Hope your training is going well. This is the second update email leading up to the pre-race meeting on Friday, June 22 up at Squaw Valley.
Bib Assignments and General Information Form
As you may have seen on our website, bib assignments have been made. Check out the entrants list to see what yours is. Just as an FYI, the most requested bib numbers this year were 77 and 100. I can understand 100, but I have no idea why 77 was the most requested number.
Please take a minute to fill out the general information form. This is used by Tropical John Medinger, WSER President and our finish line announcer, as you run the final 250 meters around the track. It's a great opportunity to thank your crew, pacers, or anybody you'd like to acknowledge. This is a special thing we have been doing at Western States for decades.
Pacer Request Form
Thanks to Gary Wang from realendurance.com you can use his Pacer Request service to look for someone to pace you. If you can't find somebody on the list of pacers you can add your name as a runner looking for a pacer. Email addresses will not be revealed until contact has been made.
2018 Snowpack
After last year's record snow pack California is back to a below normal snow pack this year. Despite a persistent March wet weather pattern, the Northern Sierra snowpack is currently at 38% of the April 1 average snow pack, which is generally the peak of the snow pack. Last year at this time we were around 140% of average.
One of the snow sites we monitor closely is the Squaw Valley Gold Coast site at 8200' near the top of the first climb of the race. We had 36.5 inches of snow water content (all the snow melted down to water) on April 1, 2018 compared to 79.2 inches last year. To see how that stacks up to other years and the melt out rates see our snowpack page. Suffice to say, snow will not be the issue it was last year.
Quartz Elite and WSER Anti-Doping Efforts
Western States is an International Trail Running Association Quartz Elite race. That means the top five ITRA ranked men and women will be asked to provide an at home blood sample before the race. The Quartz program is free and open to all athletes and we encourage you to take a look.
Western States also has our own independent anti-doping program which we implemented for the first time last year. We believe that drug testing is an important and necessary step in deterring use of performance-enhancing drugs in our sport.
Please see our Drug Testing Policy and Protocols web page, which includes information on who might be tested, an appeals process, definition of legitimate medical use, and policy regarding confidentiality/public release of test results.
Memorial Weekend Training Runs
There is still space available for the remaining three training runs over the last 70 miles of the course on Memorial Day Weekend. Sign up at
ultrasignup before they sell out.
As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.
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