Inside the Long Lines and Lotteries Keeping Runners From Their Dream Trail Races

We're diving deep on the races, training tips, and gear you need to know to get outside off paved roads to run a whole new way. Click here for more stories about the trail explosion. For ten years, the South Carolina running coach has been applying for a spot in the Western States Endurance Run, one of the US’s flagship ultramarathon trail races.

And for ten years, Allen has come up short in the race’s lottery system, meaning he’ll have to wait another year to run the 100-mile course through the Granite Chief Wilderness, west of Lake Tahoe. To be eligible for this year’s lottery, he’s had to run another qualifying race of 100 kilometers or more to have his name pulled in the 2027 edition. The yearly experience has soured him on what was once his dream race.

Now, hopefully the day I get in, maybe my sentiments change… but I am a shell of the runner I used to be so many years ago.” Allen may be one of the runners who’s waited the longest, but he’s not alone in yearning to get into one of America’s premier ultras. It’s a problem facing tens of thousands of American endurance enthusiasts—literally. In the 2026 lottery for the Western States, more than 11,000 runners were vying for 257 spots in the race.

And it’s not just this race where runners are being shut out. Anybody who’s “got a couple of screws loose,” he says, can train and learn the tactics to enter and finish one of these extreme events. As running has generally boomed, even more people are showing up with screws loose.

In 2016, the first year Allen vied for a spot in the Western States, 58,425 runners entered ultras in the U.S., according to statistics from Ultra Running magazine. In 2025, that number had ballooned to more than 100,000. And as the popularity of the sport grows, the chances of getting into its most sought-after races via the lottery are becoming slimmer and slimmer.

Some runners who have missed out on races spin theories about lottery conspiracies, spots being given to sponsor influencers, and other skullduggery through which spots are being stolen. But the truth is, runners hoping to check big races off their bucket lists face a less nefarious but even more formidable foe: Math. IN 2006, WHEN the Western States featured prominently in Dean Karnazes’ book, Ultramarathon Man, the 100-mile mountain race already had a lottery.