“The Outdoor Side of The Sport”

Francesco Puppi is thinking out loud ahead of his 100 mile debut at Western States:

I struggle with the idea that a 100m race may be more of an adventure than a competitive feat.
…
I’m not an athlete who does it just for the feeling of adventure, of being in the wild, or for the connection with nature.
…
For Western States, I’ve had to lean more into the outdoor side of the sport in order to survive and enjoy my preparation.

What a fascinating perspective, and I am not being snarky here.

For one, we rarely ever get elite athletes giving us a personal brain dump ahead of a big race. Usually they are locked in and might tease us with sharing their training volume or number of gels consumed, but that’s all we get – until after. Secondly, MY understanding has always been that Western States is considered the most “track and cross country” type race there is, so him feeling like this is an outdoor adventure is surprising, especially for an elite runner who’s planning on finishing before nightfall. Usually it’s the US runners, after having raced “California carpet races” who are struggling to adapt to “really mountain races” of the Alps like UTMB. Euro runners struggle to adapt to WSER too, but for different reasons. Francesco has raced – and won – CCC already. Is WSER – for an elite – really that much more “outdoorsy” than CCC?