MILE 93: JIM WALMSLEY AND THE WRONG TURN THAT DEFINED A CAREER

The finish line was yards away.

Jim Walmsley had never run a 100-mile race before the 2016 Western States 100. He was 25 years old, a former Air Force track runner turned ultra newcomer, and by mile 80 he was running 45 minutes inside the course record. He had gaps on the field that had nothing to do with racing at that point. He was attacking the clock.

At mile 93, with the finish line accessible within a reasonable continuation of his effort, he missed a turn. He ran 2.5 miles in the wrong direction before a photographer found him on the side of a highway, uncertain of his position. There was no malice in the error. There was no drama in the moment. He had simply run the wrong way in the dark after 93 miles of racing harder than anyone had raced Western States before.

He backtracked. He walked the final ten miles. He took three hours to cover them. He finished. The course record he had been running toward, the record that would have cemented a debut as the most impressive in Western States history, existed only in the data that had been watching his splits.

The Course

Western States 100 runs from Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe) in the Sierra Nevada to Auburn, California, covering 100.2 miles with approximately 18,000 feet of elevation gain and 23,000 feet of descent. The race was first held in 1977 and grew from a horse endurance event, the Tevis Cup, which had used the same mountain trail since 1955.

The course climbs over the Sierra crest in the early miles, runs through high alpine terrain to the Foresthill checkpoint at mile 62, then descends through increasingly warm canyons into the Sacramento foothills. The final 38 miles from Foresthill to Auburn are run largely at lower elevation, with the heat of the California foothills replacing the altitude challenges of the high country. June in the Sierra typically delivers conditions ranging from snowpack on the high trails to temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius in the canyons.

The course record is the most coveted benchmark in American ultrarunning.

The Year After

Walmsley returned in 2017 and dropped at mile 78 with stomach problems. The race went to Andrew Miller, who had won in 2016 during Walmsley's wrong-turn year. Two consecutive failures to finish in two attempts, one uniquely heartbreaking and one straightforwardly bad, defined what Walmsley's relationship with this race would need to become: something he could sustain long enough to resolve.

The trail running community had watched the 2016 wrong-turn footage, read the accounts, followed the GPS data. Walmsley had become, involuntarily, the sport's most watched story. He said after the 2016 race that he would be back like it did not matter, that it gave him more reason to return. It was the right thing to say. It was also true.

The First Win

He won in 2018. The conditions were severe: near-100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures in Auburn, heat that had historically slowed the race and produced casualties among the field. Walmsley ran through them. He broke Timothy Olson's six-year course record with a time of approximately 14:30 and crossed the finish line at the Auburn high school track as the race champion for the first time.

It was a genuine record on a hard day. It was also, for Walmsley, the first resolution of the thing that had been following him since the highway outside Auburn in 2016.

The Record That Stands

In 2019, Walmsley returned and ran 14:09:28. That time is the current men's course record. His training partner Jared Hazen also broke Walmsley's 2018 mark in the same race with 14:26. For the first time in race history, multiple men finished under 15 hours in the same edition.

Walmsley's 2019 time is 37 minutes faster than Olson's 2012 record. It is 21 minutes faster than his own 2018 mark. It reflects not just physical improvement from year to year but a competitive structure that had shifted: by 2019, the best American trail ultrarunners were training with each other, pacing each other at races, and pushing each other toward times that would have seemed unreachable a decade earlier.

He won again in 2024, his fourth title, running 14:13:45, the second-fastest time in race history. He was calm in that race in a way his earlier efforts had not been. The urgency of the wrong-turn years had been replaced by something more settled.

Kilian Jornet's Return

Kilian Jornet had won Western States once, in 2011, running 15:34:24. He said afterward that he had bad memories of the California heat and did not expect to return soon. He did not run the race again for 14 years.

In 2025, Jornet returned at age 37 and finished third in 14:19:00, the fifth-fastest time in race history. His 2025 finish was 75 minutes faster than his 2011 winning time on the same course. Caleb Olson won the race, and Chris Myers finished second. The 2025 podium was collectively the fastest in Western States history.

Jornet's return provided one of the year's better running stories: one of the sport's greatest athletes, at an age when decline is expected, finishing top three at a race he had abandoned after a single visit 14 years prior.

Courtney Dauwalter and the Eleven-Year Record

The women's course record at Western States had been held by Ellie Greenwood since 2012 at 16:47:19. It stood for 11 years. Ann Trason's record from 1994 had stood for 18 years before Greenwood broke it. The women's course records at Western States have historically been durable in a way the men's records have not.

Courtney Dauwalter had won Western States in 2018 with 17:27:00. She returned in 2019 on course-record pace and dropped at Green Gate with an injury. Four years of absence from the race followed.

She won in 2023 with 15:29:33, breaking Greenwood's 11-year record by 78 minutes. It was the first sub-16-hour women's finish in race history and one of the largest improvements on a course record in a single edition in the race's 47 years.

Katie Schide finished second in that 2023 race in 16:14. She returned in 2024 and ran 15:46:57, the second-fastest women's time ever. She came within 17 minutes of Dauwalter's record on a day when Dauwalter was not in the race. The depth in the women's field at Western States is at a historical high point.

What Western States Produces

The wrong-turn story is the most famous narrative the race has generated, but it is not unusual in kind. Western States has a long tradition of producing the sport's defining near-misses, comebacks, and sustained excellence. The heat, the altitude transition, the 38-mile exposed canyon section, and the June timing combine to make the race unpredictable at every level of the field.

Walmsley's four wins across nine years are the most dominant single-athlete men's record since **Scott Jurek' won the race seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005. Dauwalter's single-race improvement on the women's course record is the most dramatic in the event's modern history.

The race continues to attract the best American ultra runners alongside elite international competitors. Jornet's 2025 return and top-three finish confirmed that Western States draws at the level where the sport's best want to test themselves regardless of where they are in the world.

Walmsley's course record from 2019 has been standing for seven years. The 2016 wrong turn, the wrong-direction miles, the walk through Auburn in the early morning, preceded it by three years and approximately 18 hours of accumulated effort in conditions that would have stopped most runners. The record and the wrong turn are the same story.

Walmsley's wrong turn is one chapter in a race with decades of defining moments. For the full timeline, see the history of the Western States 100.