As a writer for the American Trail Running Association (ATRA), I’ve had the incredible opportunity to interview runners from all walks of life and learn about many ways in which people discover and appreciate trail running. I enjoy the ability to ask questions that get to the heart of who people are. Everyday conversations and small talk don’t often allow us to ask, or answer, these kinds of deep questions, but in doing so we can better understand the similarities and differences with those around us on the trails and in all of life. A few examples of wonderful conversations with runners in our community include:
- Magdalena Boulet Running With Curiosity Towards a Crossroads
- Mikah Meyer a Symbol for Gay Adventuring and Safe Space on Trails
- Gonzo Jimenez Elite Chocolatier and “OK” Ultrarunner
- Zachary Friedley Adaptive Athletes Ascending to New Heights on Trails
- Christian Gering Trail Running Inspired by Pueblo Values and Traditions
Out of all of my interviews so far, none has been more like the experience of looking into a mirror than the following interview with Andrew Miller. When he answers my questions, I can’t help but notice that I might answer the question similarly, and the experience as the interviewer is like being an outsider looking in on my own life. Our conversation flowed naturally from our many similarities, which include both being pioneers for youth in ultrarunning, overnight success from winning a prestigious race, being sidelined after injuries, pursuing self-excellence over victory, and how we turn to our roots in nature and community when ideas of fame and pressures from ourselves distract us from the bliss we knew when we first began trail running. These similarities give this interview a unique angle and direction that I don’t often find when interviewing athletes. But make no mistake, the following story is ALL about Miller, not me. So, without further ado, let’s dive into one of the most climactic moments in Miller’s life. A moment that would change his running career forever.
Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run
Making History At The Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run
“I have no desire to be well known, I’m happier being anonymous.” — Andrew Miller
June 25, 2016, 8:39 P.M., Andrew Miller arrives first to cheering crowds at the Placer County High School track in Auburn, CA. He has just won the prestigious Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run, traveling 100 miles on foot from the startline in the heart of the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains at Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort, through hot winding canyons and across the American River to get there. At age twenty, he became the youngest winner in the race’s 40-year history, and he’s not even old enough to drink a beer to celebrate. The following morning, Miller’s name is in the headlines of every major trail running publication.
Miller’s victory was a complete upset. All eyes were on rising star Jim Walmsley, who was setting ultrarunning records left and right. In 2016 alone he set the Bandera 100K, JFK 50 Mile, and Lake Sonoma 50 Mile course records. At mile 93, Walmsley made the most famous wrong turn in our sport’s history. Walmsley added several miles, and several hours because of the mental toll it took on him, to his finish time. He placed twentieth despite being on track to win the race and snag another course record. Miller, who raced tactically and moved steadily through the field, won the race in 15:39:36. He was the only runner to go under 16 hours, finishing ahead of more experienced ultrarunners including Jeff Browning, Sage Canaday, Paul Giblin, Ian Sharman, Chris Mocko, and Kyle Pietari. Even more unexpected than Miller’s win, was the way his entire running career would change following the race. Miller tells the experience of how this overnight success impacted his running career, “I got more attention than I ever had as an athlete. It changed the way I thought about running. After winning the Western States 100, I felt pressure to run more high-profile races and that wasn’t why I got into running. I got into running because I like being out on trails and I love the community.”
Internal pressure to compete on the elite level began to negatively affect him, “I put a lot of pressure on myself after the race to continue finding success in high-profile races. As runners, we put pressure on ourselves at all levels of running. We tell ourselves that we should be achieving certain things and hitting certain times, or running certain races and paces but the bottom line is to go out and have fun. Being excited to be on the start line is key. That’s always when I’ve had my best races. Find out what makes you excited most in trail running and chase that above all else.”
Unfortunately for Miller, he couldn’t escape the pressures he put on himself. In conjunction with his mental struggle, his body began to break down for the first time in his running career. In 2017 and 2018, Miller fell into an injury cycle that had him questioning why he was running in the first place. He sustained several hip-flexor strains, calf issues, tendinitis problems, shin splints, and it seemed that any time he managed to be healthy enough to race again, his body would break down with new injuries. Miller described this rough patch in his career, “After a few injuries, you start thinking about the sustainability of everything you’re doing. I used to think I could go out on trails and do anything but these injuries made me think more long-term. I started thinking about all the things I would want to do years down the road. I knew that if I wanted to do those things, I needed to do my best to stay healthy instead of pushing through injuries in order to race.”
Miller attributes much of his injuries to an unhealthy relationship with training, caused by his internal pressures to live up to the runner the media was saying he was. He obsessed over working on his weaknesses, instead of enjoying his training and exploring trails for fun as he’d always done in the past, “I put more stress on myself to run faster and that took the fun out of my training. I focused on speedwork (my weakness) and ran less hills (my favorite part of running trails). It was difficult for me to find joy in the training process. I broke down physically and mentally. External pressure took hold of me and I tried to change things about myself. I know now that the keys to success as an athlete are staying true to who you are and being comfortable with yourself. Trying to get better at all costs is not the best way to improve, nor is it really that fun.”
Andrew Miller Photo by: Teri Smith
Trails As Playgrounds
Miller’s ultrarunning career began in 2010 with his first ultramarathon, the McKenzie River 50K Trail Run in Blue River, OR. He describes his early running years as a bonding activity with his mother, “I started running with my mom. We’d go exploring by foot in the woods together around Corvallis, Oregon. By the end of the summer, I had done all the same training that she had. She was doing a 50K race in Blue River and she figured that since I’d done the training I’d be able to race it too. At the time, 50K seemed so far and I didn’t know if I could finish.”
Fourteen-year-old Miller did finish, a humble 117 out of 163 runners. He was hooked. By age fifteen, he raced three more ultras and by sixteen he raced seven ultras and earned his first victory at the McKenzie River 50 Mile.
Fun fact: Mozart wrote thirty symphonies by age eighteen; Miller raced twenty-eight ultramarathons before turning nineteen. Both were passionate pursuers of their craft. One addicted to the rhythms of music and another to the rhythms of moving in nature, placing one foot in front of the other.
Compared to other runners his age, Miller didn’t take the conventional route to be a runner. He never ran in high school or college like other runners his age, but he never questioned his own ultrarunning journey. The fact that he was often the only, or one of very few, teenagers at the ultras he competed in never stopped him, “When it came to running, I knew what my parents taught me. I never questioned how long I trained or ran. People in the trail running community were excited to see someone young out there running long races. Looking back now, I owe so much to this community. That’s why trail running stuck with me. The positivity of trail runners is infectious. I love being part of it.”
In the history of ultrarunning, Miller will go down as one of the pioneers of youth in ultrarunning. Before the 2010s, there were not many younger athletes finding success in ultrarunning. The consensus among the running community was that ultramarathons, especially 100-mile races, should be reserved for older, more experienced athletes in their upper 20s, 30s, and 40s. Running 100 miles was thought to be something that you only did once you worked your way up from running shorter distances such as 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons, marathons, 50Ks, 50 miles, etc. The idea that someone in their teenage years or early twenties had the discipline, racing experience, and durability in their legs and mind to survive longer races was, and still is to some degree, in question. Miller followed in the footsteps of Dakota Jones (a.k.a. Young Money) who placed second at the Hardrock 100-mile race at age twenty-one and Kilian Jornet, who won UTMB, a 100-mile race in Chamonix, France, twice before the age of twenty-two. Jornet even describes in his memoir, Run or Die, that in his first victory at UTMB he was held at an aid station because the race officials thought he must be cheating, assuming that no runner his age could be leading such a race. Miller was lucky he found only support and cheering crowds at the Western States 100.
One reason Miller never questioned his early entry into the sport of ultrarunning was that he was raised outdoors in a way that most kids in the twenty-first century will never experience. By age six, his family took him on backpacking trips to places including Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, and a trip circumnavigating Washington’s Mount Rainier. His family still holds true to their love of nature and they take at least one week-long family backpacking trip together each year. Similarly, Kilian Jornet, arguably the G.O.A.T. of trail running, and perhaps the most aptly named GOAT of any sport because he actually moves with the power and grace of a real mountain goat, grew up in a mountain hut in the Spanish Pyrenees mountains. His family instilled in him a respect and love for trails just like Miller. There may be something to be said that the best way to develop superhuman mountain runners is to have their playground be mountains and not PlayStations.
Andrew Miller on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Finding Home and Community
From August 2015 to December 2016, Miller lived and trained in Flagstaff, AZ, an epicenter for the sport of trail running. This town largely made a name for itself in the ultrarunning community with the Coconino Cowboys team, and their “spoof” Instagram page, Cappuccino Cowboys. These “cowboys” were several of the country’s top trail runners — Jim Walmsely, Tim Frericks, Cody Reid, Jared Hazen, and Eric Senseman — who all trained and lived together. The group produced some of the most viewed videos and social media content in the trail running world at the time. Although Miller might have been able to join this group if he pursued it, and would have surely increased his social media followers, he preferred to remain out of the spotlight. He ran mostly alone and although he liked running on Flagstaff’s extensive trail systems, he missed his home trails in Corvallis, “My time in Flagstaff wasn’t necessarily good or bad, it was simply a good place to train. Corvallis, on the other hand, was where I grew up and I didn’t know how special it was until I left it.”
Miller moved back to Corvallis in December 2016, nearly half a year after winning the Western States 100 earlier that June. He explains his decision, “When I’m in Corvallis, I’m surrounded with people I’ve run with for over a decade. There’s a lot of good people here and this is where most of my friends are. More important than the trails itself or location is community, and I knew I needed my community when I felt in a lull after Western States. This is my place and I’m realizing more and more that community is something I’ve come to value most as a trail runner.”
Miller’s return home allowed him to adopt a new, less pressured approach to his running. Now in 2023, he feels more confident than ever in his decision to return home, “This year things started clicking. I feel I’m finally back on track. I’m not the most fit right now but I’m in a good state of mind about my running. I’m here to try my best, have fun and support the community. I really don’t care beyond that, what other people are doing, or about competition.”
Miller goes into greater detail about his current training, “My training is very free-flowing right now. I have some structure to the week (you need some to be productive), but I ultimately focus on doing runs I enjoy. I don’t care if there’s a better run on paper I could have done to prepare for a specific race. I’ve found in the bigger picture that I can be more productive if I do what’s most fun. I’ve also realized more how important the community is. I’ve found myself running more with others. When things aren’t going well, that’s when you figure out who’s really there for you.”
Greater Distances, Greater Unknowns
The new Miller is less competition focused and more free-flowing with his training, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost the drive that made him one of the best trail runners in the world. Miller is balancing his desire to perform with an awareness of how these feelings affect his training and overall mentality, “With anything I do in life, I have a hard time not going all in. It’s the way I’m wired. If I’m going to do anything, I’m going to give it everything I got. That’s a bigger-picture realization of myself I’ve taken away in the past few years. Recognizing when I’m going all in, and deciding if it’s a good thing or not, is something that has helped me become more aware of how I operate as a runner and human being.”
This attitude fuels Miller to keep chasing big dreams in his running career, “I’d like to run better than I have before. I think I can do better. I’m twenty-six now, so I have eight or ten more years to keep pushing my absolute physical limits. Chasing down goals and being the best runner I can be is something I still strive for. More recently, I’ve been interested in 200-mile races. The draw is that I’ve never run that far before.”
Running farther, as opposed to focusing on running faster takes Miller back to his roots. Over a decade into his running career, he’s still attracted to the same challenge of going into the unknown and testing the limits of how far he can go, just like his fourteen-year-old ultrarunning self who toed the line at the McKenzie River 50K, “When I first got into trail running, I’d always been interested in running longer. Wondering how far I could go was the desire that inspired me to move up from 50K, 50 mile, 100K, and eventually 100-mile races. It’s been nine years since I ran my first 100-mile race and I’m ready for the next challenge. I’d like to go farther because I don’t know if I can. In longer races, I’m not worried about anything but keeping myself going and getting to the finish line. I imagine that running 200 miles would feel like some of the first ultras in my career where I genuinely didn’t know if I could finish them. For me, there’s a lot of appeal in trying things I don’t know I can do.”
Want to learn more about 200-mile races? Check out my article on 200-mile FAQs here.
Looking for a running coach? Andrew Miller offers a coaching service that can be found on the Coaching Resource page here.
