Western States 100 Champion, Clare Gallagher
BLISTER Podcast
BLISTER
4.8 • 560 Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2019
⏱️ 55 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clare Gallagher just won the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Race, and she did so in spectacular fashion. And normally, that is all the introduction we’d need here, since winning Western States is a very big deal. But there happens to be a whole lot more to this particular story.
Because right before this race, Clare accepted an invitation from Tommy Caldwell to go on an expedition to the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to raise awareness of and opposition to plans to give oil and gas companies the right to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge.
But backpacking and mountaineering around the wild landscape of Alaska is not how professional runners typically spend time right before their biggest race of the year.
So in addition to diving into the details of her epic Western States win, we discuss with Clare why she was willing to go to Alaska; why she runs; and how wins at Western States — or her 2016 win of the Leadville 100, or her FKT of the Zion Traverse last year — all work to create a larger platform to talk about the things that matter most to her.
TAKE ACTION:
Text 40649 now or CLICK HERE to submit a comment to your representative asking them to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by voting to pass The Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act.
TOPICS & TIMES:
- Recovering from a huge effort at Western States (2:57)
- Race Recap: day of the race & the first 80 miles (8:03)
- On the intense last 6 miles of the race (10:02)
- Mile 93 — 2017 vs. 2019 (13:13)
- Clare’s expedition to Alaska prior to the race (18:45)
- Winning, Losing, & Competitiveness (29:11)
- Clare’s background (34:37)
- Her future (49:43)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Blister podcast, a program dedicated to interesting people, the great outdoors, and a bunch of other stuff we like. |
| 0:08.5 | I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, the founder of Blister, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com. |
| 0:17.5 | Claire Gallagher just won the Western States' 100-mile endurance run and did so in spectacular fashion. |
| 0:25.7 | Now, normally, that is all the introduction we'd need here since winning the Western States 100 is a very big deal. |
| 0:32.9 | But in this case, there happens to be a whole lot more to this particular story. |
| 0:38.8 | Because right before this race, Claire accepted an invitation from Tommy Caldwell to go to the |
| 0:43.8 | Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to raise awareness of and opposition to, the current administration's |
| 0:50.8 | plans to give oil and gas companies the right to drill in the coastal plain |
| 0:55.4 | of the Arctic Refuge. |
| 0:57.9 | The thing is, backpacking and mountaineering around the wild landscape of Alaska is a far cry |
| 1:03.8 | from the way that professional runners would typically spend the lead-up time right before |
| 1:08.6 | their biggest race of the year. |
| 1:11.6 | So, in addition to diving into the details with Claire about her epic win, Blister contributing |
| 1:16.5 | editor Maddie Hart and I discuss with Claire why she was willing to go to Alaska, why |
| 1:22.4 | she runs in the first place, and how wins at Western States, or her 2016 win of the Leadville 100, |
| 1:30.1 | or her FKT of the Zion Traverse last year, all work to create a larger platform to talk about |
| 1:36.2 | the things that matter most to Claire. And if you'd like to take action on the particular issue |
| 1:41.1 | that you'll hear Claire discussing in this episode, you can text 40649 to submit a comment now to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or follow the link in the show notes to this episode. |
| 1:54.0 | It only takes a few seconds, but it's important. |
| 1:58.0 | Final note, we actually aired this episode last week on our Blister running podcast that's |
| 2:03.4 | called Off the Couch. But Claire's win was so impressive, and the broader issues that we're |
| 2:09.8 | discussing here are so important that we wanted to air the episode on our Blister podcast channel |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BLISTER, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BLISTER and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.