What to do if you didn't get into Western States with CTS Coach Adam St. Pierre⎮KoopCast Episode 4

what is going on trail runners welcome to another episode of the KoopCast uh i'm actually gonna put this episode out as a special bonus episode um i've been extremely honored and humbled with the initial response to this podcast um it was one of those things where i thought that you know if my friends and my mother would listen i would consider uh i consider it a pretty good job but we've got a ton of good feedback on social media a ton of good feedback uh in itunes and i wanted to really reward the listeners of this podcast uh for all their enthusiasm by putting out a special bonus episode that really plays along with the last episode that we had with uh western states 100 race director craig thornley and western states 100 board member tim twightmeyer um if you guys listened to that episode you know that we only had one athlete out of our entire coaching group one athlete out of the 48 athletes that uh that entered the western states 100 make it through the lottery and a lot of our coaches were were really kind of bemoaning that and so what i wanted to do is get together with another one of our cts coaches coach adam st pierre went up to his home up in boulder and we kind of discussed what happens next what happens to these other 47 47 other cts athletes that we have that were hoping to run western states and now are not and a lot of

people can really empathize with that position right now and we go through just some you know basic steps of how to how to lay your season out and this is basically how i lay my coaching season out as well as i let the western states 100 lottery unfold and then all my athletes get their calendars together and then i get my racing and support calendar together uh after that uh after that lottery transpires as well so i hope you guys enjoy the episode i hope you guys uh get a lot of good practical information about out of it to uh kind of design the rest of your seasons but most importantly i hope it kind of like lifts you up and gives uh the runners that uh that did not get into the 2020 western states 100 uh something to look forward to and something to start to plan for and something to just really get excited about because there's a lot of awesome races out there and you shouldn't let the fact that you didn't get into one race kind of ruin your season let's just keep the dream alive keep doing qualifying races keep doing things that excite you i think that's a big uh big aspect of planning your year out is you have to do things that genuinely excite you uh so hope you guys get a lot out of this episode and without any any further ado here is my conversation about what to do next after you didn't get through the western states 100 lottery with cts coach adam st pierre the western states lottery the western states lottery western states lottery just happened this past weekend

um let's lay the groundwork a little bit how many people were entered into the western states lottery i think i saw 7 700 as the the total entrance number i'm looking at right now 6 664 okay i was up i was off i think you're off by a thousand that's cool that's cool we'll warm up into it and so they draw out of those 6 664 entrants 264 people plus 50 on the wait list plus 50 on the wait list now that's not the whole field size there's a lot of ways to win your way into western states right because you can win your way in top 10 from the previous year get in their sponsor spots and things like that but in terms of the lottery which is kind of what we want to focus on right here there's 264 spots that's 6 664 people are applying for so the rough math says that there's 6 400 some odd people actually exactly 6 400 6 400 people that are crying in their cheerios this morning see but i wonder are all those people actually disappointed oh that's a good question because the the conversations i've been having with with my athletes that did not get in you know they're not really disappointed because they didn't expect to get in they had low expectations they had they went in you're not expecting to get in and they are therefore not disappointed well um so yeah let's so let's bring

that up so it's a weighted lottery and people with few tickets have less of a chance than people have more tickets obviously right i think the the one ticket odd was was less than one percent this year like 0.87 percent pretty slim yeah pretty slim and there were let's see how many one ticket people there were let me pull this up really quick 3250 so roughly half of the entire entrant pool were one ticket people so a lot a lot of people centers yeah they're one percenters right they're all entering on kind of one ticket and so to to to kind of demonstrate how we as coaches can kind of like commiserate with these 6 300 some odd people that did not that missed out on the lottery that are not into western states i asked our coaching staff to just give us their win-loss ratio um for their pool of athletes that entered the western state lottery who got in who didn't get in and so uh adam let's kind of run down this list i'm gonna call the coach out and if you can look at their win-loss record you could you could do that part of it so first off me what's my win-loss record well then i'm pulling up weren't you like oh for eight i'm oh so i was i was over four over four athletes that entered that entered in the western states lottery not one of them got in uh our next coach duncan callahan one of your uh one of your boys you've paced him at leadville before former leadville winner

what's his win-loss ratio that the western stage lottery doesn't care if your coach has won leadville previously uh because he he was i think also oh for four oh i got him on oh for five oh for five even worse yeah okay so that's duncan now next we have coach hillary allen one of your athletes i think she only had two that put in yeah and none of them got in oh for two all right so we're not doing very good so far so three of our coaches not one athlete has got in uh coach john fixgerald who's my uh my wife's coach he's one of the first coaches i hired how john do hey he ran western states a couple years ago yeah that's right did pretty well did pretty good and he paced uh he paced get at western states last year did pretty well uh but his athletes still didn't get in nope not a single one fits was oh for seven poor guy all right uh it keeps getting worse coach corin malcolm top 10 finisher from last year she actually declined her her automatic entry uh one of your athletes as well she's got she's got other plans for the year other plans but it was a tough decision to to decline that auto entry yeah well i mean that's a coveted thing yeah exactly it's so coveted so she had 10 athletes enter the lottery how many of those athletes got in the number of corinne's athletes that did not get in is equal to the place she ran at western stage the past two years that's really convoluted so what is that so that means 10 did not get in okay corinne was over 10 so so far we got me donkin callahan hillary allen john fitzgerald corinne malcolm what about ajw all no no i'm gonna go through those guys i'm just

going through it to to to date all with the goose eggs next coach coach chantal so you got nobody nobody over four next coach perennial western states finisher andy jones wilkins yeah nada so that doesn't even matter the fact that andy's finished the race 10 times he's finished as high as second he's announced at the finish line he's he lives that race no he lives that race he was oh for eight i guess you know it's nice to know that there is there's absolute transparency in this lottery yeah it doesn't care who you are who your coach is like it's it's luck of the draw at least for those 264 spots so the last coach on here i'm saying that's me that's you what was your record my my numbers are a little unclear uh because as i found out in the last couple days i had a lot of athletes put in that didn't tell me they put in um which is kind of an interesting discussion we can have a little bit later but i uh i had one athlete get in through the lottery um she did not tell me she put in for the lottery um so i it was kind of a cool surprise when when my other athletes were texting me hey dream i got in um so that's kind of fun uh that i will have one athlete towing the line at western states um i have another athlete who won the raffle last year so i'll actually have two on the different way to get in different way to get in um and then maybe a handful of others might uh might win a way in but yeah i had uh you know one athlete win through the lottery and

four others that i knew of put in for the lottery not get in um and then it turns out i had had four additional athletes who did put in for the lottery um but did not get in okay so this is pretty abysmal so here's here's the the sentence uh from an athlete i did not know put in for the lottery uh i got uh just this morning like 99.99 of people that entered the western lotto i didn't get in no surprise there so that's how a lot and then the email goes on to like so what else am i going to do with my my 2020 where am i going to get my qualifier so i can put in again in 2021 um and i've got yeah a number of those emails to respond to okay we're going to get to those so the record is i was oh for four coach duncan was oh for five coach hillary was oh for two coach john fitzgerald was oh for seven coach corinne malcolm was oh for ten coach chantal was over four coach ajw was zero for eight and coach adam st pierre was one of eight which brings our collective total to one athlete out of 48 that let that sink in one athlete collectively out of our entire coaching group out of the 48 athletes that entered the western states lottery got in that is close to a two percent chance yeah those those those odds are not good those are not all-star numbers like those are you know borderline

getting sent to the minors no so that was terrible i was actually floored when i when i added all this up at the end of the day the fact that we could have near nearly 50 athletes into the lottery and one make it through the process is i mean it's just outstanding well it's particularly odd because two years ago we had like 20 athletes collectively um so it's just yeah just just luck of the draw and we'll probably have but my back of the napkin kind of calculation we'll have maybe maybe 10 or 12 because we'll get new athletes that got into the lottery that want coaching want to do western states the right way they'll come on board for that process of going to western states we'll have also have athletes race their way in yeah you're talking about a couple of your athletes that are going to try to race their way in i have an athlete casey who's already in i have a couple athletes that are going to try to race their way in as well and so that that'll go up and i think we'll have 10 12 athletes maybe at the end of the day that uh that we're representing out there but out of our current athlete pool this one out of 48 is like i've never i never thought that that we'd be in this position as a coaching staff to have to deliver so many like boohoo messages and get athletes back on the right track no pressure on dreamer yeah no pressure on dreamer you're the old dreamer i know you're going to be listening to this you are you as of right now you're the sole lottery representative of all of the cts athletes no pressure at all you're still going to crush it and she will because she's awesome

oh yeah we'll be ready okay so now let's get down to the meat and potatoes of everything we all have these we have all these athletes nearly 50 of them that are like i said earlier they're crying in their cheerios this morning and western states has become like this lighthouse for a lot of athletes to try to get to right it's like a beacon out there that they all want to have that experience of running that race one year and it's harder and harder and harder to get into and as coaches we now have to make sure that our athletes can still like stay on that track if that's something that they eventually want to do and now is the time that they have to now now that there is a definite yes i am yes i'm in or no i'm not in and the majority of those people are no i'm not in the vast majority the vast majority of them or no i'm not in take me through what you've been hearing from your athletes and kind of the counsel that you've been giving them after this process has kind of run its course so i mean often the first the first step is the what next um and for many athletes who don't get into western states the what next is okay i need a qualifier for the year um so then you scan the calendar and see what qualifiers look interesting and what fits into your kind of your calendar your schedule and then you sign up i don't i don't know if it happens quite yet is when those qualifiers then start to fill up immediately following the western states lottery um so it requires a fair

amount of pre-planning like you can't really wait to the last minute to register for a western states qualifier um you kind of have to jump on it right right now it's kind of a circular problem because a lot of those races will fill up even before the western states lottery ends because people like your athlete that you just mentioned they're anticipating not getting in and therefore needing another qualifier so they enter the qualifying races kind of preemptively right and then wait for the uh wait for the lottery to unfold and to which they inevitably don't get in and then they already have their qualifier set right um and then the people who did wait for the lottery might be might be you know up a creek without a paddle um i mean hard rock had a similar issue where they had such a relatively small list of qualifying events that eventually you couldn't get into your qualifying events um so like your whole race planning process has to happen uh immediately before and immediately after you know those those first weekend of december lotteries do you have any athletes that are genuine genuinely upset about the fact that they're a two-time loser or a three-time loser or four-time loser or even a five-time loser because there are a lot of those when you look at the statistics there are a lot of people out there that are five six seven time losers yeah i mean i i don't think i have anyone genuinely upset crying in their cheerios you know there are some people who are disappointed um and people who want to run this race but i don't think i have any athletes for whom running western states is there's a

lot of people who want to do it but like i don't think i have anyone you know who's truly devastated about not getting in i think frustrated might be a better word frustrated because i i i mean personally i have athletes that i coach and i know other people that i don't coach that have just been applying for this race that have been on the sidelines and hard rock is the same way they've been on the sidelines for four or five six years waiting to get into the race and each year that frustration gets amplified each year that they have to wait on the sideline that frustration gets amplified and it's it's like it's becoming harder and harder to kind of like counsel them through that because like i said this race in particular western states and hard rock's another example but it's become such a big thing for people to get into and to have that experience it's you know the cliche it's iconic lifetime it's iconic once in a lifetime type of deal and every year that they have to wait in the wings it's just harder and harder well especially you know given kind of the way the math works and the fact that you know the the number of first-year applicants is increasing so much and the number of people with multiple tickets is increasing like your your your chance doesn't necessarily improve by getting more tickets true um so it's yeah there's definitely some frustration out there um i i i have a hard time uh kind of counseling i'm i'm sort of a stoic right like oh you didn't get into western states here are the facts like yeah move on yeah right quit quit it um i carry that over from my my parenting um

you didn't get your way deal with it do you know of anybody or do you have any of your athletes that are like now disillusioned at the prospect of trying to get in i haven't specifically discussed it but but i don't think so you know i think most of my athletes see it as it's still sort of this like this like city on the hill that you want to visit someday um and and they'll just keep playing the game and keep putting in till they get a chance to do it um you know last year i had right it's two years ago i had a a married couple that got in that's right and what are the chances of of you know two people in the same household getting in um you know that must be a some type of the like the stars and the blue moon aligning but um yeah i i think for for many people it's it's i want to run western states someday and if i have to play the game for four five six seven eight nine ten years then then so be it that's what they do maybe so i'm gonna have uh the western states uh race director craig thornley on the podcast uh in a couple of days and i'm hoping to release both these episodes within close proximity or even on back-to-back days i wonder if he can give me the statistics on how many two three four year uh people that have applied that haven't gotten in drop out of the process that would be interesting to see that yeah the number of people who just give up either yeah either because they can't get a qualifier right they get hurt or something happens and they can't get a qualifier in for that year or they just say screw it i'm not playing the game anymore that would be interesting to know

yeah that you could call that the like the dq the disillusionment quotient oh i like that um but at the same time yeah there's there's a lot of nuance to the lottery okay so we've gone through these athletes that haven't gotten in you're taking the approach of let's just get another qualifier yeah right just keep playing the game like suck it up put your big boy and big girl pants on quit your crying if you're crying yeah exactly move on let's get another i'm not i'm not one to complain like these are the rules they're clearly stated like everyone abides by them you know it's the other the other thing i've talked to a couple athletes i had a guy i haven't talked to him about this yet but he just ran 237 at a calendar national marathon um i got two texts from him this weekend one was on saturday night no western states for me one was on sunday morning like i just ran 237 which was a huge pr um but like all right well rather than play the lottery maybe we should just keep training and try to win a spot there you go i think that's a really the time course is is probably similar like maybe it takes another two years to to train to that level um but maybe it takes another six years through the lottery so so are you gonna have him try to target a golden ticket race because that actually is he could he could nab one depending upon how the field shakes out with that type of marathon pr i mean that's in the range of what a lot of those people are doing yeah well we'll see this year he's already got plans you know he was one where he put in for the lottery and he already had another hundred miler booked yeah um and he already had plans for the year and it was

it was one of those well if i get in you know i'll adjust my plans yeah um because it's western states and you want to run it once um but i think so many people who do that yeah i think for you know for for moving forward we might we might target something for 2021 cool you mentioned some of the anomalies and there are those out there right the husband and wife that got in on the same year i mean god i mean somebody do a regression analysis on that that's that's crazy one of my training partners uh in colorado springs got in two consecutive years on one ticket yeah what are the chances like astronomically you know on both years so one percent times one percent or one percent how's that math work somebody go figure that out and hit me up on social media but anyway the odds are the odds are extremely low in both of those cases and i mean i think it goes to show that it is in fact a true lottery yeah i think for those 268 spots or whatever it is yeah there's there's ways in outside of the lottery but i think what a lot of people can respect about western states is that the lottery is is clear and transparent well and transparency is actually key and that's something that western states does that hard rock does not do right hard rock has five race director entries that they can do that they can kind of pull for whoever they can give it to one of their friends they can give it to an elite athlete whoever they want to do and they don't disclose that they don't disclose who they give those uh those entries entries to publicly specifically because they don't want that person to

feel bad right which i've always thought is a really interesting tact and i i mean dale i'm not saying anything that's not public dale garland the race director for uh for hard rock has mentioned this several times and that's that's the rationale and i know that rubs a lot of people the wrong way and that's not the the point of this discussion but i think that we can all appreciate the fact that everybody who is in the western states 100 who's going to total line we know how they got there we know who got in from a sponsor spot we know who got in from the lottery the top 10 are you know are obvious we know who got into the raffle tickets i mean all of those are very clearly displayed on the entrance list and if anything that helps the whole boohoo aspect of this right like knowing that it's a fair product now you might disagree with how the lotteries run and how many spots are open up for sponsors and things like that but the fact that you know where everybody's coming from i think offers a little bit of sense of fairness right yeah i think it seems like a fair lottery where you know a lot of people will gripe about the hard rock lottery um and the way it's structured you know people will gripe about the leadville lottery the UTMB lottery you know their qualification systems and how you know everything's a a points chase or a money grab um but the western states lottery is nothing if not fair um clear and transparent clear yeah clear not fair yeah fair is going to be in the eye of the beholder right because some people are going to say oh well you know i i deserve to be in after seven years or i

deserve to be in after this qualification or that qualification or whatever so fair is going to be in the eye of the beholder but clear and transparent i think is it's a good thing for everybody i mean you can look at uh look at the boston marathon and how you know interest in boston running boston has exploded and how they've they've made their qualification times faster um and and tried to keep it a fast fast event and maybe that's something western states would want to look at um it might not be a popular decision and it might be incredibly difficult to implement given the variety of courses but you know if that's if that's the direction they want to go uh they they certainly could yeah it's a tough proposition and that's something that i want to that i that i'm definitely going to ask craig about uh when i get him on the podcast because you know there's only so many levers you can pull to reduce this yeah i i use this phrase a lot but i'm going to give credit where credit's due so my good friend and leadville uh trail 100 race director ken clover used to always call this the the yippee to boohoo ratio and um i i would i would i've been there in his office when they've drawn the lottery for the mountain bike and back when they just would spread out the entries on a big table and they'd throw the yeses into you know one box over here and the nose you know into the other box over there so it was very much a randomized randomized you know randomized single ticket type of uh type of lottery process but he would always call that ratio the yippee to boohoo ratio and he and he felt that if they could keep that on the level of 10 to 1 so for every 10 people that they were disappointing they were saying yippee to one

person that's about the upper limit of what that they they could tolerate from a pr standpoint for the longevity of the race for the health of the field the health of leadville trail 100 and things like that and that that's ken's yeah i wonder if there's any any sociology research behind that yeah i don't know but but i think suffice it to say western states has surely outstripped that 10 to 1 that 10 to 1 ratio over the last few years for sure that's crazy i ran western states in in 2011 um it was my first hundred miler um i put in you get it i put one ticket one ticket i did a 50 miler as a qualifier in in 2010 and i put in uh i had already registered for leadville so i honestly put in hoping to run it in 2012 but when i got in i i went and ran it um so like i i'm one of those people that that put in for western states hoping not to run it but i hope wanted to make use of the the two-time loser rule yeah um which then got changed i think in 2012 um so i i've always been sort of lucky with lotteries let's talk about that skill let's talk about that concept of putting into a lottery before you're ready because this is one of the elements uh of criticism with the current lottery system that western states has and to a lesser extent hard rock where a lot where the criticism will go along the lines of a lot of athletes are putting into the western states lottery before they are ready to run

the western states 100 and because of that it floods the applicant pool with too many people and it's an unsustainable model yeah i mean i almost think that's that's looking as if the only reason to run western states is if you're trying to win it and break the course record as in like you want to be ready for western states you know if you've run 100k as a qualifier you're probably ready or you could be ready with you know six months of lead time yeah um so i don't i don't think that's necessarily an argument of being ready um i think it's more the the the way the lottery is set up and the fact that western states is sort of this you know this this checkbox this bucket list thing that that so many ultra runners want to do um and you end up having to to put in for the lottery for athletes that you work with that come to you and say hey eventually i want to run western states what do you counsel them to do do you counsel them to start getting in right away start start playing the game yeah that's exactly what i do i mean when i have an athlete that comes to me and says hey i want to i want to run western states one day it's okay first you check off the list okay can you you know are you capable of running 100 mile or in that type of time frame okay yes and then it's start playing the game as early as find a qualifier and sometimes that's a four or five six year multi-year process or a one-year process as we found out or or perhaps yeah getting even longer so it like i said it creates this interesting proposition where a lot of athletes are entering western states i would i would put it as the earliest possible moment so the earliest possible moment that

they could that they even meet the minimum qualifying standards for the western states 100 they're putting in and there's a lot of those people out there i mean there's you know 3 250 of them that for the very first year they met that minimum qualifying standard and some of them are going to have higher standards than that or some of them are going to have like uh more exhaustive or more comprehensive qualifications than the minimum standard for western states but they're all putting in in that in that very first year and hoping to get that like less than one percent chance it'd be interesting to see the breakdown of of qualifications you know how many of those people put in having run you know 100k is their longest race ever um how many of those people put in you know having run 100 milers or or multiple 100 milers you know what is the the the experience of those first year applicants um i don't think it necessarily i don't think having you know not run 100 miler necessarily makes you less ready to run western states um it's not that you know western states has some unique challenges but it's not like it's an incredibly difficult course um it's not uh you know it's it's not a 48 hour 100 miler um it's a it's a good 100 miler um but it's not something where you need to have you know 20 hundred milers under your belt to go run western states well and that's another element of the qualification system that i think a lot of people are you know second guessing or kind of questioning right now is the difficulty of the entry standards because one of the ways you could you know get this yippee to

boohoo ratio kind of back in line is tighten up the qualification standards make sure that fewer than six six i'm gonna look up the number here again six thousand six hundred and sixty four people are applying to the lottery and then therefore let's just say there's three thousand people applying to the lottery for 264 spots that could make a big difference in the perception of you know how successful you could actually be in this lottery now the practicality of narrowing down those entry requirements is pretty exhaustive because you know western states has been pretty progressive on they want qualifiers on the east coast they want them on the west coast they want them in central they want to you know they want people to be able to apply to their lottery so it's this fine balance of having enough qualifiers out there and making the kind of the barrier to entry like low enough to where people can get in but also not so low that they're getting flooded more so than they already are well and i think you know they want to make sure that everyone who gets in has a chance to finish um and i think the qualification standard like having you know all applicants have to have run at least 100k um i think that's fair you know i almost wonder if it would be worthwhile to to bump that qualification standard to 100 miles but uh increase the the number of qualifiers like pretty much make any any documented 100 mile race a qualifier um instead of a specific list of of of races um and i wonder if that would help alleviate some of the the problem but i think it's still a temporary solution

yeah i i it's always going to be a math game and as and as we've seen the evolution of this go to go from open lottery to the two-time loser to this you know weighted lottery right now that rewards you know longevity of of entering into the lottery process every two or three years just based on the sheer number of people that are coming into the space of ultra running it's going to need to be re-evaluated we're going to have to go through the same math problem three years from now if not next year and then another math problem three years from then another math problem three years from there they should just make the race less cool people don't want to do it there's the idea just make western state suck stop stop manning the gate station so well and and stop you know stop providing ice maybe if they stop providing ice no one will want to go run well okay you bring up a really good point adam this is a luxury problem for ultra running to have yeah the fact that we have a coolest shit race that a lot of people want to do it's recognized around the world even outside of our silly little sport of trail and ultra running the fact that that exists right the fact that there is this beacon out there that people can you know turn towards uh you know once a year from squad to auburn i think is i think is a really cool thing and there's and and there's a reason why the race has been so successful at a track all these applicants because it is a cool race it does look accessible you do have a lot of aid station there is a lot of ice out there on course i mean two two what was the really hot year was it two years ago three two years ago during the really hot year i actually was sitting down with craig just

kind of casually the day before the race just after he ordered more ice and it was in an order is like 700 like 700 pounds of additional ice not just the ice that they already had pre-planned he found another source and said okay we're gonna go get more ice and i use that i think that's just a good point to illustrate like the care that the race organization is going to take of the athletes that are participating they want people to finish and that's reflective to a large part it's reflective of the actual finisher rate which is good by 100 mile standards right i mean a 30 30 hour cutoff is not general no for a hot race like that yeah for a race with all those confounding variables it's got climbing it's got descending um yeah they want people to finish and and when people get into western states they generally take it pretty seriously yeah um and and they go finish um because you don't want to be the the one who doesn't finish and then you know everyone who didn't get in hates you yeah i mean it's like when i got into hard rock all my buddies were like well you better finish because i didn't get in yeah there you go if you if like if you dnf then that's disrespectful for all those people that didn't get in yep depending upon the year it's an 80 ish percentage finish rate right just depending upon any number of variables and you compare that to leadville which you already mentioned a couple times which has a 50 ish yeah 40 to 50 yeah i mean it's so once again speaking to the fact that it's meaningful i think that plays a big part in it but also the fact that there are these qualifier races which leadville does not have right so you're already attracting what i would consider seasoned ultra runners all of those things kind of play into the races i

i think it's more successful than it should be if they if all of those variables were removed meaning i think if they just went to a one ticket lottery system everybody has an even chance with no qualifiers which a lot of races do now leadville is actually going to do that they did that last year i think they're going to do it again this year open lottery system no qualifications you don't get an 80 ish percent finish rate you get certainly less than that probably on the order of 70 to 60 percent yeah no i think that's that's a fair statement okay so we've gone kind of through these two steps the first one is the stochastic step of of adam just hey you got to get your you got to kind of get your call you got to get your qualifier in and the second step is is okay let's go ahead and start to train and prepare for that qualifying race let's talk a little bit about how athletes should think about the whole totality of the proposition of eventually running the western states 100 because it could take it's almost like an olympic cycle yeah right if you want to think about it like that it could take three to four or five years and so when you're working with athletes that have this goal of i want to enter what i eventually want to do western states you know it is likely a multi-year proposition how do you settle them into preparing for that and making sure they understand what kind of goes into that well i mean my like general coaching philosophy is is pretty long-term athlete development focused um i would say most of the athletes uh i've worked with and i've worked uh the most successfully with

are athletes that are they're in it for the long haul you know running is a lifestyle um and and ultra running is their their expression of that lifestyle um i think it's it's harder to to work with an athlete who's more event focused like hey i got into the western states lottery um i want to do western states whereas a lot of the athletes even the ones i put that put in for the western states lottery that i work with you know they the western states lottery and and running fits into their their lifestyle so it's kind of like we're approaching this as we're going to be running for the next 20 to 30 years we'd like to run western states some somewhere in that time along that time so we just got to keep plugging away and you know uh maybe you've got a list of other races that you know maybe happen to be western states qualifiers that you know you want to plug through uh along the way so um yeah we just kind of roll with it um move on find find the next the next thing i'm sure there are these people out there but i don't have any and i haven't encountered any athletes in my coaching practice where western states is this thing that is that is uh so prevalent or so present in their kind of running life that it's the only thing that matters i i did have an athlete um it must have been a couple years ago who he came to me he was a former college track athlete and he said i want to win western states it's like okay cool um and then i found out that he knew absolutely nothing about trail running or ultra that's

different it's like step one we got to get into the race oh okay what's that mean um let's just be a night um i think there are some people out there who they you know they see something about western states they get inspired and that that might be what gets them into ultra running um and if that gets you into ultra running and then you find all these other great races because they're qualifiers and that leads you to these other great races and these other great experiences then i don't think that's the bad thing you know to have like we were talking about western states to have this awesome cool race that everyone wants to do um we just have to make sure that the the downstream effects um aren't aren't negative you know that well not a turn off when i've had athletes that have like a hyper focus on this great let's use that to fuel your passion that's the first thing but i always i always take a step back and ask them okay why is that so meaningful to you and for a lot of them it's just the cachet of the actual event themselves and that's that's that's absolutely relevant they want to be there they want to see the scene they want to be on the start line with you know the the jim wombsley's and the the claire gallagher's and they want to yeah they want to run that historic route they want to get the nice sponsor swag yeah and so so what i do is i usually try to get them out there in accruing or pacing capability or capacity just to kind of get them used to it they get to see the you know they get to see the course and also go do the training camp right that's a great way to see the course and to meet the people that are courses open year round yeah of course you don't have to go to the training camp the course is the course is open year round um but then kind of kind of after

after we kind of check those two things i really try to settle people into the fact that it could be a long-term proposition and run through run the scenario through your mind if we're sitting here i'm still coaching you five years from now and you haven't gotten into western states you're a 15 year loser yeah and you're 15 years loser like what is going to fulfill your running life in between now and then and i mean i've just found that that most people while while this whole proposition of doing western states is a big thing it may be the pinnacle of what they what they'll do it's not the only thing right and they're fulfilled in other areas yeah i i don't think i've ever met an athlete for whom western states is the one only but they're they've got to be out there i i don't know i i think that they're out there somewhere because there's i mean i don't know it's just whenever you've got something that's on that high of a pedestal you'll have people that put it in a category where it's the only thing that matters like the like like kona and the iron man world and yeah oh gosh boston and the road marathon world yeah i mean that a lot of those things like if they can't get into it they're destroyed yeah you know yeah boston's a little weird because it is largely performance based right um whereas you know western states doesn't have a have a performance standard you just have to have finished the qualifier yeah and those performances for the boston marathon if we're if we want to use that as a blueprint for what could become of western states the performances get harder and harder to meet yeah

are they going to have like a like a vapor fly factor now that all these performances are getting improved they're going to have to they're going to have to because i never thought about that until just now yeah because i mean performances are getting faster more people are going to meet their performance standard you know everyone who needed a 305 and was running a 306 you know they get the vapor flies and they're running a 301 i cannot believe i did i didn't think about that until right now the field of boston marathon qualifiers because of this one shoe yeah it's going to throw a monkey wrench it's going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole system and i mean yeah it's crazy there's so many people that are on the one two three percent on the other side of the qualifying line yeah like the holy crap my athlete who just ran 237 at cim you know based on his workouts i thought he was in 243 shape and he had vapor flies but yeah he hasn't been doing his workout and his vapor flies and then i thought i thought you know best case scenario with your vapor flies 239 but no he blasted a 237 oh my god all right that's the debate for another day we'll talk about you know yeah i mean implementing any sort of like time or performance based qualification standards is going to be almost impossible in trail and ultra yeah or like if it's based on time then you're going to see a swelling in track events yeah or uh or the super flat you know 100 k's or 100 milers um and then you've got to have age-graded standards as well so um i don't think that is a direction that the race can really go um without opening up a whole new can of worms yeah okay let

me ask you kind of a couple tough questions on the on the lottery and i love tough questions all right we'll get i'll give them to you then a little bit unfair right because we don't have any say or sway over what the race actually does but i think it's a little bit relevant because you know as coaches we've got our fingers on the pulse of the athletes that are trying to you know qualify for these types of races with the current lottery and entry system that western states has right now what do you think is missing like what do you think is missing from that whole equation that they could do to improve their race field balance it out make it more equitable decrease this boohoo to yippee ratio what's out there i mean i'm maybe this is a cop-out answer but i i think they do a pretty good job you know they balance having that's not a cop-out answer they balance having the competitive entries like yeah it's going to have an elite field because there's you know 60 to 80 tickets available to elite athletes you know they can win them in golden ticket series races they can uh you know win them by having been top 10 the year before their sponsor entry so western states you know reserves a top field um i 100 agree the remaining lottery spots like i i think it's kind of fair you know like you just got to play the game it's their rules it's their it's their race it's their rules follow them and play the game and sometime you you might get lucky i i agree i agree with almost all of what you just said

what do you think i should press craig on when i bring him on the podcast i mean it'd be interesting to hear what discussions they're having like are they thinking of within the board or are they are they running through you know scenarios like can we make it better what would make it better um you know there's some interesting discussion out there like what do they want the remaining you know they've got those you know the essentially the elite spots are sort of taken care of uh based on the current system but what do they want the remaining entrance to be do they want it to be a lot of first-timers do they want it to be a lot of veterans do they want it to be men do they want it to be women do they want it to be international do they want it to be all californians you know um and if they want to to manipulate that field somehow then they can change the lottery however they want it's their rights their race um i think right now it's i think it's as fair as it can be yeah i i tend to agree with you i i would kind of have two points i think that the the and i'll ask craig about this in all fairness so i'm just on the other end of the mic here spouting things off that i'm not there therefore responsible for but but the first thing is is the sponsor entries like i think that that needs to get corralled a little bit and if you if you took 10 sponsor entries away that's not going to make a dent in the yippee to boohoo ratio because there's so many people flooding it but sponsor entries using their entries to put elite athletes into the field i think needs to have stricter qualifications because i've seen all too often sponsors give their entries away to athletes that

don't impact the race and you can never assure that getting get and i've said this on numerous podcasts many times it is really hard to get high quality fields to unfold especially in ultra running so it's not always a given but i think some sort of some sort of corral on that would be would be beneficial and then the second thing is is i i just really wish that well i'll put it i'll actually i'm going to expand this into two areas because they're not one of the same i i really wish that there were more women represented after the lottery field i think i need to double check this math but i think it was 17 percent of the of the people that got chosen through the lottery were women and that's just not it's not it's not representative of the current state of participants in ultra running right and that's the second part of it i wish somehow that the lottery field was more doesn't have to be exactly but more representative of ultra running's current demographics because if the western states field which is once again it's this big bright shining light out in the distance if western states is constantly behind the times and representing the current demographics of the sport it holds the sport back from progressing and i think that that's bad i think you're absolutely right you know it's kind of like the the spider-man quote with great power comes great responsibility the spider-man well that's

where i saw it all right we'll give the spider-man maybe it was someone else i think it was like star wars or something was it yeah anyway um but i mean western states is sort of this like shining city on the hill you know it's an example for ultra running and i think they've done a really good job of being forward thinking in many ways like the the pregnancy or um the one-year deferment option i think is a great step um like could they go to a two-year qualification window you know like like a hard rock does um i i sort of like that in that you know sure one year you chase your qualifier and the next year you can go do you know something else like you know if you have an athlete that wants to run you know like a nolan's 14 but if that's going to preclude them from doing a qualifier you know they might never get a chance to do those you know non-sanctioned activities in fkt um that sort of thing so you know maybe a a two-year qualification window but that's probably going to expand the pool of applicants and um compound the problem yeah i mean that's another big criticism is just that that there's too much pressure on the qualifying races yeah um it's because of the one-year policy yeah i think i think western states is they do a great job but they've got to continue to be progressive um and got to continue to bring us forward and i think the the uh the the male-female ratio in particular is is is not good um and and for them to take a stance and and kind of lead the way forward so that we get equal equal representation in races um is is good yeah i don't necessarily think

it needs to be equal but i just want it to be representative right of what's currently going on like if we have let's just use the number 30 this will come out in the january edition of ultra running magazine it always does but let's just say that 2019 we had overall a 35 female participation across all of the sports i would like the the the beacons of our sport the people that are supposed to be at the forefront to be more representative of that current demographic breakdown right and and and certainly not disrepresent is that a word did i make that up dis or unrepresentive i don't know certainly certainly not be so far off base of the current representation that if you looked at a western states field and you looked at the the the participation across all of ultra running you would say that thing sticks out like a sore thumb this one is this one isn't like the other that's what i don't want to have happen right and that's where i i sort of think not to not to pick on hard rock um but i think the big problem with the hard rock lottery is is it's drastically weighted against female participation yeah um and and that's that's really unfortunate yeah that maybe i'll maybe i'll bring on those guys i mean i've got a point in time there's no hard rock lottery this year so it's hard to get people enthusiastic about it and that being said i've run hard rock i got in on my fourth try i had a wonderful time but i i'm still not gonna bash on the lottery in case i ever want to run it again all right i think we banded for enough right now i think this is a great uh

uh a great prelude to bringing on western states uh race director craig thornley really looking forward to that conversation i'm going to have it in a couple days we're going to release both of these podcasts in fairly close proximity hopefully back to back if i can get all the editing done on two days looking forward to it adam thank you for your time my pleasure thank you for being a kick-ass coach by the way too i'm i'm trying you're the only coach that got an athlete successfully through the lottery as we've already determined it doesn't matter who your coach is that the lottery doesn't care it's like the honey badger that's exactly exactly right adam uh where can people reach you on social media um you can find me on uh twitter and instagram at coach adam st pierre um you can find me on on facebook i'm just adam st pierre um or you can go to uh the the train right.com website and look at the ultra running coaches and i've got some pictures there if you want to see what i look like all cross-country skiing this time of year well a little cross-country skiing a little schemo still some still some running going on in some parts of the country sweet thanks for being on man you're welcome thanks coop yeah appreciate it nice of you to visit the the republic of boulder oh yeah they they let me in just barely welcome to our bubble i had to prove that i had a boston marathon qualifier in order to get into the city limits you have to have a sufficient number of 26.2 stickers yeah or uh or 140.6 exactly stickers on the back of your car exactly we lose sight of that here well you are in a subaru so you probably you know you got through the gates that way so so in order to get into boulder you have to have in order to get an automatic entry into the county of boulder the

republic of boulder the republic you can either have a boston qualifier or what else a dog named kona a dog named kona or a subaru those three things will automatically let you through the pearly white gates or if you uh if you you know take a breath test and can prove you're ketogenic oh god that's another we'll be out here for another hour man all right thanks man thanks coop okay what do you think trail runners are you ready to start to plan your season out you've got some inspiration and direction as to what to do if you didn't get into western states or maybe you didn't have any direction before and now after listening to adam myself maybe that gives you a little bit of you know a little bit of push to figure out what you want to do in 2020 i always advise athletes to really pick things that they're passionate about pick things that they have a high emotional engagement with because the sport the sport of ultra running is just it's just too darn hard to do things that you really are not uh that you're really not psyched and enthusiastic about thanks a ton to coach adam st pierre i've always i've always appreciated his uh coaching framework and the feedback that he gives the rest of our coaches during our weekly continuing eds and i think a lot of that kind of pragmatic approach with coaching kind of came through uh in this podcast um he's one of several cts coaches and i'm

gonna that i'm gonna continue to bring on the podcast from time to time i always enjoy uh our weekly discussions where we get to discuss a number of different topics from just things like this things how to hand things on how to handle the disappointment after a lottery process to extremely you know technical topics like is cbd good for athletes or heat acclimation or altitude acclimation and things like that um so anyway you guys can look forward to those future episodes with more of our coaches uh if you like this podcast go ahead and subscribe give it a five star rating on itunes and i'd be remiss if i didn't mention we are running a coaching special this month yeah that's right a coaching special for our cts coaches just like adam if you go to the website trainright.com and check out our coaching packages there if you decide that one of them suits your needs you've got your season laid out and you want some professional guidance to really perform at your best you can enter the code KoopCast all caps KoopCast and we'll waive your registration fees we've got a coaching package and price point for just about everybody so go ahead check it out trainright.com that's really the only thing that i try to get out of this podcast is i want people to get exposed to our coaches and get exposed to cts coaching as i mentioned in episode zero with billy yang i'm not taking a dime from any sponsors or advertisers or anything like that and i do that in order to really keep the

information that is flowing throughout the the KoopCast to be really as you know just unbiased and as authentic as possible and as irony would have it i've already had three or four companies and individuals approach me about testing their products out advertising on the KoopCast and i'm going to continue to say no just like i said no to those first few people so on the back end of that if you are considering coaches go ahead and go check us out or you can hit me up on social media i can tell you what it's all about so thank you to the listeners and i hope to see you guys out on the trails so Thank you.