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Craig Thornley joins the Singletrack Podcast ahead of the 2023 Western States 100 to talk about his history of involvement in the race, memories of his blog "Conduct The Juices", and course updates for this Saturday.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome back, or welcome to the Single Track Podcast. I'm your host, finn Milansen, and in this episode we're joined by Craig Thornley, the race director of the Western States 100 ahead of this Saturday's race. Before we get started, though, this episode is brought to you by Hoka Rabbit Morton and Features Head to the show notes page of this episode for discount codes and new product releases from each of these four sponsors. With that, let's get started. Craig Thornley, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the Single Track Podcast. How are you?
Speaker 2:
doing Pretty good. Thanks for having me, Finn.
Speaker 1:
First question, and I'm not sure you've ever been asked this on a podcast. Maybe you haven't. I didn't do my homework, but what is the story behind the name Lord Balls that you go by on social media?
Speaker 2:
Actually it has been discussed. When I first got this job, the Auburn Journal contacted me and they were a little bit hesitant to ask me why is your Twitter handle, lord Balls? They were expecting some perverse meaning which would not be out of character with my personality in the lamp, but it's actually not a perverse meaning at all. My step-grandmother was in her final years or final weeks of life and she had moved to Auburn. My parents live in Kool and she moved into a home in Auburn and I didn't know her that well. But she came to Western states, to Forest Hill, in did 2004, and I was racing top 10, trying to get top 10, and I ended up puking right after the age station. I ate all this food and I didn't even see her at Forest Hill. So I go see her in her home on Monday and she says you ran by like you were Lord Balls or something, and I had no idea what that meant. But I looked it up and it meant someone who thinks very highly of themselves. Like I said, okay, that's kind of appropriate for me. And she died not long after that and so I took the name. That's where it came from.
Speaker 3:
That's a really great story. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:
How about the namesake behind your famous blog Conduct the Juices? where does that come from?
Speaker 2:
That one I probably haven't talked about on a podcast. I used to have a climbing gym in my garage in Eugene and someone brought a sticker that I don't know even what company it was, but it was Conduct the Juices, and in the climbing gym I interpret it as ah, let's work hard, let's train hard. And then I started writing a newsletter piece for Lama Pasquitur, which I was the director of, and I called it Conduct the Juices, and it could mean your motivation, your mojo, whatever you want it to be. It could also have a perverse meaning, which obviously in the gym setting there was a lot of references to perverse meanings. And then I ended up writing a blog with the same name, and so that's where that came from Conduct the Juices.
Speaker 1:
Well, we probably read about 40 or 50 of those posts in prep for this episode. It's an excellent blog. We'll link to it in the show notes. I wish it was still. I mean it's still there. You can go back in history and see some of the great stuff you put pen to paper about. But talking about that blog for a moment, one of your last posts you made was about the Syncro blog project. We actually had Scott Dunlap on the show maybe a year ago to reminisce about that, but you did the Syncro blog project with other content creators in the sport at the time and in one instance you all wrote letters hypothetical letters to Western states requesting certain changes and I thought that was super cool. And I guess the question here is, if you were to reboot that project today, what would be the organizing theme and why?
Speaker 2:
Well, we brought it back. It was a fantastic few years of doing Syncro blogs. The very first one was really awesome. That's when I wrote directly to the board of directors about the mandatory volunteer requirement and it sure got everybody's attention because we had I think it was five of us, maybe four of us and every post had links to the other blog. So we shared our permalinks with each other before we posted, before we published and when we published. You don't know how people came in to the circle of blogs, but you read every post, or at least you had links to every post and I definitely got the attention of the board. We brought it back a few years ago. We tried it again, but I think the blog sphere it's just passe now. It's not really. I mean podcasts. What you guys are doing right now is what seems to be the space now If we did it again. I mean there's so much to talk about with UTMB and the Spartan World Series and just the way the sport has become more professional. I guess the front end of the field is definitely a lot different, so there would be plenty of stuff to talk about there. But then you look at Caleb Efta from High Lonesome and there's all kinds of social issues and there would be plenty of stuff to talk about. And if I did another Shinkablog, i'd want Caleb to be one of those bloggers. I think he would bring an interesting perspective to the mix.
Speaker 1:
Would you bring back any of the veterans?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, ajw would cry if I didn't bring him back. So, and we're not gonna deploy the crying tent this year for AJW, so he was fun, but I don't know who else we do today. Yeah, we'd probably bring back some of the veterans. I want some edgier voices.
Speaker 1:
One more question on this front, because you actually wrote a post about this. It was one of the last posts. You kind of lamented the fact that blogs were going by the wayside, they were no longer this popular medium in the ultranum community, and you kind of lamented the fact that it's getting increasingly difficult to have these community-wide discussions about important issues. The forums aren't there, the blogs aren't there. Maybe podcasts are it, but have you thought at all about this, about what the next evolution is there in the space and if we are having these types of conversations in a public way that you'd like to see?
Speaker 2:
I don't know what that medium is, but the podcasts are definitely how people are consuming a lot of content, but it doesn't necessarily lend itself to a bigger group conversation. Maybe if you do it on YouTube live, like we're doing right now, and we have interactive chat, but you still need time. People need time to think of their answers and it's pretty hard to do it on the spot in a live interview to really get someone's opinions, because some people don't think on their toes that quickly and they need time. I don't know what that future medium would be. Blogs were fantastic, oh my God. They were fantastic and the fact that you could and many of them you could be anonymous. Sometimes that works against you as a blog publisher. Sometimes you don't want people to comment anonymously, but you could always see their IP addresses, so you could generally, unless they were really savvy, you could figure out where they came from, probably who they were, even if they were in a coffee shop in Ashland, oregon or something you could figure out. You could generally figure out who they were, but that added a pretty interesting dynamic to it and I used to pick on AJW on his blog as an anonymous Oregonian. We piled up on him. But you could also be yourself and give serious answers and it was a good mix of you could be a reverent and hope fun at each other and at the sport and you could have really serious discussions back and forth and I don't know if podcasts are necessarily that. Have that same kind of back and forth with a large group of people. One thing What do you think it's gonna be? What do you think it should be?
Speaker 3:
I guess one thing that I mean I've really been liking the I mean no knock on us doing this sort of interview remotely, but being all in the same room is something that I feel like has gone away with the ability to go. I mean, this is huge because you know you've got such a busy week coming up, so I would much rather have this than nothing by far, but something about that like the personal connection that you get from actually being in the same room, being able to slug in the shoulder or something. Yeah, we just had Courtney.
Speaker 1:
DeWalter here and Dakota Jones here to debrief their prep for Western States, and there was just there was an energy in the room that I've missed since pre-COVID. That, i think, draws some more authenticity out. But there is something to be said about long form content and being able to like sit in a room for however long it takes to put out a blog post and really think through something and again to respond in those forums.
Speaker 3:
So one medium that has actually has been really fun to kind of be a part of. You know, the first half of this year is in some of the live broadcasts that we've gotten to be a part of, like a bandera, black Canyon and Coca-Cola interacting with the YouTube live chat and the actual fans, like while we're commentating on the race, so many people are able to just chime in. You know what they know about some of the runners or any insight in, but we're able to read it and actively have a conversation back with them, and that's something that I feel like is somewhat unique to our sport is like you don't see, like Troy Aikman Popping up on Twitter midway through, like Monday night football being like oh yeah so and so did bring up a good point. But having that, i Think, is one of you know it's it's so fun to be able to interact with more fans of the sport in that way and Big it's really. It's really grown. It's helping grow the like overall viewership of the sport. You know, outside of your post-race recap or Being there in person It's adding like a different element that makes yep watching a You know pretty long-race. I mean you're tuning into Western States, even if you just watch from the start to win the first person across the finish line. You know it's 15 hours. Having more things to do over the course of that 15 hour broadcast has Brought a you know really fun element to the sport.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, when we started our live broadcast three years ago, we had discussed you know, syndicated in a syndicated and across multiple platforms in UTB, even asked us Why don't you, why don't you have this on Facebook, on Instagram, on on YouTube? and Billy Yang, who is our Director and producer of our live broadcast, he said, let's, let's do it all on YouTube so that we can have that interaction, that that live chat and I don't get to watch much of it because I'm directing the race, but I, i Think they've experienced exactly what you're talking about. These, these longer people are joined in This 15 hours or 30 hours talking about the same thing, and and. And it does give people time to think about their Responses, of their answers. It doesn't have to be immediate.
Speaker 1:
Craig, one thing I'm curious about You know Western States is obviously it's the most popular ultra marathon, at least in the US, but it you know internationally it's getting there. Why are you obsessed with this race? Why did you decide to make it such a significant part of your life's work? I guess you could extend the question to race directing in general. But why has this race had such a pull on you and it's made you want to invest so much of your energy into it?
Speaker 2:
Well as I as a young youngster, when I accidentally I discovered myself at mile 83 of the center mile race. Yeah, i was just. I was definitely mesmerized by What the runners were going through. That that attracted me immediately. But that's just 100 miles in general, i think. And then I started working at dusty corners, working into a couple other other places and that that community of Each little they, each little community, small community of Age station, volunteers, i mean it was just, it was like we hadn't been apart for a year. We were, we were brought together each year and that camaraderie, that family feel. I Was definitely drawn by that. The course, the trail. I'm just totally, totally Fascinated with the course. We just spent two days working in the high country. We went from Landridge age station all the way to Duncan Canyon age station, cutting trees, often in white thorn, and We talked about the diversity of the of the course. And you know Western states goes from the high country Which looks completely different than the Canyon section and the canyons is completely different up to elite forest hill and you come and come Into the lower elevation stuff. There's completely different Ecosystems. That's the right term and You know a lot of races don't have that. It requires a point-to-point or some, some way to go through all these ecosystems and Point-to-point hundreds are really hard to put on. I can see why there's not more of them. There's so many obstacles. You usually land use itself or the permitting. Can you? can you go across 100 miles without wilderness areas or private land? It's pretty hard to find that. And then just logistically It's it's much more challenging to have 20 aid stations than to have five aid stations that you visit four times. You know That really makes Western state special. And then you feel the history in the, in the gold country, in the, in the middle part of the course, the canyons, all the mines. You can really, i don't know, it's just it, even though it's only a hundred and eighty something years. It's not, it's not I don't know. It's pretty fascinating to me and you could just feel and imagine what the miners Were we're going through as they were walking up to Michigan bluff to to get their whiskey and and a hooker or something, whatever they were doing in Michigan bluff. It's, it's palpable, you can feel it. You see how old the trail is. The trail in the canyons Was built as a toll trail and it's horribly, it wasn't engineered, it was just built and it's so hard to maintain that. That's why you have some of the. Some of the Berms are three feet high. The water just goes straight down the trail because it was never engineered the way a modern trail is is built. But that gives it character, that gives it something that wow, this is not a trail that was built in the last 20 years, this was built 170, 180 years ago and that, and that's pretty special. And then the, the, the fact that there have been so many people on this course before you as a runner. You go by, you, you run up devil's thumb, just like Jim King ran up it, just like Mark Brotherton ran up it, just like Anne Trason ran up at 14 times in the race, and you and you feel that too. I think that's pretty, pretty powerful. So, yeah, those are some of the reasons and I just, i absolutely love Being a race director. I'm a connector that You know. I really love bringing communities together and getting people working towards the same goal and When it actually happens it's. At times It's surreal and humbling, like this year, especially with all the, all the challenges we've had with the, with the fire and the private landowners, and then The roads getting washed out and just all kinds of challenges, and and getting everybody moving in the same direction. It's, it's, it's really, really satisfying for me and and humbling at times too, like wow, all these people are Moving in the same direction and I'm, and I'm, at the top of it. No, i.
Speaker 3:
Really like them? Yeah, it's definitely. It seems like it's a very fluid in terms of you know Western states. You know, from year to year even and I think that's probably something that a lot of people don't realize looking At it from the outside. But one question I did think of while we were talking about you know the course and you know how it would. Probably the trail Would probably look very different if it were built, you know, 20 years ago. Do you see, you know Western states as a race course? Do you think it will evolve or change much more than it is right now? I guess what I was thinking about was, in the last few years, like the Browns bar aid station moved, i Just a little bit the quarry or the highway 49 eight station move a little bit. Does the current I Guess the current list of a station? does that seem like a pretty finalized spot? Or do you think that will continue to shift and move around as Western states you know continues to run for more and more years?
Speaker 2:
Well, when Western states was, you know, in its infancy, there You carried and Jemima hand bottles with tape around them, as your handhelds, right, didn't have the same fluid capacity. And One of the strategies of the early organizers of Western states is, whenever they'd have someone go off course, they would put an age station there. So you couldn't get off course. So we just had way too many, way too many age stations Compared to what we have now. I don't know what you, tim B, had students, oh, oh, there were a lot more. Yeah, i think the high was 38. We're at 20. Yeah, so we've, we've, we've been trying to get more in line with with the sport as it changes, as the hydration packs can hold a lot more than two handheld and Jemima water bottles and Do. I think it's done. There are a couple places that we could Squeeze a couple more out, but at this point I don't, i'm not looking to make any changes right now. And and those changes that you, just you just referenced, those were just shifts to You worked it. You worked with how it a brown spark, that access was through private land, auburn Lake trails, and It was. It was a challenge every year to one get the two gates opened and Then to have the road to be in a in a condition that you could drive down it. So we moved it down To the quarry road. We just have one Asra gate, auburn state recreation area gates, really easy to get to highway 49. We moved because it was a really dangerous, a dangerous location. We had crews that would get off the buses in the middle of the night and they'd have to walk across the street, the highway, highway 49, and I think it was just a matter of time before there was a serious incident. We had drunk drivers that CHP who man the station would. It would go and and arrest but it's dangerous. It was dangerous, dangerous. So we moved that to pointed rocks and then that kind of that kind of made it like why do we have No hands bridge, which is just a couple miles downhill? You don't really need another aid station there. So that that that shifting those two shifts Is why we eliminated no hands bridge. Wasn't that it was a bad aid station, just it just didn't seem to be necessary. If, if we have other Issues that we need to address, yeah, we'll listen to them, we'll adapt, but there's nothing in the immediate. I'm not spending any time right now thinking about where I'm gonna take.
Speaker 1:
Craig, we've you mentioned Caleb after we've had Caleb on the pod to talk about this same with the Pilates. We recently had Doug Mayer on, who wrote a book on UTMB talking about this subject. I've always been curious about this from your perspective, because Western states has been at the forefront of a lot of Interesting and positive change in the sport. What do you see, especially within the board, to the extent that you can be public about this What do you see as the biggest tensions Inside of Western states right now when it comes to, like preservation versus innovation in any area, like as Fans of the sport, what should we be paying attention to in that arena?
Speaker 2:
Well, what we struggle with, or just what we, what we try to resolve all the time, is this increase of in sponsorship dollars and an exposure Versus keeping it the way it used to be. Our, our sponsorship dollars are, i think, triple maybe a little more than triple when I came on And we've been able to keep the entry fee at the same price for many years. We've added drug testing, we've had a live broadcast neither of those are cheap And we've been able to do it without raising the entry fee, but and that's primarily because we've had increase in sponsorship dollars but with that comes an expectation from the sponsors. Like we put hoka banners across, no hands bridge, and You know we have to resolve, is it? is it? is it? How much more of this sponsorship do we want to bring in where we can make the race better Versus keeping it the way it used to be? so that that's probably a most tangible Kinship that we, that we have to resolve all the time, and I'm thinking, i'm thinking about that on almost a daily basis.
Speaker 1:
I mean, i think. Another question I have, and this probably routes back to what we just discussed but you're always in addition to thinking about how to Move the race forward or keep it sustainable. At the end of the day, it probably does come back to the runners and creating a great experience for them. I Don't know if the answer to this is obvious, and it could just be that the answer is all trail runners. But who do you see? who do you try to attract in terms of like your ideal runner for this race? like in business, there's the term ideal customer profile. Is there like a type of runner that you're trying to attract to this race?
Speaker 2:
Sub 14 hours not necessarily a specific runner, but we obviously want people who are qualified and prepared to run all hundred miles to Auburn, increasing the qualifying standards a few years ago, like we did, from 50 miles to 100 Keter 100 miles. If you look at the finishing percentages since we did that, i think it, it, it, it in addition to making it a little bit harder to get into the race, which runners just did whatever they had to do to get qualified, but I think it also makes a. We have a more prepared field and I don't care if someone runs 30 hours or 14 hours. If they're ready to run, run this race and they're gonna, they're gonna give it their all and I'm all for that. I really I don't care how fast they are.
Speaker 1:
Are you seeing, as you're watching the sport evolve? Are you noticing that runners are More or less prepared for this race, or about the same like is? is technology and Education and training evolving to a point where a lot of the worries that may have been at the forefront 10 years ago They're? they're waning, or how do you think about that?
Speaker 2:
They're definitely more prepared. I don't know if it's because it takes people eight years of running 100 Keter or 100 Milers before they get into Western States Or is it because of technology changing or informations Available. There's been an information available for quite quite some time But, yeah, they're definitely more prepared. And I don't know if that's the same across the board canyons 100 miler that just happened In Auburn last month 45% finish rate. I mean that's pretty abysmal. That's done. That's abysmal. Is that a reflection on the whole sport or is that a reflection of, you know, the fact that it's pretty easy to get in that race? You could have, you could have signed up the day before or whatever, so there wasn't as much pull to get to the finish line. They're not not as much drive, whereas if you get into Western States and you took you eight years, you're gonna be pretty damn motivated to get to the finish line. So I don't know if I can, if they, if I can, project what's happening at Western States under the rest of the to the sport. But people are definitely more prepared And there's so much information out there.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and I guess I guess, speaking of like preparedness for, i guess, looking a little bit into this year, i know there's always been jokes about like the good weather years versus the hot weather years, of like weather Western States ends up, you know, in the red or in the black because the amount of silver buckles that they have to hand out, this is looking like it might actually end up being a lot of silver buckles type year. Do you think that'll still be the case, even with? you know how Difficult it looks like the conditions still are up in the high country.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, i think if we put heat onto this year, we would have been looking at a low silver rate and probably a lower finish rate overall. But with low 80s and maybe 34 degrees at the start, heat is not going to be a factor, although 80 degrees can still feel hot to someone who is not used to running in that, and that's a totally discounted heat. 80 degrees in the sun is still hot and going through the burn areas where there's not as much shade as there used to be, i think that's going to make it feel hotter to many people, depending on where you are in the pack when you get into those conditions. But, yeah, a benign weather year like 2012,. runners will benefit from the cooler weather, absolutely. And we joke about the cost of the silver buckets. We will come up with the money. We're not going to be scrounging for money if we give out more silver buckets.
Speaker 3:
Oh sorry, you just get a silver painted buckle.
Speaker 1:
Craig, i'd love for you to talk a bit about what it took to get the race ready for this coming Saturday. So there were a lot of people on social media publicly saying, you know, this race either shouldn't happen this year for various reasons. They were kind of like looking at the forecast and how much snow we got, et cetera, and saying either it shouldn't happen or it's not going to happen. And I did listen to your episode with Dylan on free trail and you talked about how you just had this mindset from the very beginning, when all this stuff started to occur, that it was going to happen. You were going to get the start of this race to the finish line. So for any people that haven't listened to that episode or are just curious about any other things that have happened since the recording of that, what did it take this year versus other years?
Speaker 2:
Well, first, we're still not done. We have a team up in Grand Achieve with Crosscut Solve logging out the first 10 miles of the course. So we're not completely done and we're probably going to have some work coming up in the next two days, three days. We're probably going to install some fixed lines and have to cut some steps into some of the snow near Cougar Rock, which is pretty treacherous. But back in September, when the mosquito fire started, that's what we thought was going to be our biggest challenge of the years. Wow, we have 16 miles of the course at a burn And at the time we were able to just focus on those 16 miles, that being the biggest challenge. Yeah, we just went in with the attitude of you know, we went to the Forest Service instead of asking them when are we going to be able to use the trail again, which, if you let them tell you, they got lots of other stuff to do. They got roads that got washed out to have to repair, they have other trails and campgrounds and whatnot. It's probably not going to be the answer you want. So we went there with the attitude of what can we do to help get this trail ready? And we had that mindset from day one And fortunately we had receptive partners in the agency, specifically the Forest Service, and we came up with creative solutions on how to get the trail ready. It included paying the Forest Service money to keep their seasonal employees on so they could work in November and December, and then we hired a contractor from Northern California to supplement their labor. And then the volunteer effort, which I think we're now approaching 3,000 hours of volunteer effort. So we just had that mindset from day one And it's turned out to be it worked. It's been a little bit harder now that the snow came and the snow is not really releasing its grip, but it's beginning to release its grip on the trail. We just got into Red Star Ridge Aid Station Saturday for the first time And then Lion Ridge Aid Station. We got a cat, a D6, that's finishing up the work today to get into that first aid station. So the snow and the water 60 inches of rain fell on the burn scar on Forest Hill. That caused a lot of damage to roads, to other outside of the trail. But it's been an incredible effort And I'm almost ready to celebrate it yet. But I just got a call from the guys up in Granite Chief just a couple hours ago. They're up there right now. Yeah, it's been a tremendous effort. It's pretty awesome. This last weekend we had our annual camp out, which is their last weekend before the race. We can do any last minute needs And it's also a time to celebrate the year of trail work And it was absolutely awesome. We got so much work done. We had four different teams on Saturday. I think it was 40 volunteers. We had four different teams, so we were all over the place doing different jobs And people who never had done trail work before had joined us And some had done a lot of trail work with us this year. So it was a mix. We even had Jim Howard out there who won the race in 1983. He came out and did trail work with us this weekend. It was pretty cool. Yeah, it's been a tremendous effort. Yeah, we're really proud to present the normal course to the runners this year along the ridge tops, which is what you want to see when you run. When you run Western states, you don't want to run down on gravel roads next to French Meadows Reservoir. So we're really proud to be able to offer the normal course to runners this year.
Speaker 1:
This is something we often ask of a lot of runners that have been in the sport for a while, especially if they've accomplished a lot or they've just had a long career and were curious about why they're still in it. They're still in the trenches, training, hard racing, etc. And I kind of want to point this question to you as a race director. It's two parts. One are you still as excited about the sport and about race directing as you were dating back to when you got involved with Waldo or Western states And then B? what still keeps you going right now? Why are you still interested in it in 2023?
Speaker 2:
I am absolutely, totally the same interest, maybe even more so as the sport gets bigger and the race becomes more high profile. I love the pressure, i feel it. I know there's a lot of critics out there and I feel it and I thrive on that actually. And yeah, i'm still at times I'm getting a little tired, as I'm as I'm approaching retirement age I'm getting that at times. I think this would be nice to just go use my chainsaw and cut logs off the trail instead of having to Do all the other stuff. It's involved in directing the race. But, yeah, some of the mundane that, the minutiae, i'm a little bit tired of that. We did just hire an administrative assistant and she has already been a tremendous help on on my workload in the areas that I Just described. That's been, that's been a big help And I think if she continues to take more of that load, i can see myself going for for more years. But the race has grown. There's been mission creep, as Tim Tweetfire warned me when I interviewed in 2012 to watch out for mission creep And yeah, this job is way more involved than it was 10 years ago. But I think we're at an interesting point in the sport And I don't want us. I don't want to stop right now. I think there's still innovations and changes that are coming up that I want to be, i want to be a part of. So I'm struggling with that. Am I tired? Am I gonna retire or do I want to stay on? and right now, i still want to stay on. I.
Speaker 1:
Think there's a lot of questions I want to ask you around the blog. I feel like we could dedicate a whole episode to analyzing some of the posts that you made over the years. But one thing that struck me and I'm relatively new to this word I got into this in in 2016, so I'm in the ultra running equivalent of like seventh grade right now. I'm still learning so much, and one of the things that struck me about your blog is a lot of the issues that we're debating today. We were debating in a lot of the same ways back in 2009, 2010, 2011. It's not like from a from an intellectual standpoint, we're really reinventing the wheel here, or anything. You guys were on it back then as well. Are there any issues that you feel like have been resolved since those blog days? You know if you, if you had like an interesting topic that you were trying to deconstruct, you felt like we've kind of we've kind of Settled that issue, or is everything still an open question at this point?
Speaker 2:
When you tweeted out Finn a couple months ago It was. I forget exactly what the tweet was, but you you put, you asked a question. You you did it Very well, but you asked the question is it the races responsibilities to help? yeah, professional runners make a living, right? that's the exact same thing we were dealing with 12 years ago and My position hasn't really changed. I don't think the sport has resolved itself, but brands have come on and Sponsored athletes are giving them bigger contracts and I don't think races isn't have necessarily come out with prize money to support these The lives of the professional runners but they are definitely able to make More money. You get a course record at Western States. You're probably going to get a pretty big bonus from from your sponsor, and that that probably wasn't the case 12, 13 years ago, and we resolved that. But I had that exact same question From Jeff Rose used to be one of those, those runners who thought that it was our responsibility to provide their You know livelihood, and I never thought it was our responsibility at that. You need to be creative and be better at at marketing yourself and figure out how to make a living at this, and so maybe some of that has been resolved because people are making a living at it now and and it's not the races Responsibility or I've never thought of this racers responsibility that we provide the opportunity for them to race against the best people in In the sport and if they perform well, then they Money flows to them from some other sources, but not necessarily from the race. Yeah, I mean and that post, that you, that post. You were talking about the fast dude I had to read.
Speaker 1:
This is our D Oh well, linked to in the show notes. So good, so good For anyone that's not familiar. Tell the listeners and the viewers about the context of that post.
Speaker 2:
Well, i was. I was conflating a lot, i brought in a lot of perspective. So it wasn't just me as the race director in the fast dude, but it was. It was. It was a runner who thought they were Deserving, because of their speed, they were deserving of a spot in in a race that had a lottery, and the race directors is going back to the runner and saying you know, we have, we have a lot of people in our race. Have you considered volunteering or Helping the race in some other way? and the and the and the and the fast dude just kept saying no, you don't get it, i'm fast, you need to let me in the race, i deserve to be in the race. And the race director says, oh well, our race is Scholarships out to underprivileged kids and we do all these good things and the fast dude is just so obsessed with hey, i'm fast, i need to be in your race, you need to let me hear a race. And The rd kind of gets a little short with the fast dude at the end it ends a little edgy. I'd forgotten that, but it was just that it was that dialogue and and I don't necessarily see that now Do the same level would. One of the one of the things I really like about this new UT and B model which for many people is still really confusing Is that you race your way in just like just like our golden tickets, right, if you're a fast person, we have an avenue for you to get into the race. Go race against the people in that, in that qualifying event, and and show us that you're worthy of a spot instead of instead of Just subjectively saying, well, i'm fast, you need to give me a spot in the race, and I really like that about the UT and B, even though it meant Jim Wamsley had to run a qualifying Hunter-Miller to get into UT and B. But I like that. I just here. You go here Objectively, go, show, go, show us what you can do.
Speaker 1:
This is in. This is a Such a. I don't know the answer here. This is, i'm truly, a new question, but how does The selection process for golden tickets work, like when you factor in all of the different people that have seats at the table for Selecting and deselecting races? because it changes, it seems like year after year too. So for myself, anyone else in the audience, that's curious. How does that process work?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's actually gotten a little bit more complicated than it had in the past because of our Affiliation the UT and B world series. So they have a, they have. They have a say in some, in some of them. Hoka, our presenting sponsor, has a say and Then there's three of us on the board me, dylan and Topher I'm not on the board till Dylan and Topher from the board and myself, and we go Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, decide what what we're gonna do. We have contractually with UT and B. We have a certain number of races that need to be by UT and B races and We try to do geographic distribution of the races. When we were part of the ultra-trail world tour, which Solved right before you to be World Series came about, we used to get our international field through that. We'd get six athletes from overseas through that avenue. Well, that went away to us. So we push those spots into International golden ticket races and we really want an international field. I don't think you can have the best field in the world unless you have, unless you have, runners from all over the world. So that's why you're seeing more international races. That was a direct result of losing those UTW. But this, this series, we're also looking at, you know, the, the race coverage of those golden ticket races and Jimiil Curry and Arab Ipa. We get people say why does there? why does Arab Ipa have two golden ticket races? Well, look at their races, look at what. Not only do they, not only do they attract incredible fields, but they promote it and they have the live broadcasts. And they've been, they've been pushing the way. And then in the live broadcast, so yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna gravitate towards those types of races. Okay, to be a goal.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, i mean I guess backtracking just a bit, you know talking about like the back and forth, whether you know it's up to the races, to you know support the athletes if they win. It always seemed like that didn't make a ton of sense. looking at Western states specifically, being a non-profit race like Western states isn't putting on the race to put on a profit, like why are the runners profiting off the non-profit race? But I guess, yeah, i thought that came off of that was just like what are you know that a non-profit operation like that, that's that works a little bit differently than you know like a for-profit company. What are some things that you get to do differently, whether it's, you know, i guess, good or bad as. Western states.
Speaker 2:
So here's a quick anecdote. Drew Messick from Ironman was visiting us with the Pilates when they were going around the United States looking for races to buy to be part of the UTMB World Series And we finished and it was during the pandemic, so we ate outside on my deck in December. It was really cold. We came in afterwards and I showed him a buckle. I had a buckle, a silver buckle, on the table And I said yeah, here's the finisher buckle. And he looks at it and he's touching it. And he said how much does this cost? And I said I think it's about $435. And he said and what's the entry fee? I said 410. And he said how does that work? You know his for-profit mentality. just, he just couldn't. he couldn't wrap his head around that. There's one thing that we're allowed to do. I'm not trying to make a profit for any shareholders. We're not beholden to having to make a profit. But I thought that was an interesting anecdote. But we can also do. we can do a lot more fundraising to. because we're non-profit, we can go after grants that you can't get as a for-profit And the way we are treated by other, not necessarily vendors vendors aren't our toilet companies are cutting us a break. But municipalities and you know other organizations that we work with treat us a little bit differently because we're non-profit And I like that. I don't know if I could go back to a for-profit world right now. I really like being involved in a non-profit that does good stuff.
Speaker 1:
Well, Craig, I think, wrapping up this conversation, I just wanted to express my appreciation for how much you've been in the arena in this sport for so long and how many in addition to just the race directing how many interesting ideas you've injected into the space. I know just reading your blog in recent weeks and months, it's been influential on me And we're excited to be fans of this race on Saturday. Are there any public service announcements that might be worthwhile making on this show before we go? Like, is there anything that's new this year or things you're excited about or for folks that are coming in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, that they should be aware of?
Speaker 2:
Well, first off, thank you. Yeah, i don't necessarily have. I'm not on social media advocating all my new ideas. I don't have the blog anymore. I still have a very influential position here, but it doesn't feel like I'm as public with my ideas. So the fact that you read those from 10 years ago is kind of interesting, because I did have more. I was in people's faces, it was hard to hide. But for this race, what's going to be challenging for our organization is the fact that Mosquito Ridge Road, which is how we access the aid stations on the south side, of course that is closed. It's not in a passable condition. So there's no crews at Dusty Corners in Duncan Canyon And that means Robinson Flat is going to be slammed. And we've been debating whether we should restrict crew vehicles to one per runner and have a pass in the vehicle, and I have been against that because I think people will do the right thing when we ask them to just bring one car for a runner, one crew car, pack your people in. That's the way we're going. So I just want to make sure that runners cruise, respect that and understand how much pressure is going to be on getting their crews up to Robinson Flat, and then I would hope they would work cooperatively and help each other out and only bring one, not three, crew vehicles. Please don't do that. Once we get past that, it should be normal, but that's going to be a pressure point for us.
Speaker 1:
Brett. Any final questions or thoughts?
Speaker 3:
We got to let Craig bank some sleep or something. I know it's going to be a wild weekend and probably a few days leading up to it. Yeah, i'm excited to follow along. Never followed the race from a media side of things before. Yeah, it's going to be an awesome year And yeah, i guess we'll see you at the finish line.
Speaker 1:
Craig, we always give the guest the final word. Any final thoughts from you before we go?
Speaker 2:
So I hope every runner's dreams come true. I know some people waited a long time to get into this race and I hope they can just be present with every moment, from the start to the finish and all the pre-race hype stuff. Just absorb it all. Don't just rush it and try to get through it. It's definitely potentially a life changing day for many people and stay present.
