In Their Shoes

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Tim Twietmeyer, Endurance Runner
After about mile 70, even Tim Twietmeyer’s endurance-trained body gets a little finicky. “You have to go down to the simple stuff,” he laughs. “For me, that means Code Red Mountain Dew and M&M’s.” Unquestionably a running-world legend, Twietmeyer is particularly exalted for his record 25 years of participation in the Western States Endurance Run, a gritty 100-mile ultramarathon through California’s Sierra Nevada. He won the whole thing five times.
    Win or lose, he always completed the course in under 24 hours (once he ran all 100 miles in 17 hours and 17 minutes). Last year marked his final showing; 25 years in the race, he says, is a “nice round number.” He knows this trail — really, really knows it — and says he could probably tell where he is just by the dirt.
Now, the 48-year-old Twietmeyer wants to use his extensive experience to help with the event’s logistical side. He’s also passionate about forest management, after long hours on the trail gave him a keen eye for fire-prone areas.
    Embodying the lanky but muscular paradox of a runner’s physique, Twietmeyer is still in the thick of the run, even though he’s retired from the WS 100. He covers most of his distance on the weekends. His unexpected introduction to what became a life-driving force had as much to do with people-watching as it did with running.
While working as a golf-course caddy in the late 1970s, Twietmeyer stumbled upon a 24-hour race at a local high school track. He watched, casually at first, left, came back, left, and came back again, each time more engaged, tracking the progress of his favorites. “It was just such a great cast of people,” he says, “and I thought, ‘I think I’ve found my group.’ ”

Alex Kosinski, Middle-Distance Runner
The secret to a fast run? Run fast. “It doesn’t really take a lot of research to be a good runner,” says Alex
Kosinski, an 18-year-old, middle-distance runner and recent Oak Ridge High School graduate. “I know if I go out and do it, I’ll be better.”
Continued...

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