COFFEE CLUB: a running podcast about nothing · Morgan McDonald

The truth about Western States 100 (with Seth Ruhling)

July 3, 2025·1 hr 36 min·5 clips

Coffee Club opens with the familiar feel of the boys being glad to be back together. Seth Ruhling is there after his Western States 100 debut, and the talk starts with the odd question of why the sport's biggest race has to be 100 miles. That question lands as both a joke and a real one. A few days after the finish, the answer starts to seem obvious to everyone in the room. The race feels less stupid and more inevitable. Seth says he can kind of get it now, which is about as close as this show gets to a clean thesis. The talk stays on the finish, the journey, and the fact that a newcomer just came home from a huge one and made it look possible. The boys keep teasing the scale of the thing without turning it into a lecture. They move fast. They interrupt each other. They repeat the same idea until it gets funnier and truer at the same time. From there, the episode drifts into kit talk after a change to the colorway of the original kit. Nobody seems fully satisfied with the answer, which only helps the argument. They try to find a visual online. They fail. That failure becomes its own bit. The pre-classic page, the kit, the purple, the new colorway, the old colorway, the original version, the one that might have been better, all of it gets picked apart in real time. The show then swings into the Western States-adjacent rabbit hole of gear and style, including the ACG shirt that got a lot of love. The boys act like that shirt was almost the whole event. They also wonder what the sunburn situation must have looked like after 14 hours in the open. That turns into another little pile-on, because of course it does. The conversation keeps folding back on itself, with one host asking why he would not have the right media if all his feeds are now trail running. The algorithm joke lands because the whole room is already inside that world. Seth gets teased about looking like a trail runner, then is told that the vibe is the long North Face shorts and the mustache and the general North Face energy. He half accepts the bit, half defends himself, and the exchange stays warm even while it is poking at him. The talk never loses the sense that the race matters, but it refuses to act as though race talk has to be solemn to be real. By the end, the episode has become a mix of congratulations, jokes, gear opinions, and a reminder that huge running feats still happen in the middle of ordinary human noise. The final stretch settles into thanks, a hope to grab a run together, and the usual sign-off energy of a crew that has somehow made elite trail running feel like a shared table.

As heard by us

A loose, funny Western States conversation that still lands on the race.

Coffee Club uses Seth Ruhling's Western States debut as the spine, then settles into what this show does best: race talk rubbing against coffee chatter, kit opinions, and loose studio banter that turns one runner's 100-mile breakthrough into a group hangout.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for Western States told like a group chat that actually cares about running.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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