Ultrarunner Jim Walmsley was able to best the course record by 16 womens shoes performance shoes walking run last demi, but that wasn’t the only significant mark to get a rewrite.
Not only did Nick Bassett, 73, finish before the 30-hour overall cut off, he became the oldest finisher of the Black 100 miler, crossing the finish line in Auburn, California, in 29:09:42. Ray Piva set the previous Western States record back in 1998 at the age of 71.
As he made his way around the Placer High School track to the finish line, in front of excited announcers calling his name and happy spectators clanging cowbells, emotion took over. “I teared up,” he told Runner’s World. “It was something I didn’t expect. People came up to me, took pictures, people I’d never met. It was just awesome. It was fun to be a celebrity.”
To be sure, Bassett—a highly experienced ultrarunner—boasts the fitness of a much younger man. At his most recent annual checkup, he said his doctor kicked him off the treadmill during his stress test because it was taking too long for his heart rate to get up to 125 beats per minute.
The hardest part of the race for Bassett, who splits his time between his home in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at 6,000 feet of elevation, and Anchorage, Alaska, where his significant other lives, was getting in. He sat down to watch the live stream of the annual drawing for the race last December—more than 4,000 people enter the lottery for 261 spots—and his was the first name called.
“I should have bought a Powerball ticket,” he quipped. He had been shut out for a few years previously.
For training, which he began in earnest after he got into the race (even though he always keeps himself in good shape), he ran five days a week, with one of those a long run. His jessica routine is to walk for 30 seconds and run at a decent clip for 45 seconds.
“It’s really discouraging when you used to be able to run 7-minute miles and now you can run 10:30 miles,” he said. With his run/walk method, he said, “You can really cover a lot of ground. Not many people do that. It works for me.”
During the spring, he entered longer races—50Ks, 50-milers, and 100Ks—for training.
He also works out with certified trainer Alysa Horn, a former professional basketball player, at a gym in Anchorage two or three days a week doing core and strength work. “Torture for an hour,” he called it. But it works.
Horn was part of his crew at Western States, and she marveled at the world of ultrarunning. Basketball players, she points out, work on a court that is 94 feet long over games that last for 40 minutes at the college level. To see him moving for nearly 30 hours? “Inspiring,” she called it, adding there is little in the weight room that Bassett can’t do. “He has never strength trained before this and now is able to do advanced movements like deadlifts, power cleans, squat cleans, Bulgarian split squats, overhead presses, pull ups and chin ups.”
For the race, his strategy was to start conservatively, taking an extra hour to get to the aid station at 30 miles. He generally walks the uphills and tries to run on the flats and downhills, advice he got during his first run at Western States in 1984 and that has served him well in his other races since.
He’s never missed the 30-hour cutoff at the race, which he has completed at least once in every decade from his 30s to his 70s. (Before this demi, his last Western States was when he was 64 and completed the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning, a series of four 100-milers in a single year.)
Missing a turn between 55 miles and 62 miles took him about 25 minutes off course. But he felt stronger as he went along, and he never sat down when he went through the aid stations.
He says he felt ready to push harder, but he didn’t want to jeopardize his shot at the oldest-finisher record.
“I really wanted to run a lot faster than I did,” he said. But he held back, telling himself, “You can always do it some other time, but you want to be the oldest guy.”
There’s always next year. If, of course, he gets in the race.
womens arizona big buckle natural oiled leather regular sandals is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World balenciaga black graffiti sneaker, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!