So Gordy ran single-file with the horses at their trotting pace-roughly 7 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. Around mile four, the path narrowed to single-track there was nowhere to step aside to let them pass. Then, the horse riders caught up with him. Courtesyįor the first two dozen miles of the race, Gordy walked uphill out of Squaw Valley, mostly on a graded service road for the ski lifts. Gordy Ainsleigh, nearing the summit in 1978. “Good luck, Gordy,” the head timers echoed back. “I guess I’ll be going now,” he called out. He stood alone in the predawn darkness while his fellow racers-198 riders- prepared their horses for their 5 a.m. He pulled on yellow shorts and a makeshift bib: the number “zero” handwritten above “WSTR” with a black sharpie on a white cotton shirt.Ī few minutes before his start time of 4:50 a.m., Gordy walked to the start in Squaw Valley. It took 10 days before he could walk without a limp.) To keep the ends of the pantyhose from rolling, he wrapped white athletic tape around each thigh. (He’d learned that lesson the hard way he participated in the Western States 100 on a bareback pad without stirrups in 1971.
Then he got up, slipped on cut-off pantyhose, protection against chafing. He lay for a half hour longer thinking about the unruly challenge he had voluntarily gotten himself into. His girlfriend Pat had chosen to go to jalopy races that night, rather than seeing him off-a dismissive reaction to his monumental mission, he felt.Īt 3:30 a.m., his sleep was interrupted by the sound of Valentina chomping on grain. He lay in the darkness, feeling anxious, lonely, and a little bitter.
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