“No peein’ off the porch” is the sign that greets me as I wait on Craig Thornley’s deck.

He is in the kitchen to make tea and one of his cats is keeping an eye on me from under a wooden bench. What do Western States runners get up to on their race director’s porch?

Once he joins me with two mugs, he tells me it was just one guy, but he was a repeat offender. Some house rules might be inevitable, given how full his and his wife Laurie’s house can get come June.  The location is no accident – the race director lives just a mile from the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run finish line.

Listen to the full interview with Western States Race Director Craig Thornley:

This week, thousands of runners around the world enter the lottery in the hope of scoring a spot in this iconic race from Squaw Valley to Auburn, California. Numbers are capped at less than 400 runners, due to permits.

The organizers want to balance being an elite event that grants some top athletes automatic entry with being inclusive by giving also slower runners who have managed to qualify a chance to participate. Either way, those chances are slim and stand at less than 5% at first try. The most consecutive years you qualify and enter, the better the odds.

WS has come a long way in four decades. Originally a 100-mile race for horses called the Tevis Cup, a man called Gordy Ainsleigh one day decided to run it, and finished in under 24 hours.

“He obviously had something in his head that not too many of us were, at least, able to show that we had it. So he decides to run,” Craig Thornlesays.

After that first finish in 1974, the race doctor thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime feat that no one would ever duplicate.

“It was just so far out there to think of running in these kind of temperatures and this terrain, the canyons are just not very friendly, and he just started this crazy sport. It wasn’t that he started ultrarunning, but it was covering 100 miles in this type of terrain, ” Craig says.

By now, thousands have finished WS and many thousands more want to run it.

The training weekends, such as the Memorial weekend I took part in, are one way to see much of the course without winning the race lottery. Anyone can take part, and volunteers often include highly accomplished runners with a long WS history, such as Tim Twietmeyer or Ann Trason.

Craig sees runners off in the morning and greet everyone with a big smile and some hugs at the finish line each day.

The race director has grown up with this race. When Craig was a teenager, it found him in the form of an exhausted runner tumbling out of the woodwork as he and his brother were out camping.

The runner wanted to know where the aid station was. The brothers had no idea what he was talking about, but they never forgot the look in his eyes.

“Not blank, but there’s definitely a whole lot going on and we just knew that we have to experience whatever they are experiencing. You could read a lot into those eyes,” Craig said.

After working the Dusty Corners aid station for 10 years, Craig ran the race for the first time in 2001 and finished, a feat he has pulled of seven times since, always in under 24 hours.

Finishing in one day earns runners a highly sought-after silver belt buckle. These buckles are custom-made from sterling silver and valued at USD 355 – nearly the race entry fee.

The belt buckles are another legacy from the Tevis Cup, originally meant for riders. The makers from Comstock Heritage aren’t runners themselves, but have a lot of appreciation for what the buckle means to people.

“They are totally engaged, they are excited that they get to make the buckle that so many people want to earn.”

“It’s not just that it’s a 355 dollar buckle, but it’s what that buckle represents, that whole effort, commitment, not just on race day alone but getting to the race and preparing, and all the sacrifices. It’s symbolic of so much more than just a finishing time.” Watch how the buckle is made.

It’s not the first race Craig Thornley has been directing, but it’s certainly one on a completely new scale. His professional background is in IT, but on the side he’d already set up the Waldo 100k Trail Run in Oregon.

“I started developing Waldo and it became a really well-respected race, it was a national championship,” he says.

“I got to implement my ideas of what I think a race should be like, treating every runner equally, first class service at aid stations where the volunteers are very knowledgeable. […] I got to use it as kind of a playground, as a learning tool.”

Added to his race organizing experience, Craig was also a national sky patroller for years, and stewarded 16 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. So when the WS role came up, he had no trouble getting an interview. He did have trouble getting TO the interview, though.

Having committed to helping champion runner and friend Meghan Arbogast race the day before, he’d booked the earliest morning flight to make it in time.

It ended up being an epic day of flight delays, missed connection flights, rebookings, and finally a way-too-helpful rental car assistant hell-bent on selling him everything he didn’t need, ultimately leaving him chasing down the highway with no time to lose.

And then there was the problem of not usually using deodorant. We all know what happens when you’re under a lot of stress and there’s no deodorant around. Not good.

“The interview of my life and I smell so bad!” he laughs.

He was driving so fast that he made up enough minutes to storm into a petrol station and get some deodorant, and – smelling beautifully – got the job.

So now that he’s held the position for three years, where does he want to take the race?

“I definitely want to see us involved in the international scene. We are already making contributions by being involved in Ultra-Trail World Tour and the International Trail Running Association. I want to see the race continue to be relevant on the competitive scene in the world, attracting the top 100-mile runners of the world,” Craig Thornley says.

Craig is conscious of the fact that WS has less than 400 runners each year, while races like the UTMB series have thousands.

He believes the event’s relevance could decline if they don’t stay on top of things, cooperating with and learning from other races around the world.

“I want to make sure we continue to lead the sport and have the best practices in everything.”

The race also wants to continue evolving its medical research. Changes include moving away from overusing IVs to combat hyponatremia (abnormally low blood sodium levels), as it has been found that the risks often outweigh the benefits of this practice, and most runners will recover without infusions, Craig says.

“When we do get a case of hyponatremia we know now that we can give people hypertonic saline, which is three times the normal saline of your body. If you’re not hyponatremic it won’t hurt you, and if you are, it will help you equalise sodium in your blood, in your body, much faster.”

Continuing to attract the best of the sport is important, but WS also continues to be committed to welcoming runners from all walks of life and making sure everyone is treated equally special on race day.

“Every person who comes to WS, whether you are 30 hours or whether you are 14 hours, has an experience that will be unmatched. It will be a memorable day of your life, you will not forget your experience at WS.”

This year, the last finisher was 70-year old Gunhild Swanson, who made it with seconds to spare before the 30-hour cut-off, becoming the oldest woman to ever have finished Western States.

She ran the last mile accompanied by family, friends and overall winner Rob Krar, who cheered her on wearing flip flops after having finished his own race in 14:48:59 – a beautiful show of how much camaraderie there is in the sport.

In some places, streams had diverted onto trails, turning them into creeks. Sometimes the mud was so deep that you had to worry about losing a shoe in it and some downhills were so slippery that moving forward reminded of an unstable skiing experience. And there’s a reason you have to qualify for this race — the 101k distance from Courmayeur to Chamonix includes 6100m accumulated positive altitude change.

But this was part of what I’d signed up for – and the UTMB series is a world-famous event around Mont Blanc through three countries and heart-stopping scenery — winning the lottery to take part is a privilege, and whinging about it seems out of place. Why would I not enjoy it and why keep going if it’s no fun?

Mainly, neither my body nor my head were up for it.

I’d rolled my ankle badly three weeks earlier and was wearing an ankle brace, had trained a pitiful average of about 20k a week for the three months since the NorthFace100, had just gone through a relationship breakup, moved house, renovated while working, and felt completely wiped out.

If it had been any other race, I would have cancelled. But it was the UTMB series CCC, which you need to qualify for and then win the lottery to take part.

And — most of all — my mum had decided to support me for the first time at a race. I was immensely grateful for this, and a little scared, unsure of whether her presence would make running easier or harder. I hadn’t lived with her since age 13 and feeling supported wasn’t a sensation I naturally associated with her.

I crossed the start line with nearly 2,000 runners ahead of me and there wasn’t much running for the first two hours, just a long line of people as far as the eye could see.

We shuffled our way up mountain sides like a determined procession of ants. At one point, as we were filing onto a single track from a wider road, there was complete standstill for at least 20 minutes.

The race felt commercial compared to the smaller trail races I’d come to love. There was a lot of expensive new gear flashing about, but I saw little of the social fun and camaraderie normally shared at trail runs.

I even saw someone going out of his way to hinder another runner from passing, several times, even though we were at the back of the pack. If that guy blocking the way was doing so because he wanted to win, he really needed to hurry up.

The views were beautiful but I felt frustrated and my mind wasn’t in a good place. The breakup saga was running loops in my head, my ankle hurt with every uneven step, and come nighttime, I was feeling truly miserable.

With the lack of normal camaraderie on the trail, all I wanted was to catch up with my mum at Champex-Lac aid station, get a hug and some supplies and warm clothes from her to replace the ones that were now wet despite the rain jacket.

When I finally arrived and searched high and low for her, I received a text learning that her bus was running too late for her to get there in time.

The exhaustion of ultra running can make one emotionally vulnerable and bring up a range of unprocessed old feelings, and as I drudged on through the rain and mud feeling cold in my wet gear, I was certain that my mother, who was spending her day chasing after me in a bus, didn’t care enough about me to be there when I needed her. Highly embarrassing in hindsight.

At some stage though I made my peace with the situation and stopped thinking that if this event wasn’t fun like other runs I’d done, or if the interactions and support I wished for weren’t there, it was going wrong.

Each race has its own challenges and all I had to do was to figure out how, not whether, to deal with those particular ones at hand. They say running while tired is good training for the next race. Moving forward while tired, sad and frustrated is also really good training, especially mentally.

As I came into Trient aid station, my mum shrieked with excitement on seeing me, being glad to have finally caught me. We gave each other a big hug and were so happy that a man standing next to us just watched us with a big smile on his face.

She was as bright as she could be at 2am. I was worried about her and told her to head back and get some sleep.

“I’ll be okay, I feel good,” my 68-year-old mother said in an upbeat mood.

And indeed, hours later, I saw her again at Vallorcine aid station, having stayed up all night traveling about to support me, with only small naps while waiting. That’s pretty impressive.

By sunrise, there was only one big climb and descend left to tackle and I was in awe of the mountain tops towering over the morning mist as if they were floating on a white lake.

I thought of mum waiting at the finish, and my friend Manuel Hartl who’d driven down from Frankfurt to meet me after the race.  Things were looking up. Once I was over the last climb, I ran all the way to Chamonix in happy anticipation of seeing them.

At 25:33:38, I made it with less than an hour to spare before the cut-off. But I’d been lucky to avoid further injury in difficult and slippery terrain and persisted despite feeling down.

Also, the experience and shared time in Chamonix around the race strengthened the bond between my mum and me, at least for a while, and that’s very precious.

At the official post-race dinner, she looked incredibly pleased among all the runners and developed an interest in the sport. Soon she told me I should be doing more front-foot running like Scott Jurek.

In the little French town of Chamonix at the base of Mt. Blanc, New Zealand-born Stuart Mills is getting ready to run the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc – a distance of 168 kilometers with positive elevation of more than 9,600 meters.

Now a principle lecturer at the University of Brighton’s School of Sport and Service Management in the UK, Stuart has won an impressive number of ultra trail runs.

Only last year, he placed first at the Montane Lakeland 100 miles with a time of 22:17:50, beating his previous first place result in 2010 by nearly two hours.

But the UTMB is one race of a kind and preparing for it takes more then physical fitness, it takes serious mental training.

Find out more about Stuart on his blog.