Tara Dower | 2026 Western States 100 Pre-Race Interview

Singletrack

Finn Melanson

Running, Ultra Running, Sports News, Mountain Running, Ultrarunning, News, Wilderness, Ultramarathon, Sports, Trail Running

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the most exciting and versatile athletes in our sport, Tara Dower joins us in the studio to reflect on this year’s mission to race the vaunted Western States-Hardrock double. There’s a bit of a “revenge” narrative at play here as illness forced her to DNF at last year’s Western States and she was the very first person on the wait list at last year’s Hardrock, even suiting up for the start line the morning of the race in hopes that magic would happen. Ultimately, the stars didn’t ...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Norta is the official footwear partner of our 2026 Western States 100 coverage.
0:04.9	All the Rage this summer is the imminent release of their new model, the 055,
0:09.2	the shoe that Rachel Entrican wore start to finish en route to her course record victory
0:13.5	at the Kokadona 250 earlier this year.
0:16.3	Go check it out at norda run.com and make sure you are subscribed to their mailing list
0:20.6	to get exclusive
0:21.8	early access to the shoe. I've put a bunch of training miles in it. It's the real deal.
0:27.1	All right. We are back. It is Wednesday, June 24th. Another day, another dollar, another day
0:31.7	of coverage, athlete interviews ahead of the 26th Western States 100, Leah Yingling, and Brett Horning joining me in the co-hosting
0:39.4	position. And we are blessed to have Tara Dower in studio, Tara. How are you doing today?
0:44.5	Too blessed to be stressed.
0:47.9	Just off the dome.
0:49.5	Yeah. Yeah. I said blessed. I'm like, oh, I'm good. Yeah. I'm not sick and I'm really thankful for that. Yeah, this just said bless. I'm good. Yeah. Not sick and I'm really thankful for that.
0:57.4	Yeah, this is preventative.
0:59.1	Yeah, this is preventative for sure. Yeah. I even have the face mask here.
1:04.7	Yeah, and I guess if you're listening to just the audio version, we've got Tara Dow are decked out in pink latex gloves, a pink and 95,
1:12.4	and she did remove her nice kind of face shield right before we start recording.
1:16.8	ASMR, you can hear it. You can hear. Yeah, very nice. Pulling all the stops. Yeah,
1:24.1	we're not pulling any chances. I mean, do you think this is the future?
1:29.8	It should be. I mean, it definitely should be. You, you, you, people, athletes, me, all my fellow
1:37.6	athletes, we all work so hard to get here. Why wouldn't you take the extra precaution, wear a mask,
1:42.8	wash your hands, wear gloves, wear a face shield.
	...

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