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 yr marked the occasion’s tenth version, if there’s something we’ve grown to grasp, change is fixed at this race. With important course adjustments in lots of editions, this yr was no totally different. Beginning at China Wall, a trailhead positioned 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 toes 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 components, 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 boys’s leaders within the early going of the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Photograph: UTMB/Howie Stern
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 attraction in that it was the final Western States 100 Golden Ticket race forward of the 2024 occasion, the place the highest 2 men and women earned entry into the race.
The occasion was additionally a UTMB World Sequence Main, which 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 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 an extended line of males trailing tightly, no less than 10 of them inside 2 minutes, together with Peterman.
Engdahl and Peterman have been operating 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 yr off on account of severe harm. Every would avenge these profession problems with finishes immediately, 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 via 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 carefully. 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. However it was nonetheless any man’s race, with an expansion 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 via 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 via 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, successful the lads’s race in 8:44:30. He gladly accepted the Western States 100 Golden Ticket.
Rod Farvard successful the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Photograph: UTMB/Howie Stern
Behind him, Holmen ran an excellent regular final 25k, and constructed a significant sufficient hole on the remainder of the sector, passing via 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 will roll down to 3rd place.
However who could be the third-place finisher? As we all know, finally, 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. Photograph: UTMB/Jacob Banta
2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k Ladies’s Race
The beginning of the ladies’s race couldn’t have performed out extra in another way from the lads’s. Katie Schide (U.S., lives in France) took the ladies’s race out, created a spot early, and ran on. By the primary assist station at Deadwood 1 (16k), Schide had already constructed a spot on the sector, 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 yr’s Western States 100 and has her eyes on the prize of that race this yr. Undoubtedly, this race was a crucial step in her preparations for this yr’s version.
Mary Denholm featured prominently in podium place over the primary 30k, having handed via 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 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 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, slightly below 13 minutes off the lead.
Ten kilometers later, at Foresthill (49k), the Schide Present was formally in full pressure, together with her arriving at 4:25:14 and with greater than 21 minutes of actual property to the following lady. 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 via 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 via in 5:31:21. There, she’d additionally cracked the general high 10. Resulting from an absence of ladies’s protection within the dwell stream in addition to points with Sullivan’s monitoring units, we don’t have her break up at Cal 2, however she was in second place right here. Denholm was the following lady via in third, 65 minutes off the lead.
At Driver’s Flat (76k), Schide was now choosing her means via the lads’s high 10, passing in sixth total in 6:50:38. For the document, that’s 17 minutes again from the lads’s chief three-quarters of the best way via a path 100k — some insane operating. Schide’s lead within the girls’s race would solely develop over the race’s remaining quarter, and she or he 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 wanting actually good for Schide’s second try on the Western States 100 this summer season. Along with her computerized entry primarily based on her top-10 end final yr, the two Western States 100 Golden Tickets would roll right down to different girls.
Katie Schide successful the 2024 Canyons by UTMB 100k. Photograph: 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 will 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 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 exhibiting an official DNF, however she actually has.
As the ladies’s positions fluctuated, it will 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 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 shifting 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. Photograph: 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. Photograph: UTMB/Jacob Banta
