Float Up, Roll Down, On and On
Tyler Green's glorious performance at the 2021 Western States Endurance Run deserves an homage, so here's some of what this run meant for the rest of us.
The last time I saw Tyler Green before he ran the Western States Endurance Run, I asked him how he felt and he got that grin where his eyes get squinty with a glimmer and he nodded a few times. He was ready. Tyler often flies under the radar, but after a quarantine year setting Fastest Known Times from Mount Rainier to the Lost Coast, I believed. Then, a few weeks later, he went out and ran his finest race.
Here’s some of what this run meant to Ty, the world of ultramarathoning, and his family, fans, and friends who followed along.
The Game and the Race
First, let’s start with ultra marathoning itself, a sport wherein folks run vast distances over trails as fast as they can. While distance running was always part of human life, the sport’s current state was birthed 47 years ago, when a man named Gordon Ainsleigh entered a horserace without a horse.
The Western States 100 Trail Ride originated in 1955 as a race between Squaw Valley and the track at Placer High School in Auburn, California. The two locations would be less than 50 miles apart for a crow, but the path between them is a dusty and grueling 100.2 mile journey which weaves and rises and dips over the Sierra Nevadas, through snowmelt creeks, and often in withering summer heat.
Gordon Ainsleigh, a student at UC-Santa Barbara at the time, first joined the race in 1971 after buying a horse. Ainsleigh was large for a rider, around 200 pounds, so he dismounted on downhills and discovered he had a speed advantage on descents. In 1973, Ainsleigh lost his horse in a breakup, but he still wanted to race, so he stashed 10 bottles of Gatorade along the course, gave himself a 10-minute head start on his equine competitors, and finished the race 23 hours and 42 minutes later, dive rolling across the finish line. In the process, Gordon fathered a brand new sport.
The next year, another man attempted the run, but fell short a couple miles from the finish. The following year, some soldiers from Fort Riley gave it a go, then more folks kept trying, until eventually a new event split off and the Western States Endurance Run, North America’s first ultramarathon, was born. Today, WSER stands alongside the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) and Colorado’s Hardrock 100 as the unofficial Triple Crown of Ultras.
The Runner
Tyler’s first shot at Western States was June 29, 2019, and I drove down to Auburn to watch the finish because to even break the field was one of Ty’s career highlights to that point.
Tyler was new the the course, but he ran well, starting back around 40th place and finishing 14th overall. The end of the race was thrilling, though to see him so exhausted is sometimes frightening. Running 100 miles on trails cut by pack horses through dry mountains in summertime taxes a person, you see, and Tyler takes days to recover. He was already planning for his next ultra in August, though, the Cascade Crest 100 in northern Washington. He won that race, then finished second in the Javelina Jundred outside Scottsdale two months later.
Outside of his day-job teaching middle school, 2020 held plans for a full racing season including trips to China, Colorado, and Switzerland. Then Covid-19 swept in and upended trail-running alongside everything else. Instead of faltering under the national malaise, however, Tyler’s running flourished. He set FKTs for the Loowit Trail around Mt. Saint Helens, the Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier (a quest I interviewed him about in Willamette Week), and the Lost Coast Trail, along a remote stretch of the Northern California coast.
Through these runs, Tyler is more in tune with his craft than ever. He’s run enough miles and races to master running. That’s why, when he smiled-nodded, I knew what he said was legit.
There was also a possibility the field would be more open than usual since there was some mystery as to whether Jim Walmsley, a 31 year-old distance dynamo from Flagstaff, would run. He’d apparently gone dark on Strava, fueling speculation he was injured. But Walmsley did enter Western States, and as reigning champion, record holder (14 hours and 9 minutes), and owner of two of the three fastest times in WSER history, he was also a clear favorite.
The Watching
Ultramarathons are complicated to watch in person unless you wanna sit in one spot as the field passes by like a parade. If you’re following one runner, there’s a lot of driving and hiking and waiting, broken up by flashes of encouragement and joy. During the 2019 WSER, I first saw Tyler at the Pointed Rocks aid station in a classic Californian oak grove just west of the town of Cool, right after the sun set. He was smiling, donned a headlamp, and disappeared into the dark. Then I drove to Placer High to wait for him at the finish.
European ultras like the UTMB are routinely live-streamed with professional coverage, and North American races only now scrambling to keep up. The 2021 WSER was the first to be live-streamed, with announcers Dylan Bowman and Corinne Malcolm competing in their own sort of endurance challenge by hosting nearly 20 hours straight. What this meant for the rest of us is we could watch at home for the first time.
I worked Saturday, so I was only able to check updates during breaks. Through the morning, the leaderboard showed a typical WSER, with Jim Walmsley leading the pack of stars like Hayden Hawks, Alex Nichols, and Max King. Tyler was 20-25 spots back, mostly by design. Runners with this level of determination and competitive spirit often trend toward adrenaline-fueled starts, and one of Tyler’s gifts is holding back and keeping a steady pace, letting the lead dogs wear themselves down. Another strength was Tyler’s power as climber, crucially required for the steep peaks and valleys of the Sierra Nevadas.
The heat was a concern, though. While the dome set to engulf the West Coast in hot fury was far to the north, the temperature was 100° in Auburn, and baking in the valleys. Based on average finishing times, this was one of the three most difficult years in WSER history, if not the most difficult. To counter the scorch, Ty’s crew had whole coolers of ice devoted solely to keeping melted water running down him all day like a coolant. His goal was to stay wet, and between the ice vest and laying down in every creek he crossed, there were points, he said later, where he actually felt cold.
As afternoon wore on into evening, Tyler Green’s name rose through the ranks. I wasn’t surprised when I saw him equalling his previous placement of 14th in 2019, but I was surprised at how early it happened. Then he was in twelfth, then tenth.
I think about Tyler while he’s running and I pray for him because what he does is still dangerous. Runners lose the trail, are at the mercy of race planners, get injured, and run through backcountry with bears and cougars and rattlesnakes. Less than two months ago, the sport faced its most horrific tragedy when 21 ultramarathoners were killed after a storm swept through the Yellow River Stone Forest during a 100k in China, stranding them in high winds and freezing temperatures.
Mostly, I pray Ty experiences the story meant for him in each run, and the themes for this one were community and preparation. With knowledge of the trail under his belt, Tyler relied on an all-star crew chiefed by the stalwart Jordan Carey, the experienced Travis Liles, and Ty’s wife, Rachel Drake. He had elite pacers in J.T. Lehman and Yassine Diboune, and a handful of loyal friends (like Mike Irvine and Matt Block) to drive and lug coolers. And Tyler’s preparedness levels would’ve put an Eagle Scout to shame. He had innovative cooling systems and shoes designed by the most forward-thinking brand in athletics, a honed calorie intake plan, and methods and tactics picked up through experience to conserve energy, stay cool, and persevere.
Meanwhile, I got off work, returned home, settled into my easy chair, and streamed YouTube’s coverage through our TV. Tyler was in eighth. Then seventh. Then fifth. As he rose up the ranks, the announcers praised Tyler’s splits, claiming his technical proficiency would make future text books for Ultramarathoning 101. Dylan Bowman, who lives in Portland and trains with Tyler, said he wasn’t surprised and expected a top five finish. But the day still wasn’t over.
The Flow
Some years ago, while Tyler was living with us in the years after Mindy’s death and before he and Rachel were married, we each got very into Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), a book written by the head of the University of Chicago’s psychology department, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The theory of flow is people are happiest and most brilliantly productive when they become fully focused on a challenging task. You know this feeling and have experienced it on some level when you’re locked in or in the Zone. Flow is a sense of such full immersion that all other temporal concerns (time, food, self, etc.) fade away.
According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow state has these eight characteristics:
Complete concentration on the task;
Clarity of goals and reward in mind + immediate feedback;
Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
Effortlessness and ease;
There is a balance between challenge and skills;
Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
There is a feeling of control over the task.
This is the state Tyler prepares for, seeks, and exists within for hours while he runs. As he moves up mountainsides and switchbacks, he imagines floating upward, rising through heights to grand vistas. Then he descends, relaxed, seeing himself as a marble rolling down a groove.
Flow, to me, is a state of ultimate worship, a oneness with our Creator. We can’t stay there all the time, and must also go through other components of change: discomfort, isolation, planning stages, rest. But that flow work satisfies because that’s when we’re in accordance with our gifts and place in the world. Artists and athletes know this especially well. We yearn for the flow state, to act and feel the Holy Spirit lifting us above and beyond ourselves.
The chart below is a visual representation. Please note the many pleasant and not-so-pleasant feelings we move past in progress toward flow, each of which have their own times and place.
Flow was an ethic we learned as boys—usually referred to as “the Pursuit of Excellence”—and Tyler’s life and running career embody this wholehearted embrace of greatness. His emergence as one of the world’s finest distance runners after decades of dedication and learning is a joy to behold for myself and many others who’ve followed Tyler’s path. That he is also highly-regarded as an honorable and kind colleague by his fellow athletes is equally inspiring.
The Chase
The town of Foresthill sits at the WSER’s 62 mile mark, and experts claim this is where the race truly starts, whether paces will hold up or falter. Tyler entered the Foresthill Hill aid station in 7th place, right behind fellow Oregonian Max King, a distance-running legend. King was tapped out from the heat, though, and Tyler left the station in 6th. Some miles later, he caught up to Nike teammate Drew Holmen, and for the next fifteen they linked up to run together in 4th and 5th.
The duo passed an overheated Alex Nichols at mile 75, then faced an uncomfortable truth: runners aren’t really into ties. But it was Tyler who’d caught Drew, and now he moved ahead, his strategy of starting slow and building momentum to pass in full fruition.
Ahead of them both was Hayden Hawks—only one of the finest ultra-runners in the world—from Cedar City, Utah, who trained with Walmsley and has a habit of dominating races across the Southwest. Splits, however, indicated Hawks was slowing.
(This point seems as good a place as any to add that ahead of Hawks, by a wide margin, was Jim Walmsley. Remember how he had two of the three fastest times in course history? Well, his 2021 time was the fourth fastest. “I can’t help living in the Age of Walmsley,” Tyler said later. And this is the last time we’ll mention him.)
Back in Portland, inside our sweltering home, the aid station at Pointed Rocks was on the television as I sipped a whiskey sour, waiting alongside Dylan and Corinne, frantically texting with friends and family, and all the other live-streamers, to see who’d rumble in next.
I thought about being there in the hills above Auburn two years previous with Mom and Dad and Tyler’s crew, waiting for him to roll down the hill toward us. I thought about those beautiful oaks which still dot California’s undeveloped land and make me understand why everyone gave up their homes and lives to move west. The sunsets spark a longer-lasting Gold Rush than the fortunes which once glittered in the Sierras’ earth and streams.
Then the picture cut from a static shot of the finish line and back to the oak stand, and there was my brother Tyler, emerging from hills lit by golden hour with a squinty grin. He’d caught Hawks on the descent near Quarry Road, and was now in second. He stopped for a snack and a new water bottle, passed on the headlamp, then disappeared down the dusty trail.
From there, barring catastrophe or injury over the final stretch, the podium was Ty’s to lose. As we waited, there was a surprise cameo from Gordy Ainsleigh, who was chillaxing next to his massage table near Michigan Bluff with a half glass of orange juice.
The Finish
The final leg of Western States loops down from Robie Point and into the city streets of Auburn. The sun was down and blue hour begun when Tyler hit pavement and was joined by Rachel and their dog, Teddy. Upon arrival at the Placer track, he slapped his hand on the synthetic surface, then soaked up the last few hundred yards. You can watch official coverage of the moment here, and Ty’s final finish below, which I was yelping and hollering through like Dennis Hopper at the end of Hoosiers. (One hidden highlight: Jordan Carey’s background flex. 💪🏼)
Back in Portland, many of us were cheering loud, feeling proud of the hero on the screen, Tyler Green, who ran for Oregon and himself and everyone who loves him, who harnessed his craft and community and experience and will and spun them into a harmony of excellence. Despite the crushing heat, he beat his previous time by 40 minutes.
Someone asked me once if I feel envious of Ty’s running success and I felt some affront to this question, not because envy is an alien emotion, but because I’m glad for who Tyler is, and I’m glad for who I am, and I’m glad we find flow in our own ways. I admire how Tyler chugs around volcanoes, showing us what can be done with tenacity and diligence. Plus, my life would’ve been poorer and sadder without my ferocious and incredible brother, so on the balance I feel, like, 98.5% happy for each new level he reaches.
I’m not beyond comparison, though, so sometimes when Tyler runs, I remember early writing advice from literary agent Kathy Helmers: “The writing life is a marathon, not a sprint.” Well, I spent most summer days of my childhood locked in athletic battle with a future world-class ultramarathoner with hyper-competitive drive so perhaps I’m ready to go the distance through my own fields. Other friends of Ty have similar stories, and I think this is one reason so many people love him, for how his effort and perseverance inspire us along our own paths.
From now on, Ty’s WSER racing bib will include the prestigious M2, proof he reached the original ultra’s podium. For now, he’s moving this week, planning for future runs, pacing Dylan Bowman in the Hard Rock 100 in a few days, and training for UTMB’s TDS, a 145-kilometer race around Mont Blanc in late August. There are new peaks to climb, and the flow rolls on.
What an amazing story, Jordan! Your writing conveys it beautifully. Congratulations to your brother!
Beautifully written and incredibly inspiring. Thank you both for sharing your talents and chasing flow.