Western States 100-mile Trail Run

Went out to Squaw Valley, CA to do a little work, if you can call what I do work, and was able to take some photos while there. The “work” portion of this trip consisted of collecting samples from some of the runners in the annual Western States 100-mile trail run to examine the effects of prolonged physical exertion on certain parameters of immune function. This involved only a pre and post collection so the rest of the time was spent at leisure.


Took this after securing the rental car after leaving the airport in Sacramento. I was glad to be off the plane where I had been sandwiched in between two strangers for the entire 1800mi flight – not the seat I was assigned. I was informed when I tried to board the plane in Chicago that my seat had been given to someone else??? So the airline was going to do me a ‘favor’ and give me a seat in Coach Plus – which by the way is exactly where my original aisle seat had been - It was around 8 or 8:30pm and the sun was setting over what I believe to be the Maycamas chain of the Coast Mt. Range. I was surprised at how flat Sacramento proper was.

and another. That’s not a UFO in the top left region of this photo. It’s the remains of a bug on the windshield of the car. I was taking these photos from within the car with one hand, not something I'd recommend.

This is where we stayed, The Inn at Truckee. Looks a bit more festive in this photo then it actually appeared to me at the time. Truckee, by the way is a beautiful town. I would like to live there. It seemed to me that there were a whole lot of runners and bikers there, more so than other places I’ve been. The temperature was on the chilly side of comfortable.




This was early Friday morning, around 6:00AM (I had been up since around 4:00AM because I was on EST and so getting up at this hour for a run was easy) as we were heading West to Donner State Park - Donner as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party - for a run.

Tough young fella’.





Looking west within the park. Practically everywhere you looked your gaze was met by an abundance of evergreens.

The 330ft deep Donner Lake with the Sun struggling to get over the mtns. in the background. It was very cold on this morning, I would guess around –2 – 2 degrees C.




‘A’ running through a stand of trees. The lake is to our right.

More mountains, rising from the North end of the lake.




Not a bad place for a house.




Heading south down 89 from Truckee to Squaw Valley. I took this photo because I had driven (and would drive numerous other times after this photo was taken) this 10+ mile stretch of road a few times already and thought it was a beautiful drive. If you have Google Earth and some spare time follow this road with the ‘terrain’ feature enabled.

Approaching the Olympic village at Squaw Valley.

‘A’ at the beginning of our run/hike of the first leg of the Western States 100-mile Trail Run. Very tough way to start out a race! Approx. elevation gain: 2500ft in 2.5 – 3.0 miles.

Continuing up.

Only about halfway to the top!

Good perspective of the grade.

Still going up.

Me in front of cascading snow melt.

Very old and large tree. My outstretched arms couldn’t reached around half of it’s circumference. This tree had a very nice smell too.

Almost at the top.

Finally at the top! Elevation: approx. 2700m (8800ft). A view of Lake Tahoe in the distance. Second deepest lake in the US. Maximum depth: over 500m (1645ft) with an average depth of over 300m!

Beginning the descent.

Back down at the starting line of the race – which would begin two days from when this photo was taken. The building in the background was where we were set up to collect pre-race samples.

Rings from the 1960 Winter Olympics.

Lake Tahoe.

The lead runner at the midway point on the course. The runners were climbing out of a very deep valley where temperatures hovered around 42 degrees C (approx. 107F). Elevation change from the valley floor to checkpoint #13 at Michigan Bluff (an old mining community) was about 1500ft. The man in the yellow shirt, behind the runner is Dr. David Nieman of Appalachian State University who often collaborates with our lab. The guy in the foreground taking the photo was another member of our research team, an MD from Harvard, whose name escapes me. There was also a few representatives from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) who were funding a large portion of this study. And of course ‘A’ at far right.

Left to right: ‘A’, Dr. Bob Lind the Medical Director for the race who is one of the nicest men I have ever met and an endless source of valuable info. and two members of the App. State research team.

‘A’ posing in front of a beautiful valley and surrounding mountains. Is it me or does she look like she’s getting ready to fight me?!

Me. Same place. Dr. Nieman in the background attempting to get the best angle for his photo with his digital camera, short of leaping up in the air.

Same place, better photo.

At Placer High School, the finish. This is our workstation. The refrigerated table-top centrifuge you see on the far right of the table never worked so we had to take the samples the following day to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital where Dr. James E. Heard was kind enough to let us use his facilities to spin down our blood samples for RNA isolation. After having been up for over 30 hrs this was a tougher task then it should have been. ‘A’ is posing for the camera – trying to look really busy. The first runners were still hours away from arriving.

The first runner enters the stadium. I know it’s dark but trust me. The people surrounding him with the headlamps were his pacer (who had won the race 6 or 7 times in a row but was not running this year) and friends.

The winner (or maybe not) as he collapses as he crosses the finish line. The poor guy would later be DQ’d because as he entered the stadium and finished one loop around the track he kept falling down and his pacer and friends that were surrounding him kept helping him to his feet – A very BIG mistake!

Funny anecdote, the guy in the too-short green shorts could have easily passed as Richard Simmons twin.

After this the runners continued to trickle in with the last runner finishing around 1530hrs. One of, but not the last person to finish was a guy who was not only celebrating his 11th finish in a row but also his 69th birthday!

All in all I had a great time seeing yet another beautiful place this country has to offer.