Races

The Demystifying Series: How to get into the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run

Braden VanDragt | October 17, 2025 | Comments: 0

Hardrock describes itself as a “postgraduate” run—an advanced test of runners against the mountains.

Starting and ending in the town of Silverton, Colorado, Hardrock covers 102.5 miles and features 66,394 feet of elevation change, a high point of 14,048 feet, and an average elevation of about 11,000 feet. Aid stations are widely spaced, there are sections of cross-country, river crossings, and “mountain lions may be encountered.”

I hope you did your homework.

Hardrock is not what you would call a big race—at least not in terms of the number of runners. In 2024, 146 people were selected of the 2,800 or so who applied. Of those racers, 68 had already run the course, leaving only 78 first timers.

If you want to be one of those few, it will take a combination of racing, volunteering, and luck. As with many iconic ultras, entry to Hardrock depends on a lottery, so let’s get into the details.

Hardrock Qualifying Standards

To enter the Hardrock lottery, you must have finished a qualifier and satisfied the service requirement. We’ll start with the qualifier.

Because of the extreme difficulty of Hardrock, the list of qualifying races is relatively short. Only 33 races, 19 of which are in the US, will earn you the right to apply. You must have finished a qualifier within the previous two years, meaning if you want to race in 2025, qualifiers from 2023 and 2024 will work.

All qualifying races are what you might call “burley.” Hardrock chooses qualifiers that give runners a taste of the kinds of challenges that await them in the San Juan Mountains, and the list is ever changing.

Hardrock Service Requirement

Those who attended liberal arts colleges will understand the service-learning component of Hardrock.

After you’ve run the qualifying race, you must meet the service requirement. Aspiring racers need to complete at least eight volunteer hours. You can meet this requirement in several ways. You can:

Help organize an ultra,
Serve at an ultra (e.g. working an aid station—pacing or crewing doesn’t count),
Work on a trail used by an ultra,
Or do construction or maintenance work on a new or existing natural-surface trail with a formal trail maintenance organization.

After you complete your volunteer hours, you’ll fill out and submit this service requirement form. Keep in mind that you’ll need signatures from either the race organizer or trail boss, who will need to have a valid land agency permit, so do your research first!

The Lottery

Hardrock tries to admit a fair mix of runners each year, which means that the lottery system is a little convoluted. In addition to ensuring a gender mix that’s proportional to the percentage who apply, Hardrock has two pools of applicants: “finished” and “never finished.” If you’re reading this, you’re probably in the latter, and we’ll limit the discussion to that group.

As you’d expect, your odds of winning the lottery depend on how many tickets you have, so everything comes down to maximizing your number of tickets. You can get tickets in two ways: 1) apply multiple times and 2) get “service tickets.”

Math incoming—my apologies.

“Never finished” applicants get 2^n tickets where n is their number of DNSs. For the sake of the lottery, Hardrock defines DNS as any time you’ve qualified, applied, entered the lottery, but didn’t start the run. So that includes being selected but withdrawing, being waitlisted, and not being selected. Your number of tickets is cumulative, and they don’t reset if you miss a year of applying.

Let’s talk examples. If it’s your first time applying, you get a single ticket. If you applied but didn’t start in 2024, you get 2 tickets. If you’ve applied in 2022 and 2024, you get 4 tickets, and so on. Your chances increase exponentially every year.

Service Tickets

If you want to improve your odds—while having a blast!—you can get additional tickets by volunteering at Hardrock. Service tickets are awarded for:

Captaining an aid station (these are transferrable to another volunteer),
Two days of trail work (with an additional ticket for being a Trail Boss),
And marking or clearing the course (though only volunteers “who have most contributed” will receive tickets for marking or clearing).

Keep in mind that these service tickets are one-time use. They only apply to the following year’s lottery. However, Hardrock does offer “perpetual” service tickets—one for every five years of volunteering at the race—that never expire and can be used multiple times.

Good luck to all those applying! As for me, I’m still working on my undergrad races.