In her debut at the 100-mile distance, Jenn Lichter lines up for the 2026 Western States 100 having thoughtfully increased her racing distance over the past few years. In the following interview, Jenn talks about her running background, training with a strong group of women in her home in Missoula, Montana, and how she thinks her running experience will make up for her lack of experience in the 100-mile distance.
To learn more about who’s racing, check out our women’s and men’s previews before following our live race coverage on race day.
[Editor’s Note: If you are unable to see the video above, click here to watch it.]
Jenn Lichter Pre-2026 Western States 100 Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Meghan Hicks of iRunFar. I’m with Jenn Lichter. It’s a couple of days before the 2026 Western States Endurance Run. Here we are in Olympic Valley, Jenn. How are you?
Jenn Lichter: I’m good.
iRunFar: We’re just about two days before your debut 100 miler. How does that sit with you today?
Lichter: Honestly, I’m not thinking too much about the race right now. I’m just trying to stay in my process, and I think the nerves will definitely come the day before, in the morning, so I’m saving those for that. Right now, I’m just kind of soaking it all in, enjoying being here, and getting ready to be part of one of the most iconic races in trail running.
iRunFar: This is iRunFar’s first interview with you. I’m so excited. But I’d love to know just a teensy bit of your backstory. You’re a Missoula trail runner. How did you come to trail running?
Lichter: Trail running happened way back in 2020, actually, during COVID. I was working as a hiking guide in Glacier National Park.
iRunFar: You were?
Lichter: Yeah, because I was living up in the Flathead, or Whitefish. In my summers I was living in West Glacier, so I was hiking and taking people on tours, and then just got obsessed with the terrain and the idea of going further than hiking allowed me to. That’s when I started trail running, with Glacier as my background. I fell in love with trail running then. And racing came in 2021, in the fall, where I decided to do the Rut for the very first time. It’s in Big Sky, Montana, so kind of close. It felt like a safe place to try something new out, and I guess you could say it’s been kind of history ever since. But I feel like it came to me very naturally.
iRunFar: I didn’t know that origin story. We actually share a similar story. I was working in a national park, too and learned about trail running. That’s fun. A natural progression.
Lichter: Yeah, a natural progression. I was freshly out of college, and I was pretty burnt out, so I think trail running provided a different way to run. Running is running, but it just felt so new and different and exciting. It just felt more of an adventure than a point-A-to-point-B kind of day. I don’t know, it just grabbed me, I guess you could say.
iRunFar: Well, because it’s the same movement. You can elicit the same feelings inside your body, but you can detach from times and splits and all that stuff, and then attach to nature.
Lichter: Yes. Yep.
iRunFar: You got into trail running four or five years ago now, and when you look at your resume so far, there’s this natural ascendance through time with a few crescendo points. Things like JFK [50 Mile], [Trail World Championships] in 2023, where you were in the top five, and then, of course, Black Canyon [100k] this past spring. When you look at the arc of your career so far, holistically, what do you think about?
Lichter: I think I needed to go through, I wouldn’t say my career has been a straight success shot. You look at those results and you’re like, yeah, but I feel like sprinkled in there have been races where I wasn’t 100%, or maybe I didn’t meet the expectation of what I could have done. But I do feel like it’s been an accumulation of trusting the process and just getting better at understanding racing tactics and nutrition and patience. I think all those things you learn through racing, trying and trying again, and succeeding but then failing, and succeeding and failing, then figuring out how to be more consistent, I guess you could say.
For me, I’m really happy with the way I progressed through the sport, because I feel like when I stepped out to the 100k and the 100-mile distance, it didn’t feel rushed. It felt exciting, and it felt like I wasn’t doing it because I felt like I needed to do it. I felt like I reached a point in my career where I was like, okay, I’ve done these 50ks and marathons for the past four years, and now I’m ready to do something more. I didn’t feel rushed, and I think that’s why I feel prepared for this distance, why I felt prepared for the 100k back in February. I think the years of not doing this and the trial and error led me to the confidence of understanding how to get this right. And also being okay with sometimes it’s okay to fail, but it doesn’t mean that it’s who you are in the sport. I’m excited.
iRunFar: I think our sport is so unique in the respect that, in almost every other sport out there, you can practice failing at things in practice. But we rarely run ultra distances when we’re training, so the only time that you take risks and then fail is in the competition sphere.
Lichter: Yes.
iRunFar: It’s a really unique requirement of us, to put ourselves out there literally not having practiced some of the things you’re going to need to do, right?
Lichter: I agree. And I think you learn to troubleshoot. I think the races that don’t go as planned, most of the time you come away with some sort of lesson. I think it’s really important to learn from that, to then succeed and understand more about how to get it right.
iRunFar: You live in Missoula, which is quietly becoming a trail running hotspot. It has been for a while, but it’s growing. You have a Western States champion who lives there. You have folks with oodles of ultra experience. You have folks coming from track and field with all the leg speed in the world. What’s it like to be building a career in that surrounding atmosphere?
Lichter: I think we uplift each other, and I think we draw from each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and we just learn from each other. It’s so funny, because you have that team atmosphere in college, but you’re so young, and sometimes you can get kind of petty and very ego driven. I feel like when you’re older, like right now in our careers, and the people that I train with in Missoula, that’s not really the case anymore. I think it’s more about how do we uplift each other and get the best out of each other while being competitive at the same time. So it feels more like a huge support team than a pissing contest.
iRunFar: The strange dynamics of when you’re younger.
Lichter: Yeah, it’s so different. And I think you get older and you get wiser. So I think the atmosphere has gotten to a point where it just feels really like a family, in a way. We’re all really close to the people that I train with, and the majority of us are trained by the same coach, so it does feel like we’re on the same goal and on the same page, and they understand your process and also what it takes to be at the top level. I think it’s really important to have like-minded people with like-minded goals despite different distances. At the end of the day, we all want to uplift each other. We all want to do really, really well in our respective distances. But at the same time, in order to do that, we have to be competitive with each other at the same time. So there’s this mutual respect, but also I want to get you better so that I can get better. It’s a shared thing.
iRunFar: Rather than you being successful meaning somebody is going to be unsuccessful, like an understanding that there’s room for everybody to have success, right?
Lichter: Yes.
iRunFar: It’s really interesting to hear that reflection of the evolution of the team feel through time. Being part of a team or a group of people is so important, but being part of an adult team, right?
Lichter: Yes, I agree. And I think most of us have all been running for a long time, and we’ve gone through the highs and the lows of running and running environments. So I think we all come to the conclusion of, we don’t want that anymore. This is what we want. And to be honest, I think that’s what will help us achieve our goals.
iRunFar: This race, this is your debut 100 miler, but like you said, you feel like you have sort of built up to this experience and developed the confidence to be able to take that leap between the 100k, your longest distance so far, eight hours of racing, to whatever this is going to be, 15 hours, 16 hours. Where does your mindset go when you have to go to that gap between what you’ve done and what you’re going to be doing, what are the things you’re leveraging, that you’re really going to fall back on and say, these are my strengths?
Lichter: I think one of the strengths I go back to is the training leading up to the race. You have to believe in the training you’ve been doing in order to be confident and successful in your pursuit of whatever goal you want on race day. So I draw back from those long runs, the workouts, the days where maybe I didn’t feel that great, but I was still able to pull through and have a pretty solid training day. Reverting back to, I’ve done this before. I’ve been this tired and I can pull through.
I always believe that on race day, something magical happens within your body and it’s why you do so well. It’s why you get so much more out of yourself than you can in a workout. Nobody can really run the same times in a workout as they do in a race. So also drawing back from, I’ve prepped my body to do something amazing on race day. And then also for me, it’s keeping it pretty simple in my head. I don’t think about the daunting distance ahead. I think about this section to this section, this section to this section. If I’m 50k in, it’s like, okay, I’ve done another, I can do another 50k, because I’ve done another 30-mile run before. Breaking it up to, it’s just another 30 miles next, or just another 10-mile section.
iRunFar: Yeah. The next time I see my crew is in seven miles.
Lichter: So breaking it down so it doesn’t seem so daunting. I think it’s really good, because with the longer distances, fitness is obviously a huge component in how your body holds up, but I think your mindset is really big. How do you draw strength from that and practice being mentally strong during fatigue and lows and stuff like that? Because I do think the mind is a beautiful thing and a beautiful tool that you can use. So keeping mentally engaged and knowing that when I’m having a low and I start to tear up and think, this is so hard, realizing that sip, drink something, eat something, your mind will turn around.
iRunFar: Sugar will turn it around.
Lichter: Yes. It’s like whatever you’re feeling at the moment is not guaranteed for the entire time, so it’s believing that you get through that hump.
iRunFar: I love what you just said about it being a series of moments put together, and every moment is different. What you’re feeling this moment is not the whole race.
Lichter: Yeah. Drawing strength from your fans in the crowd, I think that’s huge, too. I think that’s something we runners want to express to the people out there. I don’t think you understand the energy that we draw from everyone. I’ve obviously never done this race, but just being there last year, I paced my friend, Erin Clark.
iRunFar: You feel it, too, don’t you?
Lichter: You feel it as a spectator. Going through Foresthill, you see these runners going through, and you feel the crowd’s energy, and you’re not even running. Also drawing strength from the people that believe in you, and the people that have come out here to nerd out over you. I think that’s also really beautiful, drawing strength from their belief in you as well.
iRunFar: I think being a professional athlete right now in trail running, as it’s developing so quickly, you guys sit in an interesting place, in that you have your own identity, your own goals that you’ve put on paper, but then there’s this identity that the media creates for you, that fans create for you. What are people getting right? What are you saying to yourself, like, well actually, this is my journey here, and it’s a little bit different?
Lichter: To be honest, I don’t really pay much attention to that. I know who I am in the sport. I know who I am when I’m on the start line, when I’m racing and I’m a competitor. I draw back to that animalistic side of me, of keeping it really simple. All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and that’s how I race. I’ve come to become more of an intuitive competitor. Going back to the learning and failing, I was kind of like a hotshot from the start, letting my emotions and my ego get carried away. So I think now I’ve become more centered in the way I approach racing because of those trials and errors I’ve done in the past. I hope the media sees me as just a competitor, and that I will continue to fight through whatever is happening out there. And I also hope they see me as someone who will help raise women up to be honest, to get the best out of themselves. I hope that what I bring to the sport is that people are like, “Oh, Jenn’s on the start line? That means we’re going to run faster.” I hope that’s what the media has taken away, because I do believe there’s so much more that we can give to the sport. It just takes a little bit of courage from someone to help pull people along. I’m sure there are other people in the field who feel that same way, and I just want to be one of those contributors, of like, this is not going to be a slow race. I want this to be an honest race.
iRunFar: We’re going out quick, ladies.
Lichter: Yeah, Come on.
iRunFar: Well, best of luck getting the best out of yourself on Saturday. I’m super excited to see your 100-mile debut.
Lichter: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I’m super excited to see my 100-mile debut.
iRunFar: You’re not kidding. This is going to be fun.
Lichter: Yeah, it’ll be good.
iRunFar: Best of luck.
Lichter: Thank you so much.
