If Hayden Hawks had been born two generations earlier, it’s not a stretch to imagine him lining up alongside a score of soldiers from Fort Riley, hoping to beat them all in a pioneering 100-mile foot race over the course of the Tevis Cup, the annual endurance horse race in California that would start the following day.
That 1972 get-together was the prelude to what has become the Western States 100, the world’s oldest 100-mile trail race that starts from the foot of the Palisades Tahoe ski resort and heads west through Foresthill, crossing the American River Canyon and rising through the aptly-named Cool, a small town in El Dorado County, before finishing on Placer High School track in Auburn, California.
“I’ve been asked what my favourite race is a lot of times, and 100 percent Western States is my favourite race in the entire world,” Hawks enthuses. As we count down to the race on the final weekend in June, he’s every right to be excited by it.
Growing up in St George, Utah, and working in a running store, he still clearly remembers the shared stories of epic adventures associated with the almost mythical test; a net downhill course that has more than 5,500m of ascent over its 100.2 miles, with runners striving to finish in under 24 hours for a coveted silver belt buckle, and aid stations manned by the same crews for years, taking on their own identity within the race.
“It means a lot to me,” he continues. “It’s what got me into ultra running in the first place. I was fresh out of college and managing the St George running centre and just trying to make it as a pro, working full-time and trying to pick up sponsorships.
“One customer in particular had run Western States and the store owner had grown up in that area and volunteered at some of the aid stations when he was younger. As they talked you could see the light in their eyes and their love for that race.
“I started researching, reading all the books and watching all the shows that I could, and fell in love with the history and intrigue. When I got the Golden Ticket and qualified for my first Western States, it lived up to the hype.”
Western States (or WSER to use its acronym) isn’t just a challenge to complete, it’s a challenge to even get a start. Thousands apply for just a couple of hundred places through an annual lottery. Alternatively you just need to be the fleetest of foot and earn your Golden Ticket through one of a select number of qualifying races. Hawks nabbed his spot by winning the Black Canyon Ultra.
Solving the WSER puzzle
“Western States attracts the best runners in the world, but holds true to its roots,” he adds. “It intrigues me because it has so many elements to train for. You have to be good in the mountains but also a really good flat runner. You need to deal with the cold at the beginning and the heat at the end. There are so many variables and you’re never going to fully control all of them. It’s like a puzzle, and I like having the opportunity to put the pieces together and try to figure it out.”
Hawks, having finished runner-up behind Montana’s Adam Peterman in 2022, has additional incentive to perform after a knee injury followed by surgery ruined his chances in 2023.
“When I was younger I had Osgood-Schlatter disease,” he explains, describing a condition normally linked to growing pains in teenagers. “It usually goes away when you’re an adult, but mine came back for some reason. I had a significant bone spur under my patella tendon and it was just rubbing and causing a lot of tendinopathy. They took the spur out, shaved the bone down and cleaned it off, allowing the tendon to move as it needs to. It’s been 10 months since surgery and I’m not completely out of the recovery stage yet, but it’s manageable now and on its way out. I continue to be on top of my physical therapy and strength training.”
A confidence-booster arrived in February with the Black Canyon Ultra victory over 100km in a time of 7:30:18 - that's about half the duration he can expect for Western States. Hawks gives credit to his coach, Robbie Britton, and his wife, Ashley, whom he met in college and has since had two children with, for getting him through.
“It wasn’t easy and mentally it sucked,” Hawks says. “Ashley is my biggest supporter and I definitely couldn't do it without her. There were times when I was asking whether I was ever going to come back from it: ‘maybe I’m done, maybe I should just retire.’ But she wouldn’t let me do that and insisted we worked through it together. Robbie had knee surgery of his own a few years ago and was like: ‘Dude, I understand, stay positive. I promise it will go away.’ He was able to guide me through mentally, and it was definitely very helpful.”
While only 33, Hawks is acutely aware the sport moves on apace. Western States is just one such example. In 1974, Gordy Ainsleigh became the first to complete the course in under 24 hours, but Hawks believes that given the right conditions - “Western States is all about the weather” - it’s possible to go 10 hours faster.
“It’s getting more and more competitive,” he says. “Everyone is on their A-game. Only a handful of people have broken 15 hours for Western States but it’s happening more and on the right day, with the right fitness, and a cool year, I believe I’m capable of breaking the course record. I’ve discussed it with Jim and we believe breaking 14 hours is possible.”
The current leading mark was set by aforementioned fellow American Jim Walmsley of 14:09:28 in 2019. When ultra running legend Scott Jurek won the race seven times in a row from 1999, his first victory was in 17:34:22 and he dropped it to 15:36:27. On the women’s side, Courtney Dauwalter’s winning time of 15:29:34 last year took 1-hour 18-minutes off the existing women’s course record. That might be an outlier, but the times are tumbling.
“It’s a could-a, would-a, should-a thing,” Hawks adds on his chances. “I feel like I can run low-to-mid 14 hours and most years that will win the race, but I cannot control what other people do. We’re seeing a lot faster times being run, with more depth in races. The prize money is going up, increasing the opportunity to do it for a living and it’s only going to make the sport more competitive.
“I love it just as much if not more than anybody. At the root of it I do it because I love being out everyday, pushing myself and running the trails, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making money doing what we love. Isn’t that the dream for everybody?
“But I can’t let my guard down and need to find ways to make myself better, recover faster and take care of myself. We see it with every other sport. Lebron James invests millions into his body so he can continue to be at the top of basketball. I have to invest in myself and put a team around me too.”
If Western States is a puzzle, how close does he feel he’s come to solving it? “Not very close to be honest!” Hawks replies. ”There are always going to be struggles in a 100-mile race, but I want to run a race that I’m proud of and I haven’t done that yet. One thing that was really off previously was my fueling and hydration. That was before I was working with Precision Fuel & Hydration, so I’m intrigued going into this year."
Hayden's fueling strategy
Hawks explains how he flew to the UK for testing with sports scientists at Liverpool John Moores University and learnt he was under-fueling and under-hydrating in racing. “It made sense because I’ve struggled at the end of the races, blowing up and losing significant amounts of time.”
Previously, Hawks had been mixing up his nutrition with a variety of food, gels, chews and drink mixes. He felt he needed a simpler plan.
“I was trying to do too many things and found it’s too much for me, particularly late in the race,” he explains. “It was better to grab what I needed from aid stations and go, so I could focus on other elements such as keeping cool and running at the right pace.”
Instead, he now uses the PF 300 Flow Gel to get 300g of carb in one bottle, topped up with a PF 30 Caffeine Gel, so he aims to get an average of 110g of carbs per hour. He also carries two soft flasks and a small bag of Electrolyte Capsules to stay on top of sodium loss and any training run over 90 minutes is fueled like a race to get the gut used to his nutrition.
“I’ve had flavour fatigue badly in the past and have had a hard time with really sweet things, especially later in the race,” Hawks adds. “The Precision Fuel gels have a very light flavour so I just squirt in a bit of water, swish it around and it’s no issue.”
How Hayden trains
It means all that’s left to nail is the training, and while mileage might be a useful measure for some ultra runners, Hawks puts just as much store in his weekly vertical ascent. “The Europeans have been doing it for years. People would look at Kilian Jornet’s training and say he only runs 80 miles a week, but he’s also putting in 40,000 feet of elevation. That’s why time is the most important thing to measure with training, but everyone does it a little differently.”
Today has been an easy 90-minute run from home in Cedar City up into the mountains. It’s not far from where Hawks was brought up and while he has tried the well-trodden training bases of Boulder, Colorado and Flagstaff, Arizona, it’s Utah to which he’s returned.
“I live at 2,000m so I ran up to 3,500m and back. We accumulate a lot of vert as we get ready for Western States, but nothing as crazy as training for UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc), when we’re trying to reach 10,000m per week. For Western States, it might be around 5,000m per week, and if I’m running around 100 miles a week, it would be about equivalent to the whole of Western States.”
It will often be complemented by a faster, flatter effort the following day before returning to the hills. The idea is to simulate the terrain that might see a fast hike such as required for the 36 switchbacks up to the canyon wall of the Devil’s Thumb midway through the race, to the flatter sections where sub 6-minute miles might be demanded. “It’s multi-dimensional, with a lot of sections super flat where I can run pretty fast and lots of sections straight up straight down. We have to be good at both.”
The other element is having a like-minded training partner to help share the load and while away the hours. For Hawks it is Kiwi Daniel Jones, who placed fifth at Western States in 2022 as Britain’s Tom Evans took the title. “We met a couple of years ago, started training together and clicked right away,” Hawks explains. “I’m heading to New Zealand to train with him in the winter, but first we’ve got this big block for Western States. These are the most important training blocks where we build fitness that carries over until UTMB and then the fall racing. We’ll also train together in Europe ahead of UTMB.
“There are times you need to be in your head because during an ultra you will be running by yourself a lot of the time, but training weeks up to 30 hours all by myself can be mentally draining, so it adds an extra element to run with somebody. Today we were both pretty tired, but just chatting about life and other things besides running made it go by a lot quicker.”
Both are coached by the experienced Britton. There's a danger of training groups causing athletes to push too hard as they try to establish themselves, but both have similar mindsets. “Dan and I understand each other. We don’t have egos and we’re not trying to race each other, but we keep each other accountable and slow down and speed up when we need to. Come race day it's every man for himself.”
The immediate target is Western States, but then it will be on to Chamonix for the UTMB CCC (Courmayeur – Champex – Chamonix) over 100km that he won in 2017 in only his second year of trail running. Repeating that feat has proved harder since, but Hawks remains determined.
“I’ve tried Western States-CCC double and struggled a bit at CCC, so I want to nail that one. Then I’ll probably move to the Western States-UTMB double. Right now I feel like I’m good enough to go out and win the biggest races in the world.”
