Late on Saturday night, Courtney Dauwalter needed help getting up out of the chair she was sitting in at the south end of the Placer High School track so she could greet fellow competitor Katie Schide.
Once up, she slowly and awkwardly limped about 15 steps, considerably slower than she had all day on her historic run from Olympic Valley to Auburn, California. Hours earlier, Dauwalter won the 2023 Western States 100 with a record-shattering masterwork effort, running hard while trudging through the difficult snowy sections early on, and then methodically and relentlessly hammering her way along the second half of the fabled 100.2-mile course.
Although no runner had come within 23 minutes of Ellie Greenwood’s 2012 women’s course record of 16:47:19 for the previous 10 years, Dauwalter, a 38-year-old runner from Leadville, Colorado, shattered the mark with a stunning 15:29:33 effort to win the race for the second time in three tries. Schide, a 31-year-old American who lives in France, turned in a valiant effort in Dauwalter’s wake, finishing second in 16:43:45, the second-fastest women’s time in the history of…
