Heather Huggins had just gotten the news that her 10-year quest to get into the Western States 100 had been realized when she felt something snap in her left foot.
Running on a trail in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains near her house in Monrovia, California, in early December with her neighbor, Anthony Snitker, who had also just gotten into Western States, Huggins gingerly hobbled home and hoped for the best but prepared for the worst.
Snitker got into the race through the Western States lottery, but days before that Huggins learned that she had been awarded an official entry to the 2026 race from UltraSignup’s Order of the Unchosen (OotU), a program aimed at rewarding a runner holding at least four Western States lottery tickets.
UltraSignup is an official partner of the Western States 100 and decided to award its 2026 sponsor entry through the random Order of the Unchosen raffle bolstered by a runner’s Forsaken Points.
Huggins had been trying to get into Western States via the lottery for 10 years and admits she was shocked when she received the email in the days before the December 7 lottery.
“To be perfectly honest, I almost deleted it,” Huggins said. “But for whatever reason, I clicked on it, and when I read it, and I thought, ‘I don’t know … I don’t think this is real.’ I took a screenshot of it, and I sent it out to two of my run clubs, and asked everyone, ‘Is this real or someone trying to scam me?’ A few people responded and thought it seemed real. But I kept wondering if someone out there was preying on people trying like crazy to get into Western States for years. But when I realized it was real, I was pretty excited. I have had a lot of friends who have run Western States and to finally get in is really cool.”
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How it Started
Huggins, 52, grew up on a family farm near Brookings, Oregon, in the rural southwest corner of the state and loved being outdoors, often with her older sister, for as long as she can remember. She wasn’t a runner back then, but she has great memories of hiking, camping, and riding horses. She developed her own style of fastpacking, whether on foot or on horseback, and learning to move fast and efficiently through the terrain.
“My mom’s thinking was, ‘Give those girls a horse and a dog, and let them go do what you want,” Huggins says. “I started doing then kind of what we do now, just kind of walking up the steep parts, running everything else and carrying a bottle of water, or depending on where I am, drinking out of the creeks, and eating a little granola bar or something and calling it good. I figured as long as I go fast, I can get 20 miles and I can get to that lake or the campground. So I feel like I’ve been doing that for a long time, even though I was kind of slow to the game and didn’t really get started as a trail runner until my mid-30s.”
Having been around horses, she’d first heard of the Western States 100 because of its historical ties to the Tevis Cup equestrian race. But her first real curiosity about Western States developed while she was training for her first marathon in the early 2000s when she and her husband, Brian Dorsey, were living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
One of their friends at the time was Zach Miller, a runner who was training for his second Western States and often ran the same 17-mile Potawatomi Loop. One Saturday after finishing a loop, Miller went back to his car in the parking lot and ate an entire pizza. Then he ran another lap, and then ate another pizza.
Huggins, who was training to run another Boston Marathon at the time, was intrigued, especially after Miller recorded back-to-back top-six finishes at Western States.
“I thought this is something I might check out once I get a few marathons under my belt,” Huggins said. “I remember following the race online and being so excited. It was amazing how you could track people and was just blown away at just how good he was. I was inspired by the excitement of it all.”
Huggins ran her fastest Boston Marathon (3:21) in 2008 and also ran her first trail races in Michigan, but she really immersed in the trail world and became inspired about running ultras after she and her husband settled in Monrovia and started a family. And it makes sense, given that they live in the San Gabriel Valley just a few blocks from several trailheads that lead into the San Gabriel Mountains.
Going Ultra
Huggins’ first ultra was the 28.4-mile Quad Dipsea race north of San Francisco in November of 2015. That led to her first 50-miler the following spring at the Sean O’Brien trail races, then her first 100-miler at the 2016 Javelina Jundred. She couldn’t wait to finally enter the Western States lottery for the first time.
However, that was at a time when trail running and interest in Western States started to boom, and lottery entries grew from about 2,500 with 6,600 tickets in 2015 to 4,200 entries with 11,000 tickets just two years later.
While her ticket count increased through the years, so, too, did the lottery entries. Heading into the 2025 lottery last December, she had 256 tickets, but there were also a record 9,993 individual entries with 68,724 tickets.
“After I entered the first time, Western States lottery entries just kept shooting up,” Huggins said. “So before that time, I think you had a decent chance of getting in if you had a couple of tickets. And then over the years, for a little while, my percentage would go up by a little, but then at one point it started going down. Clearly, it was becoming a bigger and bigger deal worldwide.”
Huggins caught the ultra bug, but she never got discouraged when she failed to get into Western States year after year. Instead she was only more inspired as she ran dozens of 50K and 100K trail races throughout California, Oregon, and Nevada. (She also competed in several ride and tie events, won the women’s race at the 2022 OC Marathon in a new PR of 3:07, and earned a third-place age-group finish at the 2023 USATF 100-Mile Championships.)
Each year she’d submit her name in the Western States lottery with the same hopeful intent, believing one day she’d get the chance to run from Palisades Tahoe resort up and over Emigrant Pass, through the canyons of the Sierra Nevada foothills and eventually to the track at Placer High School in Auburn.
She learned of UltraSignup’s Order of the Unchosen program last fall and decided to enter, because, “What the heck?”
“I wasn’t even sure if it was real, but I thought, well, I’ll see what happens,” she says. “I did have a lot of tickets this year, and thought, surely I had a good chance this year, but even with that many tickets it was still only showing like a 58 percent chance of getting in, so I’m grateful it worked out the way it has.”
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How It’s Going
Huggins doesn’t work with a personal coach and has yet to set foot on the Western States course, but she’s relied on her local trail running community—including regular run groups with A Snail’s Pace running store and the Arrogant Bastard Trail Running Club—and key mentors and friends who have guided her and inspired her as a trail runner for years. She also takes plenty of inspiration and training motivation from her longtime role as a cross country coach for Monrovia High School.
“I know what the high school kids are doing is way, way different than running ultras, but I always tell the kids that cross country is a gateway into trail running, and I think it is,” she says. “I’m always trying to be a better coach, so I spend a lot of my free time reading and going to coaching clinics and listening and learning from other coaches. And a lot of the things I tell them and have them do, I’m extending for my own training. My long runs aren’t eight miles, but more like 20 or 21 miles. But I’m still doing the speed work they’re doing.”
Come Western States race weekend, Huggins knows she’ll get plenty of support from her crew of Jim Picker, Rachel Vannette, and husband, Brian Dorsey, not to mention good friends and pacers Jenny Picker and Susanna Messinger, with whom she’s shared many epic running experiences. (One of the keys to success, she says, will be making sure they feed her plenty of Red Vines fruit-flavored licorice at aid stations.) And if her teenage children Rowan, 17 and Iris, 13, aren’t too busy doing something else, she’ll love having them involved, too.
Huggins says she grateful to have so many great trails on run on just a stone’s throw from where she lives, many of which offer steep climbs, dense forests, waterfalls, bubbling streams and cool ponds that are ideal for post-run soaks in the summertime. Two of her favorites routes are the 15-mile Strawberry Peak Loop and the Three T’s, a 21-mile, three-peak route with a lot of vert and amazing views.
“Right now it’s a beautiful spring in Southern California, and it’s a great time to run,” she says. “Luckily that I have all these trails here so close. I mean, within a mile I can be on the trails from my house. Right now the creeks are running, the flowers are blooming, and it’s green up there. It’s going to change because it’s been hot and dry, but it’s still green right now and really beautiful.”
Her husband doesn’t run much, but loves to hike. He works as a research botanist, so he prefers a more casual pace so he can take in all the plants.
“On my last long run, I left the house and went 25 miles into the mountains and got over 6,000 feet of elevation gain,” she said. “He drove up into the mountains and took the dog on a short hike and met me up there 5-6 hours later. He had the van fridge charged up and filled with cold chocolate milk and grapes. That felt like a perfect relationship moment.”
On the Trail To Tahoe
As for the pain in her left foot, she never did see a doctor about it, but instead she mostly stayed off of it for about eight weeks and kept a positive mindset, and that seemed to do the trick. After waiting 10 years to run one of the most famous 100-mile trail races in the world, she wasn’t going to let that get in her way of reaching the starting line on June 27 at Palisades Tahoe resort.
Huggins got back to running in late February and now she’s averaging about 60 miles per week and feeling good about her fitness. She plans to continue layering on mileage, heat training, and elevation gain over the next two months, and is planning on running The Janes Mile on May 3 and in Santa Monica the Bishop High Sierra 50-miler on May 16 before taking part in the three-day Western States Training Camp over Memorial Day Weekend.
“After that happened—which was just four days after I learned I had an entry into Western States after 10 years of trying—I had to take almost two months off,” Huggins said. “I didn’t want to say anything to anyone because I was like, ‘It’s fine. It’s going to heal.’ I just needed to be good and just stay off of it. Normally I probably would have tested it out every couple weeks, but this time I just stayed off for two months to make sure it was fine, and now it’s fine, and I’m going to be ready.”
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2 comments
Susanna
Woohoo! So excited that you’re finally in! You’ve earned it, and you’re going to crush it.
Zoë Rom
Let’s go Heather!!!!