Just seven weeks ago, Dan Green captured the attention of trail running fans when he ran away with the win and new course record at the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile. Now, this week, all eyes will be on him again as he debuts at the 2025 Western States 100.
At 28 years old, Green is one of the younger runners on the sharp end of the sport, and he’s not afraid of doing things his own way, defying conventional wisdom by diving into 200-plus-mile races, which many consider to be the domain of more seasoned ultrarunners, in addition to more traditional-length ultramarathons.
We caught up with him to hear a bit more of his story ahead of this weekend’s “Big Dance.”
Dan Green at the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile. All photos courtesy of Dan Green, unless otherwise noted.
Early Years and Running
Dan Green grew up in Southern Pennsylvania, which he described as “dairy country, so a lot of fields and it’s pretty flat.” For his initiation to sports as a youngster, he played football and baseball, and also swam. Running as a sport was not on offer until he started high school, and he recalled: “In ninth grade, I started running cross country [in the fall] and swimming in the winter. So, I would stop running in the winter and then run track in the summer and the spring. I stopped doing that after two years and just ran all year.”
Green learned about ultras at an early age, and his interest was piqued. He said, “I had a mentor, kind of a coach, character growing up in track and cross country, Lance Pledger, who introduced me to a bunch of running history, including ultra history. He didn’t run ultras, but the training really was interesting to him.”
Through Pledger, Green learned about multiday ultrarunning, which, although just exploding onto the mainstream in recent years, had existed as a form of running subculture in the U.S. for a long time.
After finishing high school, Green moved to Huntington, West Virginia, to attend Marshall University, where he majored in dietetics. Here he continued to develop as a runner, focusing purely on cross country, and said: “We didn’t have a track team, which was good for me because I wasn’t very good at track.”
Over the course of his four-year degree, Green experienced a hip injury that caused major disruption to his running and even daily life. He said, “It was a sacroiliac joint misalignment type thing, almost like a sciatica problem. I couldn’t put my clothes on, I couldn’t go up and down the stairs, and I definitely couldn’t run.”
After several months, the injury eventually resolved itself, but Green had missed enough of the collegiate running season to be awarded a medical redshirt. This designation is given to an athlete at an NCAA Division 1 school — which Marshall University was one — allowing them to compete for a fifth year if it is deemed they have missed close to a full season due to injury.
Green (center) with his friends and crew at the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile.
Diving in the Deep End of Ultrarunning
While still running with the college for another year after finishing his degree, Green began working at a running specialty store, which he still does to this day. He said, “That kind of ingrains you in the community and what people are doing. People were running trail ultras and 50ks and things like that.”
The job afforded him unique access to the wider running community and fueled Green’s interest in ultras. Coupled with that, having finished college, he now had more time to dedicate to training and was ready to take on some big challenges. He said: “I had always wanted to kind of do 24-hour, 48-hour ultra-endurance stuff, longer running.” For about a year, Green didn’t enter any events but quietly trained and built up his volume, eventually signing up for a 50k race, which was to be his first ultra.
However, there came a plot twist when his goal race was canceled. Not wishing to waste the training, Green went searching at short notice for an alternative event. He said: “I looked up races on the same weekend and the only other thing that seemed reasonable was a 24-hour race down in southern West Virginia on a two-mile paved loop. And I was like, Alright, that’s what I’m going to do.”
It was a baptism of fire for Green — who had yet to run even a marathon — diving straight into a 24-hour race, but he kept his expectations modest and said: “My mindset going into that race was I’m just going to get a baseline. I’m going to run as far as I can until I can’t stand or walk. And so that’s what I did. I made it 90 miles. It took me 18 or 19 hours, and then I couldn’t stand or walk, so I just laid down in the back of my car for a while.”
As for many, Green’s initiation into the sport wasn’t pretty, but the band-aid was ripped off now, and he could call himself an ultrarunner.
Car naps have since become a staple for Green. Here he is during the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile.
Later in 2021, he raced the Dark Sky 50 Mile and won. He swiftly signed up for his first 100 miles — the Rim to River 100 Mile in West Virginia, where he placed second. He shared, “I ran it [Rim to River] in sub-16 hours, and I was like, You know that really wasn’t that bad, and I really wasn’t training appropriately.”
Stepping Up in Competition
Having already had some success at home, Green wanted to try his hand in a more competitive environment and signed up for the 2022 Black Canyon 100k, a race he has returned to many times since. He recalled, “It was just me, my brother, and his girlfriend. I had no pacer. We had very limited crew experience. And that was my best Black Canyon ever, finish-wise. I’m not really a 100k guy.” Green was pleased to take 10th in the highly competitive Western States 100 Golden Ticket race, and said: “We just went out there to see how we could stack up, and I got top 10, which was cool.”
Later that year, Green again raced his local Rim to River 100 Mile, taking the win and shaving 18 minutes off his finish time. Things were moving in the right direction, and the following autumn, at the 2023 Javelina 100 Mile, he reached a turning point.
Still only 25 years old at the time, Green placed fourth amongst a competitive field, and said, “That’s kind of when I thought, Ok, maybe I can compete at a higher level … Getting fourth at Javelina, and then really the big thing for me was being able to come back the next year and run close to 20 minutes faster. I was like, Ok, I’m not getting worse, so that’s good!” Green placed third on his second attempt at the race in 2024, just outside of Western States 100 Golden Ticket range.
Although getting to a place of being competitive in top 100-mile races was obviously welcome for Green, he hadn’t lost sight of what drew him to ultrarunning in the first place — a fascination with longer, multiday events.
He said he put off doing the Cocodona 250 Mile for a number of years, as many voices within the sport advocated for younger runners sticking to shorter distances, as it’s perceived that longer races are more suited to older runners, whose top-end speed may be in decline. He said, “I’ve wanted to do stuff that’s further, and I kind of put it off just because of the advice to, you know, ‘Use your speed while you have it.’ I was probably 25 or 26 at the time when I first wanted to do [the Cocodona 250 Mile].”
After getting a firsthand glimpse of the race in 2024 while crewing for a friend, Green decided not to put it off any longer and signed up for the 2025 event. The rapidly increasing competitiveness of the sport was a factor for him too, as he reasoned: “The last thing I want to do is wait to get into the 200 milers and then run a time that would have been good three years ago.”
Preparing nutrition and planning the night before the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile.
Having committed fully to the 2025 Cocodona, Green, who is still unsponsored, managed to pull off an extremely demanding training routine alongside working full time. He shared: “I’ve slowly built up [my mileage.] Leading into Javelina, it was 90 to 130 miles a week. I usually do three up weeks, followed by one down week. And then for Cocodona, I was doing 100- to 160-mile weeks here and there, and then I was adding in a little bit more gym time, too.”
Green also added time in the sauna for recovery, and his schedule often meant getting up at 4:30 a.m. to train before work, and getting in another session in the evening.
In 2025, he didn’t run his now staple race, the Black Canyon 100k, or any other major build-up races, and rather went straight from the 2024 Javelina 100 Mile to focused training for Cocodona. He laughed as he recalled, “If you’re a watch person and if you listen to your Garmin, mine said I was in the strained mode for two months straight.”
More as a training run than an all-out race effort, he ran the Rabid Raccoon 100 Mile in Pennsylvania in May this year. He said, “I was able to do that and kind of test my fitness a little bit. And going into that, my mindset was if 100 miles isn’t easy, I’m not going to be able to race 250. Like, I should be able to run 100 miles, not skip a beat, go straight back into training the next week. And that’s kind of how it went.” He went on, “I took it easy … felt really good the whole time, and then just went right back into training, and I was pretty happy with that.”
The 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile
When the start of Cocodona rolled around, Green had a plan to work to his own abilities. He said: “I knew that my strength would not be the climbing, it would be in being able to run efficiently and quickly on the runnable sections.” Aware that the first 30 miles or so of the course, to Lane Mountain Aid Station, contained steep climbs and descents, he said, “Starting the race, I took it pretty easy. I didn’t want to get too far from the front, but I had no intention of being in the front, especially when I realized the pace that Harry [Subertas] and everyone was going out at.” Subertas went into the race as defending champion and course record holder.
The start of the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile.
Before long, Green began patiently picking off some of the other men as he moved up the field. He shared, “Passing Harry was a big one just because I hadn’t known really where he was, and we didn’t have a pacer yet, so I wasn’t able to really check the tracker … and I just was coming down a gravel road and there he was with his pole broken and he was kind of bloody. I felt bad because he had definitely just eaten it pretty hard somewhere.”
At the time, Courtney Dauwalter had established herself as the overall race leader, and after passing Subertas around mile 80, Green found himself at the front of the men’s field, with only Dauwalter ahead of him.
Then, before reaching the 100-mile mark, Green found himself catching a fading Dauwalter. He humbly shared: “Passing her was pretty cool. It was me and my buddy Danny Hayes, and I was like, ‘Man, I think that’s her.’ It was one of those surreal moments you don’t really expect to happen.”
After he took the overall lead, Green was challenged by Ryan Sandes, and the two ran close together for a time. He recalled, “He had been kind of close behind. We kind of yo-yoed back and forth for I don’t even know how long.”
Eventually, Sandes took the lead at the checkpoint at mile 148, but Green remained calm and said: “It was ok because at that point it was setting in how long the race was … When I started to think about it, I was like, Dude, we still have 100 miles left. I don’t care if anyone passes me.”
Refueling at a crew stop.
Green wasn’t behind for long, as he recounted: “My brother and I went out toward Sedona, [Arizona, on the race course] and we actually caught up with [Sandes] probably three or four miles in to that segment and then came into Sedona ahead of him. I think we stayed ahead of him the rest of the time.”
Despite being ahead of the course-record pace for the majority of the race, Green didn’t allow himself to indulge in that thought too much and focused on sensible pacing to last the distance and maintain his position. He said, “I didn’t really think about the course record until we hit the last aid station, at Wildcat (mile 237), right before you go up over Elden. And my crew was like, ‘Well, you have like six hours or something to go under course record.’ And I was like, ‘Well, we’ve come this far. We might as well try, I guess.’”
Eventually, Green’s adventure came to a close as he arrived at the finish in Flagstaff with a time of 58:47:18 — a new course record by just over an hour. He recalled, “My crew came out and met me at Buffalo Park, and we ran the last mile or so in together, which was awesome.”
Dan Green ran a smart and consistent race to travel from Black Canyon City to Flagstaff, Arizona, faster than anyone else and win the 2025 Cocodona 250 Mile. Photo: iRunFar/Bryon Powell
The 2025 Western States 100 and Beyond
There wasn’t much time for Green to switch off after his supreme effort at Cocodona, as just a couple of weeks later, his name was pulled from the wait list for a spot at the 2025 Western States 100, just seven weeks on from Cocodona. In a strange twist of fate, the spot he was given had belonged to the men’s favorite, Jim Walmsley, who had to withdraw due to injury.
Getting the late entry didn’t come as a total shock to Green, who shared, “I’ve been putting in for the lottery for four years. I had eight tickets, and I got on the wait list 26 back, and I kind of knew that I would get in … It goes into the 30s, into the 40s sometimes, back on the wait list.”
The particular significance of getting Walmsley’s spot was not lost on Green, who said, “Getting Jim Walmsley’s spot was kind of crazy … I messaged him on Instagram, and I was like, ‘Dude, I want to do your bib as much justice as I can.’”
So far, recovery and a gentle build to Western States are going well for Green, who shared: “I’m lucky that I feel like I recover quickly from these things. And I’m lucky to have no injuries. I got no blisters, I got no black toenails, and I had no chafing.”
Although his training has crept back up to roughly 100 miles per week, he said: “I’m not focusing on mileage, honestly. I’m not even concerned with doing any long runs, just recovery and trying to get any amount of spring back in the legs as possible. That’s all I’m going to do.”
In terms of how he hopes the race itself will go, he said, “I have no expectations. It’s a race I plan to come back to, so I just want to go because I got the opportunity and run it however it pans out.”
Later on in the year, he plans to race the Hurricane 100k and the JFK 50 Mile, before starting to plan 2026. So, however the 2025 Western States 100 goes, it’s clear that Dan Green is just getting started.
Call for Comments
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