Elite Ultrarunner: You Are Almost Certainly Not Eating Enough

Hans Troyer led Western States for 62 miles, DNF’d, and still calls the day a win.

Eight weeks later he was on the CCC podium, which tells you most of what you need to know about how he metabolizes a bad race. Dominic welcomes back the 26-year-old for the first time since before his 2025 Western States debut, and Hans admits the stretch since has felt like three years crammed into one.

He traces the self-belief back to Bandera in 2024, when a few coachless months in Georgia were enough to prove to himself he could hang with anyone. On Western States, he is unsparing and unbothered at once: he went in giving himself a ten percent chance to win, came out believing it was eighty, and wrote every lesson down in a notebook.

He breaks down what the Alps taught him at CCC: from the climbs that go straight up to the hiking and poles he had never practiced with.

The training talk is specific. Hans walks through his jump to 120-130 mile weeks peaking at 145, up to 36,000 feet of vert before CCC, the move to Boulder in March, and the sweat test that revealed he had spent years taking in triple the sodium he needed. He defends his much-criticized diet with a simple argument about aid stations, explains why he fuels every run over ninety minutes like it is race day, and leaves young runners with carbs, consistency, and a reminder to enjoy their lives.

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