Rod Farvard’s Western States quest

By Henry Howard

Rod Farvard returns to Western States this year, following his breakout performance in 2024 when he finished second overall with the third-fastest time ever at the historic race.

In 2024, Jim Walmsley won his fourth Western States in 14:13:45, the second fastest time ever — only behind his own record of 14:09:28 in 2021. Farvard held off third-place Hayden Hawks on the track, as they finished in 14:24:15 and 14:24:31, respectively.

This year’s Western States men’s field is shaping up to be among the most competitive ever, even without Walmsley and Hawks on the start line. Farvard is one of at least 10 men with a legitimate shot at breaking the tape. (Among the top runners in the women’s field is Heather Jackson, who I interviewed as part of my Western States preview. Check it out here.)

In April of this year, thanks to HOKA, I spent five days at the Canyons race events in Auburn, Calif. During that trip, I interviewed some of the top athletes, including Farvard. (Here are some other interviews from that experience: an elite runner panel including Farvard, a review of the new HOKA Mafate X and my race recap from the 50K.)

During a panel discussion led by Corrine Malcolm, Farvard compared Canyons, where he was running the 100K, and Western States.

“These ultras are more or less the same, whichever direction you go, and it's given me a lot of belief in being able to be someone who could win Western States,” he said.

Q&A with Rod Farvard on his Western States quest

Here is a question and answer, edited for clarity and brevity, about Farvard’s Western States quest.

Question: Obviously you had a great race last year. Tell me about where you are right now and what you're thinking of as Western States is approaching.

Answer: It's been a very different buildup this year. I feel like in previous years including last year it was all about getting to States. So the Golden Ticket races were the key races. And this year the training has been way more specific for a 100-miler. Since December, I’ve been really trying to build up more volume and I've done a lot more lactate threshold work than I've done in the past. So Canyons — I hate to say a B race, it’s not a B race. This is a very competitive race, but it's not the goal and the intention is to get a really good effort here and recover fast so we can get to some serious work for Western States.

Question: You posted on Instagram, way back in January, about some heat training you were doing on a treadmill. Tell me about incorporating that training method, the frequency and what if any gains you've seen already from it.

Answer: Yeah, huge gains already. I'm working with a company called Core to help me out with it and basically they wanted to test this five-week protocol to see how active heat training increases your hemoglobin mass and ultimately your VO2Max. In these five weeks you run on the treadmill in a heat suit five days a week for 45 minutes. They have a proprietary zoning system that puts your body temp into a certain zone. So they want you to stay in Zone 3, which is around 101 to 102 degrees, and you're supposed to maintain that for 45 minutes. So these sessions would typically last 80 minutes, since you have to warm up to get to that zone. I was doing that for five days a week for five weeks, testing my VO2 before and after, and I saw an 11% increase, which is just crazy in five weeks without doing a lot of VO2 specific work. It was validating to see that, so we continued it in our training about two or three days a week to get the heat adaptation with the hemoglobin mass gains as well.

Photo credit: Howie Stern

Question: How important is it, after that initial five-week block, to continue the heat training? Is it like building a muscle, as in, if you stop, does it slowly go away?

Answer: Yes, it goes away very fast, which is unfortunate. Part of their tech involves an app and it shows you how adapted you are to heat and it's almost like a little meter. So if you don't do a session one day, you will go down a few percentage points. The recommendation is to keep it going at least twice a week up until your race. Still it puts a lot of stress on your body. So if you're finding that you can't hit your quality sessions because of these heat workouts, that's a good sign to back off. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle and you got to know when to prioritize each piece.

Question: Let’s talk about nutrition. Earlier you mentioned a goal of 120 carbs an hour. Have you changed the breakdown or the combination of solids or even gels compared to liquid nutrition? What’s your approach to how to get in all those carbs?

Answer: To get to 120, I don't do any solid food. It's all gels and drink. I do half through a drink mix, half through gels. So I'm doing two gels an hour that's 60. And then when I'm doing three bottles an hour, one of those bottles is pure water and the other two are drink mixed with 30 grams of carbs in each.

Question: Let’s look ahead to Western States. Has the track meet at the end of last year’s race influenced your training at all, as unusual as that is? Is that finish on your mind at all in addition to all the climbing and heat training, but also just having that quick leg turnover late in a race?

Answer: I don't do any neuromuscular work or anything like that. I do VO2 work, so that's kind of the top end stuff. But it's more like with the endurance philosophy, whereas when you're increasing VO2, you will also increase your endurance, not so much getting more leg speed. We all used to be faster runners, so it's in there somewhere.

Question: You had a superb race last year, coming in second, one of the fastest times ever. Now this year we have arguably an even more competitive field on the men's side. What would success look like to you?

Answer: That's a hard one for me. Being that close, it's hard not to feel like the only next step is to win it, but a lot of it is out of your control and I think you're going to be pretty unhappy if you let that mindset dictate you. For me, success would look like staying in the front pack, the whole race and feeling like I had a shot to win it by Pointed Rocks (mile 94.3) and then what happens there happens there. But I want to be right in that front back. I don't want there to be a 10-minute gap on me. In a way, I felt like last year was a little bit of a failure despite it because I let Jim get away so much at the end. I just don't want that to happen and I want the gap to stay closed. And if five people are in front of me, but I kept that gap closed and I just didn't have the last mile, that'd be totally fine.