On a day off in 2013, after going for a 40-mile bike ride and a 14-mile run in the morning, he met a friend to go rock climbing. When Walmsley graduated from the Air Force Academy, he had hoped for a billing as a logistics officer near a major city, but was instead assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana, to pull 24-hour shifts supervising nuclear-missile silos. Those are decent times for a D1 runner, but they stand out in the world of ultras, which more often attracts athletes who have a talent for grinding and suffering rather than running fast. He had a PR of 13:52 for the 5,000 meters. After graduating, he ran at the Air Force Academy, where he was a second-team all-American in the steeplechase, running 8:41. Walmsley grew up in Phoenix, where he was a state champion cross-country runner and qualified for the Foot Locker National Championships. “I can talk about running forever,” he said. Over drinks one night a few days later, he took ten minutes to explain that closed-cell insoles absorb less water and are lighter than the open-cell insoles that come standard in running shoes. In conversation, he would be a familiar character to anyone who has spent time around a college or high school cross-country program-he’s a running nerd. When I met him in Flagstaff on a warm Sunday night this spring, he was wearing sweatpants, sandals, and a large down jacket Walmsley doesn’t have much body fat. Walmsley, who is now 28, is tall and gaunt, even for an ultrarunner. If you can get it done at Western States, you got a good year.” Western States “gets brought up every day of my life,” Walmsley told me in May. “He’s going for the 1080 flip that no one has ever done, but he hasn’t landed it.” “He hasn’t stuck it yet,” said Bryon Powell, the editor of running website iRunFar. But he still hasn’t won Western States, and the question he has posed to the sport-why can’t he race 100 milers hard from the gun?-will again be the subtext of this year’s race. Ultrarunning is a sport that favors a tortoise-over-hare mentality that irritates Walmsley and that his running style challenges. At distances below 100 miles, he is the best ultrarunner in the country. Unlike in either of his previous attempts, he is now both well-known and seasoned, with course records at half a dozen of the country’s top ultras, including the Lake Sonoma 50 Mile, where he broke his own record by nine minutes in April. On June 23, Walmsley will race Western States for a third time. He vomited profusely while leaving the Foresthill aid station at mile 62, and dropped out at mile 78. By midafternoon, however, temperatures were in the high nineties, and at mile 52 Walmsley’s stomach began to give out. Walmsley said yes, and Sandes let him go. Shortly after the start, Ryan Sandes, a top South African racer, asked if Walmsley planned to attack the course record again. In 2016, Walmsley had covered a steep early section of course fast, and in 2017 he went out even harder even though parts were snowed in. Myke Hermsmeyer, Walmsley’s friend and unofficial documentarian, produced an emotional short film about the 2016 race, and a group of his fans and friends came to watch and crew many wore T-shirts that read STOP JIM, an homage to the STOP PRE T-shirts that Steve Prefontaine fans wore in the 1970s. One had been edited to read, in smaller letters, FROM GETTING LOST. In 2017, Walmsley intended to prove that his race the year before had not been foolish. Scott Jurek, who has won the race seven times, called to offer a mix of condolence and congratulation, and Hoka signed him to a sponsorship that allowed him to quit his job at a bike shop in Flagstaff, Arizona. Discouraged and exhausted, he reversed direction at a walk and finished in 20th place. Western States begins at altitude near the Squaw Valley ski area, in eastern California, then drops gradually westward to Auburn, outside Sacramento. By late afternoon, Walmsley was on pace to break Olson’s 14:46 record, but at mile 92 he made a wrong left turn and ran two miles off course. It was a good story: an almost completely unknown runner was dismantling the course record of the country’s most famous ultra. Jenny Simpson, the world champion 1,500-meter runner, used to train with Walmsley in Colorado Springs, and she tweeted updates on his progress, keying in a broader section of the competitive running world. In 2016, Walmsley attacked from the gun, at times running as much as 45 minutes under Timothy Olson’s course-record pace. Jim Walmsley is known for two races, the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run in 20.
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