Background
Overall philosophy
Get great folks in and around the race. It’s as simple as that.
We’ve designed our lottery to bring as many great people to the Wyoming Range as possible. We want tough runners, thrilled volunteers, and ecstatic supporters.
Subject to change each year
Our lottery will be subject to change each year. Once we’ve set it for a given year, however, we won’t alter it. But we reserve the right — and plan to exercise the right — to change it from one year to the next.
The reason is simple: our lottery should reflect the shifting needs of our event and, secondarily, the broader needs of the trail running community.
To be clear, the needs of our race supercede the needs of the broader trail running community. Just because other races have structured their lotteries in a certain way does not mean we will structure ours in a similar manner. We’ll readily borrow ideas from others where they make sense for the WYR100.
No exceptions
We will not deviate from our lottery structure once we’ve set it. If you email or team and request an exception, we promise you the answer will be, “No.” We welcome your feedback on our lottery, but you should assume that we’ll consider your suggestions in a subsequent year.
Mechanics
How to enter the lottery (or waitlist)
We will host our lottery on UltraSignup, and the registration window will be two weeks. Once the window closes, we will publish ticket amounts and give runners several days to validate.
During the validation stage, you will not be permitted to adjust your ticket number in response to what you perceive as higher-than-expected “competition” — perhaps offering to bring an extra volunteer (see below). The validation stage is there to catch errors made by race management.
In addition to filling the entrants list, we’ll create an uncapped waitlist.
How to improve your odds in the lottery
Be a repeat finisher: +2x points per prior finish
Repeat finishers will get two extra points for every time they’ve finished the race. A two-time finisher, for example, will get four extra points in the lottery, for a total of five points. As of 2025, we have three two-time finishers and no three- and four-time finishers.
Bring a committed volunteer: +4 points per volunteer
Every year, the single biggest need of the Wyoming Range 100 is passionate volunteers. The race is incredily far from major population centers, which makes it challenging to garner a signficant number of volunteers. In fact, most of our volunteers stay for the entire weekend and travel, on average, over four hours to arrive at their aid station/assignment.
To expand our volunteer pool, we will give more tickets to lottery applicants who agree to bring one or more volunteers. (Yes, you can bring multiple volunteers and collect more tickets.)
There are, of course, parameters:
Race management will ultimately be responsible for making volunteer assignments: While we’ll do our best to accomodate a volunteer’s desired responsibilities and timing, there’s a chance that things won’t perfectly align. We simply ask for folks to be understanding and work with our volunteer coordinator.
If a volunteer no-shows, their runner will not be an official finisher and will be banned from the race: If your volunteer no-shows, you, the runner will be marked as a DNF. You’ll be welcome to run the entire race, but you will not receive a belt buckle nor will you have an official finishing time. Oh, and good luck getting into the race ever again.
If a volunteer shirks their responsibilities, the runner will not be an official finisher: If your volunteer does not take their responsibilities seriously — arrive egregiously late, depart egregiously early, go through the motions, etc. — you, the runner, will be marked as a DNF. You’ll be welcome to run the entire race, but you will not receive a belt buckle nor will you have an official finishing time. The aid station captain will be solely responsible for determining if a volunteer “fails.” We do not expect to use this power — and we certainly don’t want to! We will do our best to understand challenges, incorporate real-time feedback, and do whatever it takes to set our volunteers up for success.
Mark a section of the course: +6 points
As a remote point-to-point, marking the WYR100 is a surprisingly complex undertaking. What’s more, we (1) number each flag, (2) take a picture of each flag, and (3) mark on a GPS the location of each flag. All this slows the process way down and requires a high level of detail and commitment.
So, we’ll award six extra points to runners who are willing to arrive a few days early and, alongside someone else, mark a section of the course.
If you sign up to mark the course and are unable to do so, you will be disqualified from the race. This is non-negotiable, no matter the reason. (We struggle to think of a valid scenario in which you’d be unable to mark the course but still run the race.)
How to bypass the lottery
Be the prior-year John Langford award winner — 1 spot
Each year, we honor the resilience of last place — usually an unofficial finisher, after the 48-hour cutoff — with the John Langford award. In 2022, John Langford finished the WYR100 in 59:18:12 and has come to embody everything that we love about this race. We want to similarly honor those who have followed in John’s footsteps, gritting for longer than anyone, with an invitation to return the following year. This entry must be used in the following year and cannot be rolled forward.
We fully acknowledge that this lottery bypass presents a measure of moral hazard: “If I’m second to last, I’m second to last. But if I slow down, I get to bypass the lottery next year.” Out of respect for John and the race — don’t do that.
Be a good human — 9 spots
The race management team will award five entries to folks who represent everything that we hope the race will someday embody. They could be amazing volunteers, prior-year finishers who didn’t get in through the lottery, or generally good humans whom we believe will elevate the event.
We’ll give three examples:
Eric and Henry: In 2024, Eric and Henry marked and swept over 40 miles of course. Then, they stuck around and helped us clean the finish area. You better believe that they’re automatically in for 2025
Michelle: Michelle is a two-time WYR100 finisher and a one-time volunteer. At the finish line in 2024, Michelle told me that she can’t wait to come back in 2025. In the unlikely event that Michelle does not get in through the lottery, we’ll welcome her with an RD spot
RD spots are not spots to which you apply, so please don’t ask for an RD spot.
How the lottery works
Once we have gone through the ticket validation stage, we will set a day and time for the lottery drawing. At that time, we will:
Announce the runners who bypassed the lottery. We will have removed their tickets from the lotter beforehand
Assign a random number to each ticket. The minimum number will be 1 and the maximum will equal the number of tickets
Generate a random reference number that’s between, but inclusive of, the minimum and the maximum
We will then order the tickets by how far their number is from the reference number. The ordering will assume that we are counting up, meaning that if the reference number is 17, 18 is the “best” number and 16 is the “worst”
Once a runner has been selected, we will pass over any further tickets they may have in the lottery
After the lottery, runners will have one week to accept their slot. If runners do not accept their spot, we will move folks off the waitlist
We will use an Excel file to run teh lottery. You can download and play around with the lottery file, if you’re bored.
Et cetera
Qualification requirements and the lottery
Your race director, Denis Cook, ran his first 100-miler on a qualification exception and has a soft spot for them. But only if the runner has clearly done their homework, digesting every page on this website.
To request a qualification exception, please email Denis during the lottery window. If you email me beforehand, I will reply, “Please check back during the lottery window.” (Requesting an exception outside of teh lottery window is a terrific way of signaling that you haven’t digested every page on this website.)
From there, we’ll schedule a 15-minute call, during which we’ll both assess if the WYR100 is right for you. It’s not right for everyone, irrespective of one’s running “resume.” Ultimately, we don’t want anyone to DNF their first 100.
No sponsorship spots (for now)
The WYR100 does not have formal sponsors. That’t not necessarily intentional and could change, depending on the long-term needs of the race. So, for now, we do not have sponsorship entries.
Sponsors are outside the scope of this article, but we’ll simply say that we are open to partnering with like-minded organizations who understand what we’re trying to build and, equally important, how we’re trying to building it.