Farvard Has Breakout Win, Schide Storms – iRunFar

On the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k, Rod Farvard had a breakout efficiency to win the boys’s race and Katie Schide (U.S., lives in France) ran an absolute stormer to win for the ladies.

Whereas this 12 months marked the occasion’s tenth version, if there’s something we’ve grown to know, change is fixed at this race. With important course modifications in lots of editions, this 12 months was no completely different. Beginning at China Wall, a trailhead situated within the mid-foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the race traveled roughly east to west — with some deviations — to complete in downtown Auburn, California. Runners traveled an total downhill trending course, nonetheless with a stout 10,600 ft of climbing over the course of 63 miles.

A piece of the center of the course traversed the well-known Western States Path, and included a few of its iconic elements, such because the Satan’s Thumb climb, a stiff climb that finishes passing a thumb-looking rock; the Deadwood Cemetary, a historic cemetery; and Cal Road, an almost-20-mile, principally downhill, and principally a gloriously runnable piece of actual property.

The race began at 5 a.m. native time on Saturday, April 27, below clear skies, with delicate temperatures and comparatively dry air predicted all day. This was maybe a welcome reprieve for runners, because the area had seen important rainfall within the prior days.

This race held plenty of aggressive enchantment in that it was the final Western States 100 Golden Ticket race forward of the 2024 occasion, the place the highest 2 ladies and men earned entry into the race.

The occasion was additionally a UTMB World Sequence Main, that means the highest 10 women and men secured entry into the CCC on the UTMB World Sequence Finals, which shall be held this August in Chamonix, France.

2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Males’s Race

The boys’s race went out en masse, with round 20 males inside 2 minutes of one another on the first assist station at Deadwood 1 (16k). Main this unfastened pack had been Petter Engdahl (Sweden, lives in Norway), Rod Farvard, and  Adam Peterman. By Deadwood 2 (29k), the second assist station, Engdahl and Farvard nonetheless led collectively, once more with a protracted line of males trailing tightly, not less than 10 of them inside 2 minutes, together with Peterman.

Engdahl and Peterman had been operating on robust comeback tales, with Engdahl having suffered damaged bones with surgical procedure final fall in a motorcycle crash, and Peterman returning after not less than a 12 months off as a consequence of critical damage. Every would avenge these profession issues with finishes at the moment, Engdahl on the rostrum and Peterman in 14th.

And Farvard, like so many males, was looking a type of Western States 100 Golden Tickets; with 3 prior makes an attempt at that race, he’d solely topped out as excessive as eleventh place, clearly lower than his potential.

Among the many early close to leaders by means of the primary 30k additionally included Stephen Kersh, Tracen Knopp, Preston Cates, and Drew Holmen.

Michigan Bluff (38k) noticed some extra of the identical, with Engdahl and Kersh main the prepare and a lot of the similar males following very intently. Although there have been some 6 males proper there, Farvard technically beeped into the checkpoint in third place.

The village of Foresthill, 48k into the race, marked one thing of a transition level within the race the place the runners head out of the race’s larger nation, and all the way down to the bottom terrain of the Sierra Nevada. The competitors was additionally transitional in Foresthill because it was right here the place eventual males’s champ Farvard arrived within the lead in 4:13:43, with Kersh about 20 seconds again. One other 2 minutes introduced males’s second and third place, Holmen and Engdahl.

From there on, Farvard wouldn’t yield the lead. At 61k, the Cal 2 assist station, he handed at 5:16:19 elapsed. This time Kersh checked in a little bit over a minute again. Right here, Holmen was holding in third, 2 minutes off second, and Makai Clemons had now moved into fourth place, one other 2 minutes again from third place. However it was nonetheless any man’s race, with a variety of lower than 13 minutes between first and ninth locations.

At Driver’s Flat (76k), Farvard held tight to his small however stable lead, passing by means of in 6:33:33. This time, Holmen had moved into second place, 3 minutes behind the lead. Kersh was proper there, although, 30 seconds off Holmen.

For the race’s remaining quarter, Farvard added bits of distance between he and second place, passing by means of the ultimate two assist stations, Mammoth Bar (88k) and Confluence (94k), with respective 5- and 7-minute leads. Rod Farvard seemed completely elated to cross the end line, profitable the boys’s race in 8:44:30. He gladly accepted the Western States 100 Golden Ticket.

Behind him, Holmen ran an excellent regular final 25k, and constructed a significant sufficient hole on the remainder of the sector, passing by means of the 88k and 94k assist stations some 6 and 4 minutes forward of third place, respectively. When Drew Holmen crossed the road to take second in 8:51:09, he tossed his pack and collapsed to the bottom, clearly utilizing most of what he had in him for that efficiency. After some finish-line contemplation, Holmen declined the Golden Ticket, which meant it could roll down to 3rd place.

However who can be the third-place finisher? As we all know, in the end, Engdahl. After sitting in fifth place as late as 88k, he surged to maneuver up two spots when he handed the 94k assist station. Petter Engdahl’s glorious extremely pacing led him to take third in 8:55:31. He was keen to say the second males’s Western States Golden Ticket.

Having run a massively constant race, Makai Clemens completed fourth in 8:57:38. Stephen Kersh, after pushing the boys’s race tempo earlier, discovered himself in fifth at 9:05:56.

2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Males’s Outcomes

1. Rod Farvard – 8:44:30
2. Drew Holmen – 8:51:09
3. Petter Engdahl (Sweden, lives in Norway) – 8:55:31
4. Makai Clemons – 8:57:38
5. Stephen Kersh – 9:05:56
6. Tim Tollefson – 9:19:09
7. Kevin Vermeulen (Switzerland) – 9:35:21
8. Matt Seidel – 9:42:04
9. Ryan Raff – 9:42:05
10. Brandon Gardiner – 9:46:49

Full outcomes.

2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Girls’s Race

The beginning of the ladies’s race couldn’t have performed out extra in another way from the boys’s. Katie Schide (U.S., lives in France) took the ladies’s race out, created a niche early, and ran on. By the primary assist station at Deadwood 1 (16k), Schide had already constructed a niche on the sector, some 2.5 minutes. She grew that hole by the second assist level at Deadwood 2 (29k) to almost 9.5 minutes.

Schide, with too many accolades to say, was second finally 12 months’s Western States 100 and has her eyes on the prize of that race this 12 months. Undoubtedly, this race was a essential step in her preparations for this 12 months’s version.

Mary Denholm featured prominently in podium place over the primary 30k, having handed by means of 16k in second place and 29k in third place. Denholm is a 2-time Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier with a 2:36:28 marathon PR, who was mainly debuting in path racing.

EmKay Sullivan was the opposite girls’s tempo pusher over the primary 30k, assuming the second place round 22k and by no means trying again. Sullivan has a great deal of robust path race performances to her identify, with all of them at shorter distances than this one. Among the many many ladies in search of that Western States 100 Golden Ticket, she clearly needed it. She dropped from the Black Canyon 100k, one other Golden Ticket race, solely 2 months in the past.

Additionally among the many combine for the ladies over the primary 30k had been Addie Bracy in addition to Australians Anna McKenna and Stephanie Auston.

By Michigan Bluff (39k), Schide led by about 11 minutes. Sullivan remained Schide’s closest chaser, with Denholm in third place, slightly below 13 minutes off the lead.

Ten kilometers later, at Foresthill (49k), the Schide Present was formally in full power, together with her arriving at 4:25:14 and with greater than 21 minutes of actual property to the subsequent girl. Sullivan and Denholm maintained their second- and third-place positions, round 2 minutes other than one another. Behind Denholm was additionally some respectable daylight, with fourth-place Bracy coming by means of about 10.5 minutes after third place.

Schide was actually ablaze at Cal 2, the 61k, some two-thirds of the best way down Cal Road, operating by means of in 5:31:21. There, she’d additionally cracked the general prime 10. As a result of an absence of girls’s protection within the reside stream in addition to points with Sullivan’s monitoring gadgets, we don’t have her break up at Cal 2, however she was in second place right here. Denholm was the subsequent girl by means of in third, 65 minutes off the lead.

At Driver’s Flat (76k), Schide was now selecting her approach by means of the boys’s prime 10, passing in sixth total in 6:50:38. For the report, that’s 17 minutes again from the boys’s chief three-quarters of the best way by means of a path 100k — some insane operating. Schide’s lead within the girls’s race would solely develop over the race’s remaining quarter, and he or she remained in sixth place total on the end line. At Mammoth Bar (88k) and Confluence (94k), she led by 44 and 46 minutes respectively.

Finally, Katie Schide was the runaway girls’s victor in 9:10:10. It’s secure to say that issues are trying actually good for Schide’s second try on the Western States 100 this summer season. Together with her computerized entry based mostly on her top-10 end final 12 months, the two Western States 100 Golden Tickets would roll all the way down to different girls.

Sullivan’s race for second place by no means wavered. At 88k and 94k, she held a respective 7- and 9-minute hole over third place. EmKay Sullivan cruised over the end line to take second in 10:01:26, cautiously accepting the Western States 100 Golden Ticket, as it could imply yet one more huge step up in distance.

Behind Schide and Sullivan, the race for the ladies’s prime 10 was something however set within the race’s remaining 25k. Denholm, the debut path racer, bumped into issues en path to Driver’s Flat (76k), relinquishing her podium place. On the time of this text’s publishing, she’s not displaying an official DNF, however she actually has.

As the ladies’s positions fluctuated, it could be Anna Kacius who emerged into the third place by 88k and who would maintain it till she completed in 10:24:37. Kacius has about 3 years of ultrarunning below her belt, with prime finishes together with seventh on the 2022 IAU 100k World Championships, and fourth on the 2023 Black Canyon 100k. She narrowly missed a Golden Ticket by 1 place at that latter occasion. This time, she was golden, graciously accepting that Western States 100 entry.

Careth Arnold completed fourth in 10:38:42, after transferring up into that spot earlier than the 94k assist station. Anna McKenna rounded out the ladies’s prime 5, crossing the road in 10:43:31.

2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Girls’s Outcomes

1. Katie Schide (U.S., lives in France) – 9:10:10
2. EmKay Sullivan – 10:01:26
3. Anna Kacius – 10:24:37
4. Careth Arnold – 10:38:42
5. Anna McKenna (Australia) – 10:43:31
6. Laura Hansen – 10:45:32
7. Erin Clark – 10:52:16
8. Marta Wenta (Poland) – 10:53:14
9. Jade Belzberg (Canada, lives within the U.S.) – 11:00:02
10. Arden Younger (Canada) – 11:08:04

Full outcomes.