The Chance To Dance

Created By Like The Wind In Partnership With The North Face / Words By Like The Wind · Photography By Gracie Hinz

Turning the corner onto the Placer High School track, Zach Miller’s teeth were bared, fists pumping in an all-out quarter-mile sprint. For the final victory lap at the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run, most finishers aren’t digging in for their fastest 400 meters. But Zach does things his own way.

“He’s so gritty and he won’t give up,” says Tracen Knopp, Zach’s teammate for The North Face, who was also racing. “It’s inspiring to think about when I’m out there — I’m like, OK, Zach Miller will give his best. I’d better be doing the same.”

Both Zach and Tracen raced WSER for the first time this year, Zach more than a decade after first qualifying. Tracen for his 100-mile debut. At the fastest WSER in history, both left it all out on the trail.

Two Journeys To One Storied Race

This wasn’t Zach’s first time on the WSER course. He’d spectated and paced friends on the route from California’s Olympic Valley into Auburn — and earned a reputation for handing out treats from the “Zach Shack.” A mini school bus that Zach lives out of when he’s on the road for races, the Zach Shack has become a fixture at events like WSER and Hardrock where he flips pancakes, passes out homemade donuts and dispenses frozen treats.

After working for years as a caretaker at Colorado’s Barr Camp, a backcountry hut halfway up the 14,000ft Pike’s Peak, Zach says the hospitality habit took root. “There are a lot of hard things in life,” he says, “and if we can just set up and make someone’s day, or give them something to smile about that day, that’s pretty rad. That’s what the Zach Shack is all about.”

This wasn’t the first time Zach qualified for WSER, either. More than a decade prior, a win at the Lake Sonoma 50 earned him a bib. But he decided to hold off, focusing on other things. First, it was Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), where he took second place in 2023. Then Hard Rock, where his dream was deferred by a burst appendix, but he returned for a fifth-place finish the following year. This year, the time was right for WSER.

“Sometimes you have to wait,” he wrote on an Instagram, after finishing second at Canyons by UTMB 100K and earning himself a Golden Ticket entry to WSER. “For the girl. For the race. For the ticket. For the chance to dance.”

Depth Of Field

In the decade since Miller first qualified for WSER, course records dropped steadily and — most noticeably to him — the field deepened.

“I used to go into races like Canyons and I’d race at the front and it would be a pack for maybe the first mile and then pretty soon it would be down to two or three guys. We would break away, then one or two of us would break off that and, in the end one guy would win,” he says. “Now when I went out at Canyons, 10 miles in we were still a pack of 15 to 20. You go down a big descent and come up the climb and you watch all these guys streaming behind you — and, whoa, it didn’t used to be like this.”

At Canyons, he earned a podium spot alongside two other ultra running veterans — but had his eye on a brood of “up-and-comers” whom he considered a threat. The type of younger runners who would also put the pressure on at WSER. Like teammate for The North Face, Tracen Knopp.

Going All In

Raised in Palmer, Alaska, Tracen grew up on the trails and skied for the University of Alaska Anchorage. After surprise successes at the rugged 22-mile Crow Pass Crossing and Kesugi Ridge Traverse, he began to shift his focus to running. In 2021, he won the Resurrection Pass 50 miler, setting a course record.

“I thought, dang, I like this, I’m having way more fun doing these trail races,” he says. He gradually amped up his running as he and his fiancé moved to Reno, Nevada, for grad school. There, they were closer to more of the West’s pinnacle trail races and were both soon nabbing podiums, including his second-place finish at the 2022 USATF Trail Marathon National Championships. TNF tapped him to be a product tester, then an ambassador.

By the time Tracen finished his degree in atmospheric science and took a full-time job in Alaska with the National Weather Service, he’d earned a spot on The North Face’s trail running team. After earning a Golden Ticket for a third-place finish at Black Canyon Ultras 100K this spring, he quit the NWS job to focus on training full-time.

WSER would be Tracen’s first 100-miler — and, aware it was getting harder to get into the race in the first place, he decided to go all in. The North Face flew him to Flagstaff, Arizona to train with teammates Seth Ruhling, who finished sixth at WSER in 2025, and the legendary Rob Krar, one of very few to win the race two years in a row. For Tracen, Rob’s advice and example kept him going through what would ultimately be a brutal day and a testament to genuine grit.

“[Rob] was never leading the pack, you know, at the start of the race. He worked his way up and ended up winning,” Tracen says. “And I had that in my mind. People can still do well, even if they’re not in first place at mile 30. So I kept hope. That’s what kept me going for a lot of the middle section of the race. It was the thought that this can still be a good day. I have hope still.”

Into The Deep End

Notorious for being a hot, dry race, WSER was uncharacteristically cool this year and Tracen felt good for the first 30 miles before he started coughing. Soon he was coughing up bloody phlegm on the uphills and overdoing it on the descents trying to make up the time. Soon, his quads were going.

He pressed on to the river crossing at mile 78 with a top-10 finish still in his mind, but was forced to walk — ultimately, he was diagnosed with pulmonary edema, excessive fluid in the lungs probably triggered by altitude. Gutting it out in with the same kind of heart he’d seen modeled in his TNF teammates, he managed to cross the finish line in 19th place.

While Tracen was fighting his own battle, the lead racers were in “a drag race through sixth place” in the words of live-stream commentator Dylan Bowman — with Zach right in the mix.

“I was just surprised by how good I felt all throughout the race,” he says. “And how much fun I had. Most of my 100-mile racing experiences are at UTMB. So racing something that takes 14 hours and is net downhill is drastically different.”

After adjusting nutrition to address a low around the 30-mile mark — his wife is a trained dietitian and helped him with his race strategy — he kept feeling strong. Both Zach and Tracen credit their crew and TNF team with keeping them going.

A Record-Breaking Race

Giving his all to the very end, even sprinting through the finish arch in his signature style, Zach landed in fifth place. The race was so fast overall that the top four finishers broke the previous course record. To Zach, even in stiff competition, there’s a whiff of service or hospitality. Sure, he wants to win. But the way he sees it, iron sharpens iron and he was part of something bigger.

“We’re trying to do this really hard thing. Our best shot at getting there fast — and getting the best out of ourselves and each other — is to run as hard as we can. I’m pushing you, you’re pushing me — we get the best out of each other.”

Two weeks later, he was posted up with the Zach Shack at Hardrock, passing out donuts at the finish line.

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