Rest is overrated: Gallagher endures to win

Boulder’s Clare Gallagher sounded as if she were still in shock Monday morning after winning the prestigious Western States 100 endurance run late Saturday night, and for good reason. Actually, two reasons.

One was the magnitude of the race, but she also was on a mountaineering expedition in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve the two weeks preceding the race. That’s hardly the best way to store up energy before the most important endurance run of the year, but when the opportunity to go on the expedition with bigwall rock climber Tommy Caldwell came up a month ago, she couldn’t pass it up.

“I know the facts of the situation and I feel it in my body — I can’t really walk right now — but when something really big happens, you never know how you’re going to feel,” Gallagher said in a phone interview from the Sacramento, Calif., airport. “I can’t really describe how I feel. I guess I just keep smiling and laughing.”

After her two-week expedition in Alaska, Gallagher barely had 20 hours at home in Boulder to do laundry before leaving for Western States, a race that begins at California’s Squaw Valley ski resort and ends 100 miles to the southwest in the town of Auburn.

Part of the goal of her Alaska trip was to advocate for saving the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve.

“We climbed like the second-highest peak in the Brooks Range, and I was super scared out of my mind. I thought I was going to die twice. Then I get to Western States and I’m like, ‘This is 100 miles on a trail. This can’t be that hard.’ ”

The first 80 miles were almost easy, in fact. Golden’s Courtney Dauwalter had a substantial lead and was on record pace.

Then Dauwalter was forced to drop out with a hip injury.

“I moved into the lead,” Gallagher said, “but the pack behind me was just consistently five minutes (back), so the race just turned into this epic battle the last 20 miles. …

“At mile 94, I dropped all my excess things from my pack and I did not look back. I just completely lost my mind. I blacked out those last six miles.”