Western States Endurance Run

If you’re reading this, you noticed that we have a new website. It’s been a process that began about six months ago. We hope you find it easy to navigate and filled with useful and interesting content. One of the challenging issues web designers face today is the wide variety of devices used to view websites. This site has been designed to be viewed on a variety of browsers so don’t be surprised if it looks different on your phone, tablet, and desktop browser.

The team involved in making this a reality is from all over the US. I am humbled to have such incredibly talented and dedicated people working with me to bring this new website from a concept that began when I interviewed for the RD position last January to a reality today.

• Ian Doremus, from Eugene, OR is the principal designer of this site. I’ve built several websites with Ian over the years and he’s got a knack for incorporating photography into his designs. He has spent countless hours working with me on this new site. Ian will soon be the new WSER webmaster.
• Richard Goodwin, from Colfax, CA has been the WSER webmaster for 13 years. He wrote the original webcast which was cutting edge at the time. Richard is stepping down as webmaster and looking forward to being just a “regular race-day” volunteer in the future. Richard has helped with the new website, while concurrently maintaining the old site. His contributions to WSER have been recognized with a Friends of the Trail and a Little Cougar Award.
• Ted Knudsen, from San Rafael, CA is the new WSER Chief Technology Officer. Ted does all the behind-the-scenes work to keep our domains, servers, and everything tech-related running smoothly. He is the guy who developed the world-class webcast platform ultralive.net and has played a critical role in this year’s lottery. Ted is a WS Friends of the Trail recipient.
• Tim Smith, from San Antonio, TX, is a professional web designer who specializes in wordpress and has been our technical consultant.

Retiring race director Greg Soderlund, the WSER board, and Research Advisor Marty Hoffman also contributed to the new site. In the very near future you’ll see contributions from Ten-Day buckle holder and owner of realendurance.com Gary Wang. Photographer Luis Escobar contributed many photos.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the cadre of friends who reviewed the site. Thanks to each of you.

Now for a little of the technical details if you are interested:

• The site is hosted on Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud. A small instance runs the apache webserver, while a micro instance runs the mysql database.
• We are using WordPress as the CMS with a variety of plugins and some custom code.
• The theme is a custom responsive theme. It uses media queries to ask the browser what its capabilities are and then renders the appropriate layout of the content.

We will continue to develop and add content. If you have ideas or suggestions on what we can do better please let us know.

Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run Race Director Greg Soderlund, who has led the world’s oldest and best-known 100-mile trail run through an unprecedented era of increasing popularity, prestige and worldwide renown, has announced his retirement, effective January 1, 2013.

Soderlund, who began his career at Western States in 2000, will oversee the December lottery and then will retire. Craig Thornley, who served as assistant race director in 2012, will take over for Soderlund.

“It has been an honor to direct a pinnacle event in the sport of ultrarunning for the past 13 years,” Soderlund said. “I will continue to be involved with the event and will assist Craig and the Western States Board in any way I can. The past 13 years have been a remarkable journey, and I thank the Western States Board for their trust and guidance. I have been inspired both by the runners and our 1,500-plus volunteers and the amazing growth the sport has experienced over the last decade. I extend a special thanks to our tireless and selfless volunteers — without their dedication to the runners there would be no event.”

Under Soderlund’s direction, Western States has seen its annual lottery swell to nearly 2,000 applicants. Working closely with presenting sponsor Montrail and the Montrail Cup series of Western States qualifying races, Soderlund’s efforts have fostered greater competitive depth of the elite men’s and women’s fields. In addition, the race’s trail maintenance efforts, volunteer ranks, medical research agenda and sponsorships are all at record levels.

The 2012 edition of Western States was just one example of Soderlund’s focused, athlete-centered race direction. Men’s and women’s course records were set by Timothy Olson and Ellie Greenwood, while the race also saw a record number of finishers and the most sub-24-hour silver belt buckles ever awarded in the race’s 39-year history.

“Greg has set an incredible standard for 13 consecutive race cycles,” Western States Board of Trustees President John Trent said. “Our race has been blessed to have someone of Greg’s abilities directing our race. I may be a bit biased, but I believe that Greg is the best race director in the country.

“The thing I will remember most about Greg is his belief that every runner who toes the starting line at Squaw Valley on the fourth Saturday of June should have the experience of a lifetime while running our race. Amazingly, for 13 historic race cycles, he’s always been able to accomplish that goal. For that reason, and much more, Greg’s legacy is simply remarkable.”