The Shoe Engineer and the Rookie: How Both Western States Records Fell in One Day

By Endurance Sports & Gear · Mon Jul 20 2026

The most interesting man in ultrarunning spends his weekdays designing shoes for other people. On the last Saturday of June, Vincent Bouillard, a full-time product engineer at HOKA, clocked out, flew to California, and took 23 minutes off a Western States 100 course record that most of the sport had quietly filed under "untouchable." A few hours later, Jenn Lichter, running the first 100-miler of her life, without so much as a split time on her wrist, broke the women's record too. One day, one hundred miles, both benchmarks gone.

Three weeks on, with UTMB looming in late August, it is worth sitting with what actually happened in Auburn, because it might be the single most consequential day ultrarunning has ever had.

One hundred miles, briefly

For the uninitiated: Western States is the oldest and most prestigious 100-mile trail race on the planet, 100.2 miles from Olympic Valley near Lake Tahoe to the high school track in Auburn, California, with 18,090 feet of climbing and a quad-destroying 22,970 feet of descent through canyons that usually cook runners alive. This year the weather stayed unusually cool, and the front of the race treated the course like it owed them money.

The engineer who beat his own customers

Bouillard's story reads like something a screenwriter would reject as too tidy. A 32-year-old from Annecy, he works full time in HOKA's product and innovation department. In 2024 he entered UTMB essentially anonymous, unsponsored, and won the whole thing. Last year he came to Western States and blew up, a DNF he clearly took personally. This year he came back and ran 13:46:15, becoming the first French winner in the race's history and only the seventh person ever to win both Western States and UTMB.

The gear angle, because this is that kind of channel: according to Marathon Handbook, Bouillard raced in a HOKA Tecton prototype he customized for his own stride. Sit with that. The man engineers trail shoes for a living, built himself a bespoke pair, and then personally demonstrated the product roadmap by dismantling the most famous record in American ultrarunning. Marketing departments spend nine figures failing to buy that story.

He did it patiently, too. After his 2025 flameout, the plan was restraint: "I wanted to try and be a little more conservative," he said afterward. He did not take the lead until around mile 85, having spent the day trading pace with Italy's Francesco Puppi, who ran 13:51:08 in his first 100-miler, and American Ryan Montgomery at 13:53:55. All three finished under 14 hours, the first podium in race history to do so. Thomas Cardin, in fourth, ran 14:07:58; by the old record, that time wins most editions of this race. On this day it was not worth a trophy.

Somewhere behind them, the old guard had a terrible day at the office: pre-race favorites Jim Walmsley and Kilian Jornet both dropped out.

The rookie who didn't know her splits

If Bouillard's win was precision engineering, Jenn Lichter's was jazz. The 30-year-old from Missoula, Montana had never run 100 miles before. Her build-up included a pre-race stomach bug serious enough that her crew, working with nutritionist Meredith Terranova, improvised a fueling plan of Wonder Bread soaked in Coca-Cola, which is either an abomination or the greatest sports-nutrition hack of the decade depending on how your last long run went.

She raced the entire day by feel, with no split information at all. It was only at Robie Point, mile 98.9, that her pacer (and partner) Nick Cornell finally asked whether she wanted the course record. At that moment her cushion on Courtney Dauwalter's 2023 mark of 15:29:33 was all of 36 seconds. Lichter closed with a 5:20 final mile onto the Placer High track, an end-of-race split most of us could not produce fresh, and stopped the clock at 15:28:05. Record broken by 88 seconds, in her debut, good for 11th overall.

The resume behind the "rookie" label deserves a second look. Born in Bogotá and adopted at age nine, Lichter ran collegiately at Toledo, worked as a hiking guide in Glacier National Park, and has spent 2026 setting course records nearly everywhere she starts: first woman under 8 hours at the Black Canyon 100K in February, another record at the Gorge Waterfalls 50K in April. Behind her, Riley Brady ran 15:42:14, the third-fastest women's time in event history, while battling stomach issues, and Canada's Marianne Hogan completed the podium.

What the numbers say

Course records at hundred-milers usually fall by seconds, on freak weather days, to established legends. This year they fell by minutes, to an engineer and a debutante.

Yes, the cool weather mattered; nobody runs 13:46 through a heatwave in the canyons. But conditions do not explain depth, and the depth is the story: four men inside the old record, two podium debuts, and a women's mark that had belonged to the most dominant ultrarunner of the era falling to someone who had never raced the distance. The sport's talent pool is suddenly much deeper, much faster, and much less predictable than its star system assumed.

August is going to be absurd

The sequel writes itself. UTMB, the sport's other crown jewel, comes to Chamonix in late August. Bouillard is the 2024 UTMB champion and now the Western States record holder; a second UTMB win would end any argument about the best hundred-mile racer alive. Lichter has not confirmed whether she will toe the line, and honestly, the mystery is half the fun; her season so far suggests the record book should be nervous either way.

And somewhere in a HOKA office in Annecy, a product engineer is back at his desk this month, reviewing data from the most successful field test in the company's history, conducted personally, on company shoes, at record pace. Best commute story in the building, forever.

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