On the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k, Rod Farvard had a breakout efficiency to win the lads’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 vital 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 general downhill trending course, nonetheless with over 12,000 ft of climbing over the course of 63 miles.
A bit 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 Avenue, an almost-20-mile, principally downhill, and principally a gloriously runnable piece of actual property.
The boys’s leaders within the early going of the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Picture: UTMB/Howie Stern
The race began at 5 a.m. native time on Saturday, April 27, beneath clear skies, with gentle temperatures and comparatively dry air predicted all day. This was maybe a welcome reprieve for runners, because the area had seen vital rainfall within the prior days.
This race held a lot 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 Collection Main, that means the highest 10 women and men secured entry into the CCC on the UTMB World Collection Finals, which will probably 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 free pack have 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, no less than 10 of them inside 2 minutes, together with Peterman.
Engdahl and Peterman have been working on sturdy comeback tales, with Engdahl having suffered damaged bones with surgical procedure final fall in a motorbike crash, and Peterman returning after no less than a 12 months off resulting from critical damage. Every would avenge these profession issues with finishes right this moment, Engdahl on the rostrum and Peterman in thirteenth.
And Farvard, like so many males, was looking a kind 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 way 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 practice and many of the identical 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 increased nation, and right 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 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. Nevertheless 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 strong lead, passing by way 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 last quarter, Farvard added bits of distance between he and second place, passing by way 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 lads’s race in 8:44:30. He gladly accepted the Western States 100 Golden Ticket.
Rod Farvard profitable the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Picture: UTMB/Howie Stern
Behind him, Holmen ran a brilliant regular final 25k, and constructed a significant sufficient hole on the remainder of the sphere, passing by way 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 could 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 assert 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 lads’s race tempo earlier, discovered himself in fifth at 9:05:56.
2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Males’s Outcomes
- Rod Farvard – 8:44:30
- Drew Holmen – 8:51:09
- Petter Engdahl (Sweden, lives in Norway) – 8:55:31
- Makai Clemons – 8:57:38
- Stephen Kersh – 9:05:56
- Tim Tollefson – 9:19:09
- Kevin Vermeulen (Switzerland) – 9:35:21
- Matt Seidel – 9:42:04
- Ryan Raff – 9:42:05
- Brandon Gardiner – 9:46:49
The 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k males’s podium (left to proper): 2. Drew Holmen, 1. Rod Farvard, 3. Petter Engdahl. Picture: UTMB/Jacob Banta
2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Ladies’s Race
The beginning of the ladies’s race couldn’t have performed out extra otherwise from the lads’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 sphere, some 2.5 minutes. She grew that hole by the second assist level at Deadwood 2 (29k) to just about 9.5 minutes.
Schide, with too many accolades to say, was second eventually 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 way 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 principally 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 wanting again. Sullivan has a great deal of sturdy path race performances to her title, with all of them at shorter distances than this one. Among the many many ladies searching for 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 have 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, just below 13 minutes off the lead.
Ten kilometers later, at Foresthill (49k), the Schide Present was formally in full drive, 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 way of about 10.5 minutes after third place.
Schide was really ablaze at Cal 2, the 61k, some two-thirds of the best way down Cal Avenue, working by way of in 5:31:21. There, she’d additionally cracked the general high 10. As a result of a scarcity of ladies’s protection within the reside stream in addition to points with Sullivan’s monitoring gadgets, we don’t have her cut up at Cal 2, however she was in second place right here. Denholm was the subsequent girl by way of in third, 65 minutes off the lead.
At Driver’s Flat (76k), Schide was now selecting her method by way of the lads’s high 10, passing in sixth general in 6:50:38. For the file, that’s 17 minutes again from the lads’s chief three-quarters of the best way by way of a path 100k — some insane working. Schide’s lead within the girls’s race would solely develop over the race’s last quarter, and she or he remained in sixth place general on the end line. At Mammoth Bar (88k) and Confluence (94k), she led by 44 and 46 minutes respectively.
In the end, Katie Schide was the runaway girls’s victor in 9:10:10. It’s protected to say that issues are wanting actually good for Schide’s second try on the Western States 100 this summer time. Together with her computerized entry based mostly on her top-10 end final 12 months, the two Western States 100 Golden Tickets would roll right down to different girls.
Katie Schide profitable the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Picture: UTMB/Howie Stern
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 one more huge step up in distance.
Behind Schide and Sullivan, the race for the ladies’s high 10 was something however set within the race’s last 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 exhibiting an official DNF, however she definitely 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 beneath her belt, with high 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 high 5, crossing the road in 10:43:31.
EmKay Sullivan taking second on the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Picture: UTMB/Howie Stern
2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Ladies’s Outcomes
- Katie Schide (U.S., lives in France) – 9:10:10
- EmKay Sullivan – 10:01:26
- Anna Kacius – 10:24:37
- Careth Arnold – 10:38:42
- Anna McKenna (Australia) – 10:43:31
- Laura Hansen – 10:45:32
- Erin Clark – 10:52:16
- Marta Wenta (Poland) – 10:53:14
- Jade Belzberg (Canada, lives within the U.S.) – 11:00:02
- Arden Younger (Canada) – 11:08:04
The 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k girls’s podium (left to proper): 2. EmKay Sullivan, 1. Katie Schide, 3. Anna Kacius. Picture: UTMB/Jacob Banta