Congratulations on a successful Wasatch 100!

Another Wasatch 100 has finished, and what an amazing run it has been.  Geoff Roes finished first, completely demolishing the course record.  We also had, for the first time, two women complete the course in under 24 hours.  Becoming the 7th and 8th sub-24 hour run for the women in the 30 years the event has been held.  Total, we had 156 runners complete the course within the 36 hour time limit. What a fantastic and exciting run!

The packet system performed just like it should.  Operations and Procedures went very well.  We had some hiccups and missteps, but we were able to take care of those in short order.  And we got all of our runners in safely. We were tired, cold, hot, and many other things, but we were also excellent.

Amateur radio volunteers are an important cog in the engine that gets all these runners to the finish line, or helps them if they DNF.  We are primarily tasked with keeping the runners and pacers safe, through our tracking efforts.  While our duty is mostly technical in nature, getting information into and out of our stations, I see the men and women from our organization doing so much more.  We join with the volunteers, organizers, runners, pacers, and spectators to build together the best ultrarunning event on the planet.  There is a spirit of friendliness, achievement, and camaraderie that being a part of the Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run engenders.  I hope you all feel the same way.

And so, thank you all for making this another exciting and successful year for this event. 

I look forward to next year, when we can do this all over again. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, ideas, or anything that could help us help the Wasatch 100.

Mike Renlund/Net Control Captain

mike {at] mikerenlund.com

Amateur Radio and the Wasatch 100

Amateur radio operators have provided communication services for the Wasatch 100 Endurance Run since 1980. From inception, the primary communications purpose was and still is the safety and aid of the runners.  The secondary function was tracking the runners split times.  Back then, communications were done using voice, tracking the runners using a manual paper spread sheet.  Since then tracking has been done using the computer starting with Word Star, then expanding to various data base programs, with operators calling in the split times and Net Control Operators inputting the data. Packet radio was successfully used for the first time in 1997.  The system has evolved ever since, with annual changes and improvements to the software and radio hardware.  For several years we have been uploading the runner data base to the internet (wasatch100.com) with millions of hits annually.  The dedication and efforts of the communications volunteers continue to make this the best supported overland races on the planet. 

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to assist you in your efforts, or anything we can do to make this webpage a better resource for the Wasatch 100.

Thank you everyone for all of your hard work throughout the years, and into the future.