A race for the soul

Back in 1974, Gordon Ainsleigh decided that while his horse was lame, he certainly wasn't.

Ainsleigh and the poor critter were competing in the Tevis Cup horse race through California's Sierra Nevadas. When the horse couldn't make it, Ainsleigh made the then-radical decision to go ahead on foot, shocking observers by running the distance in just under 24 hours.

And thus, the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Race was born.

Now, every year in late June, a group of humans attempts to run that same route, 100 torturous mountain miles from Squaw Valley ski resort to Auburn, California. They'll do it again this year, starting just before dawn Saturday.

In 1977, the first official Western States 100 drew 14 runners. Since then, ultramarathoners, the solitary purists of the running world, have flocked here each year like swallows to Capistrano, seeking to hammer their bodies, minds, and souls along the anvil of the Sierra Nevada range. They face 17,000 feet of vertical climb and 23,000 feet of descent, with precious little flat running. Most will take home only a silver belt buckle, the memory of the view from 9,000 feet with 96 self-propelled miles to go, and some of the world's blackest, ugliest toenails.

The competition will be fierce. There is the reliable defending champion, Tim Twietmeyer, and his friend and rival Ann Trason, whose performances in this race have brought her closer and closer to breaking the gender barrier of athletics.

Spectacular Angeles Crest 100 former winner Ben Hian, a tattooed preschool teacher with a rabbit-eating python and wild, spiky hair, will be there. Also on the trail will be top Western States veterans Joe Schlereth, Dave Scott, and Scott St. John.

Three Eastern stars hope to crack the home-turf dominance of Californians who run the Western States trail for training.

Eric Clifton, 38, of Greensboro, North Carolina, started racing ultras in 1982, but only hit his stride in 1989 when he won the Vermont 100 and then went on a tear, setting course records at every race within a day's drive--the Vermont 100, the Old Dominion 100, the Mountain Masochist, and the Arkansas Traveler. But Clifton also tried the Western States 100 six times and came up short. Clifton has blamed this variously on overtraining, undertraining, and, once, on eating a bad pizza the night before. Western States veterans blame his reckless decision not to carry enough water on the run. They say that while he may outrun dehydration back east, it isn't possible in the tinder dry Sierra heat.

This year Clifton is coming with two other Easterners, Mike Morton, 24, a Navy diver based in Stevensville, Maryland, and 31-year-old Courteney Campbell of Berryville, Virginia.. Morton and Campbell met when they were lost and feeling bad around the 30th mile of a trail race. They ran together for the next 70 miles and found that they preferred to run in tandem, and have since shared the victory at several races. Other times, when they are behind another runner late in the race, the stronger of the two goes for the gold.

This year, for the 20th annual event, they will face a course that includes, along with the usual geological tests, the famous No Hands bridge which crosses a gorge and has a drop-off of several hundred feet on either side.

The Western States trail once connected the silver mines of Nevada with the prospectors of California's gold rush. Starting near the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics at 6,000 feet, the trail climbs nearly 3,000 feet in the first four miles. Still relatively fresh, runners can see the whole vista of the Sierra Nevadas spread out before them. Over 90 percent pure trail, the course crosses snowy alpine meadows, cool thick forests, high mountain ridges on desolate rock, and steep canyons sometimes superheated in the dry, tinder-hot California summer.

It passes through the old mining communities of Last Chance, Devil's Thumb, and Michigan Bluff, and at many of the 28 checkpoints, chase crews can get in and give them dates, figs, bananas, salted potatoes, M&Ms, ice, sports drinks, water, and medical attention as required.

And just for a test of will, they must face the icy cold Rucky Chuck River crossing at mile 78, where volunteers are required to help the runners pass without getting dragged downstream. If that weren't enough, after the No Hands bridge crossing, the last few miles has another 1,000 feet of climb before finishing on the Auburn high school track--at around 11 p.m. for the winners and well into the next morning for the survivors.

The Western States trail is a constant reminder that the magnificent territory is merely borrowed. Trason herself gently chased a sunning rattlesnake from the trail with a few softly thrown rocks. Two years ago, a woman pre-running the course in March was killed by a cougar, and bear and cougar sightings have been common along the course this month.

To be sure, there are now more than a dozen similar 100-mile trail races in the United States, and there are 15,750 ultrarunners who competed nationwide last year, so the Western States is no longer the lone frontier of human endurance. But never underestimate it.

"This race is about pain," explained endurance racing pioneer Sally Edwards, who has also competed in the Ironman and the Iditarod 100-mile snow shoe race. "By now it is so obvious that none of the competitors even bother to talk about it among themselves. But to finish here you must be extremely strong mentally because the pain subjects you to more self doubts and more temptations to quit than you could have imagined. But the rewards are gold--a self-knowledge and self-confidence that can't be bought."