Inside the 2026 Western States Lottery // Hope, Math, and Madness
A Beautiful, Mathematical, Deeply Human Absurdity
It’s that time of the year again: Western States Lottery! Are you excited?
You can follow the live broadcast on the Western States YouTube Channel. It begins this Saturday at 7:00 AM PST (4:00 PM CET).
Last year’s Das Z Letter about the lottery didn’t age very well. The numbers have changed as expected, but nevertheless drastically. If you still want to delve deeper into how the Western States Lottery works and watch a video of how I was selected in 2022 with just one ticket, here is your text:
Like every year, there are 369 actual starters allowed at Western States. Of those, 257 are filled via the public lottery. The rest are Golden Ticket qualifiers, automatic entries, invited athletes, raffle winners, and reserved slots. The lottery is the gate that most of us crowd around every December, and this year the hat is enormous.
Who’s actually in this lottery?
Here are the official1 preliminary counts for the 2026 lottery: there are 11,335 entrants and 93,140 total tickets in the hat.
That huge ticket pool exists because the lottery gives you exponentially more chances for every year you fail to get drawn (your ticket count doubles each year you miss. Given you run a qualifying race each year, of course).
The breakdown of entrants by how many tickets each person has matters a lot, because a few people with hundreds of tickets shift the odds dramatically for everyone else.
This is what the list of entrants looks like. Listed from “forget it” to “if it doesn’t work this time, the universe hates you.”
4,471 runners with 1 ticket — The Freshly Naive
Bright-eyed, hopeful, no idea what’s coming. Tells friends, “You never know!” Statistically: we do know.2,563 runners with 2 tickets — The Lightly Weathered
Realizes it’s harder than expected after running two qualifiers. Still optimistic. Claims they’re “not attached” to the outcome. Lies.1,754 runners with 4 tickets — The Emotionally Invested
Has bookmarked every Reddit debate about ticket weighting. Can explain the draw method at parties. No one wants them to.1,102 runners with 8 tickets — The Returning Realists
Understands the lottery is actually a human experiment in emotional pain and resilience. Buys peanut M&Ms for comfort on draw day.672 runners with 16 tickets — The Conflicted Believer
Half monk, half statistician. Says “It’s all in god’s hands,” while calculating odds in Excel at 1 a.m.354 runners with 32 tickets — The Quietly Desperate
Has accepted that this is now a multi-year personality trait. Checks weather in Auburn for no reason. Has considered getting a WS tattoo “just preemptively.”239 runners with 64 tickets — The Hope Veteran
Can recite all past draws by heart. Watches the livestream standing up. With an upper Zone 2 heart rate of 145.129 runners with 128 tickets — The Almost-Inevitable
Friends say, “This has to be your year.” They smile politely, knowing that it’s still a lottery and that' it’s likely not his or her year.45 runners with 256 tickets — The Mathematical Favorite
If probability were fair, they’d be in. Probability is not fair. Has already drafted 12 versions of their “I got in!” Instagram caption… just in case.5 runners with 512 tickets — The Cosmic Chosen Ones
They live at the intersection of patience, obsession, and karmic bookkeeping. If they don’t get selected, they suspect either fraud or fate getting eternal revenge for something they did as a teenager.
A strangely poetic detail: 39% of all entrants are single-ticket hopefuls — nearly half the field. The largest group belongs to the people with the worst odds. Isn’t that beautiful?
Let’s Do The Math — What do you actually get for your ticket in 2026?
Let’s cut to the arithmetic, because the glitter of “tickets” hides how tiny each one actually is. Using WSER’s official totals (93,140 tickets in the hat and 257 lottery-allocated slots), a single ticket yields a baseline chance of:
~0.28% with 1 ticket.
~0.55% with 2 tickets.
~1.10% with 4 tickets.
~2.19% with 8 tickets.
~4.32% with 16 tickets.
~8.45% with 32 tickets.
~16.12% with 64 tickets.
~29.8% with 128 tickets.
~50.7% with 256 tickets.
~75.7% with 512 tickets.
For the nerds: those probabilities are calculated exactly as 1 − (1 − p)^t, where p = 257 / 93,140 and t is your ticket count.
WSER’s page also includes their own probability images and tables with slightly different numbers, if you want to cross-check.
As always, real-world drawing mechanics (removing all remaining tickets after a person is selected) shift these numbers slightly, but this is the correct theoretical baseline for 2026.
Putting this brutally honest math into simple words: if you want a realistic shot via the lottery, you either need many tickets or a lot of luck. Easy as that.
The Absurdity (and why we keep loving it)
Western States is a gravitational field. A myth wrapped in dust, heat, history, heartbreak, rebirth and a belt buckle that somehow feels bigger than the sport itself. People don’t get drawn to Western States because the odds are good. They get drawn to it because the story is good.
And that’s why the absurdity never repels us. It attracts us.
The unfairness, the randomness, the statistical cruelty, they all reinforce the same romantic idea: if your name finally gets called, it means something. The lottery is unreasonable. It’s also beautiful. A machine built on math that keeps the myth alive.
My own Western States problem, which isn’t really a problem
I’m in the 2026 lottery with two tickets. Not a lot. Not nothing. Statistically negligible, but emotionally perfect. Because for me, the draw isn’t about probability. It’s about direction.
Western States isn’t a single target pinned to a single year. It’s a horizon I walk toward. Sometimes limping, sometimes running, sometimes barely moving, but always oriented the same way. The annual qualifier gives my seasons a spine. It cleans the fog out of my mind. It tells me what the next step is, and the next after that.
The truth is simple: having a long-range dream steadies me more than achieving it ever could. Running a qualifier each season is structure, not obsession. It’s a ritual that orders the rest of my life. Especially now, when no other running goal feels magnetic enough to pull me forward.
So yes: I will keep qualifying, year after year, not because I expect the lottery to reward me soon, but because the act of returning to the hat feels honest and necessary.
To me, the point of the path is the path itself. Read that again:
The point of the path is the path itself.
Who I’m rooting for this Saturday
Lottery day is strange. Part statistics lecture, part emotional circus. My love for Western States hasn’t faded at all. And while my own odds this year are tiny, my hope for the people I care about is huge. I want someone I know to hear their name. I want to witness another chapter from close range.
Every person in the hat is writing their own Western States story. Some chapters begin on Saturday. Some don’t. Mine continues in the long game, and that’s enough to keep me moving.
I’ll return to Auburn. I know that. It’s just a matter of when. Until then: good luck to everyone in the draw. May the lottery be kinder to you than it statistically should be.
Everything Not Running
It took a while, but I think I’ve finally settled into the strange new ecosystem that is the gym. Not emotionally — I’m still a real world (trail) runner at heart, not a creature designed for mirrored walls and disinfectant spray — but physically? Mentally? Logistically? Let’s say: I’ve accepted the terms of my rehab. And honestly, it’s not as bad as I feared.
Take the Stairmaster. A few weeks ago I described it als “the closest thing to a hamster wheel for humans,” and I stand by that. But I’ve also discovered something unexpected: it’s weirdly meditative. If you ignore the display, the handrails, the entire environment around you, and just focus on the stepping itself, you can actually fall into a rhythm that feels very close to real uphill movement. The same quiet burn. The same mechanical simplicity. And when I put my hands on my hips or fold them behind my back, it almost feels… free. Or at least more free than a giant rotating staircase in a fluorescent-lit room should ever feel.
And the treadmill? Also not the punishment I imagined. Yes, part of that is the 24-inch screen that politely distracts me with Netflix, YouTube, virtual alpine routes, or whatever else keeps my brain from checking the timer every seven seconds. But another part is the precision: speed, incline, intensity. All controllable, all predictable, all measurable. It’s the kind of structured running that lets me explore what the knee tolerates without guessing. There’s something comforting about that clarity.
So, here’s the surprising truth: joining a gym for the winter might actually have been one of the smarter decisions I’ve made this season. It’s not the mountains, it’s not the trails, it’s not the version of running I crave. But it’s good. It’s useful. It keeps me moving. And right now, that’s exactly what I need.
On Repeat
Some bands have a prime. Alexisonfire had a detonation.
“This Could Be Anywhere In The World” is the sound of a band hitting absolute maximum force. In their Watch Out! / Crisis era from 2004–2006, Alexisonfire performed like their lives depended on it. They didn’t just peak, they exploded. And this song is one of the shrapnels.
I lost track of them over the years, but I guess that’s natural. I’m just glad they shaped the alternative scene of the early 2000s so massively. Good times.
Bummed to miss the lottery this year, but a good reminder that next year (4 tickets) will also represent a faint hope. I keep telling myself it'll take me 5-8 more years, but maybe I'll get lucky in the meantime.
Bon chance! 🤞