles later. A 9:25 pace Mackey couldn’t follow. ”I got a pump off of all the people,” he said, ”I just tried to harness all that energy and go.” This effort would prove good enough to make Koerner winner of the WS100 for second year in a row (race cancelled in 2008). His time: 16:24.
Mackey dropped out near mile 78 and the second place turned into a brutal duel between Japanese Tsuyoshi Kaburagi and Great Britain’s Jez Bragg. Bragg pushed a 10:00 pace for the last 15 miles, but that came 2 minutes short. Kaburagi crossed the finish line second in 16:52. “We passed three people between No Hands (Bridge) and here,” said Bragg, “I would bet our splits at the end were some of the quickest ever, because I was properly flying.”
The 45-year-old mother of four from Eagle, Colo. , Anita Ortiz, kept her lead through the entire race and clocked a time of 18:24. Krissy Moehl was in second place while Anderson-Abbs trailed in third, with a time of 19:26 and 19:53 respectively. Three-time women’s champion and favorite for the women’s victory Nikki Kimball finished 4th in 20:55.
Along the way, many runners had to call it a day before reaching Auburn. Among them, ultrarunning most known face, Dean Karnazes (mile 62), Italian best endurance runner Marco Olmo (mile 62), Hiroki Ishikawa (mile 34), Chikara Omine (mile 62) or France’s top mountain runner Laval Benoit (mile 55).
race recap courtesy of trailrunningsoul.com
