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Drew Holmen continues to improve at long distance running, so much so that he will represent the U.S. at the World Mountain & Trail Running Championships on June 9 in Innsbruck, Austria.
The former Cook County High school cross country runner won the Lake Sonoma 50.8 -mile race in Healdsburg, California on April 8 with a time of 6:44:20 to qualify. He was more than ten minutes ahead of the second place finisher Caleb Olson, a fellow Strava runner. Drew earned $2,000 for the victory.
The top three men and women finishers at Sonoma punched their tickets to the 2023 World Mountain & Trail Running Championships, an 86-kilometer (53.4379 miles) race featuring the top trail runners on the planet.
The Lake Sonoma 50-mile event is held on trails that traverse through wine country on native lands of the Southern Pomo, which are part of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe.
A graduate of I.S.D. 166, Drew now lives and works in Boulder, Colorado, where David Roche coaches him. He runs professionally for Strava, an internet company that makes a mobile app and website that connects millions of runners and cyclists.
During high school Drew ran cross country, played hockey and played baseball. He wasn’t a serious cross country runner in high school, admitting, “I hated running cross country.” Instead, he used the conditioning he got from running to train for hockey and baseball.
Although he is paid to run, Drew still needs to work to cover his living expenses. So, Drew, 30, is also Chief of Staff for Transform, Linked In, which was recently acquired by dbt Labs, the world’s pioneer in analytics engineering.
While some ultra-runners train over 100-120 miles each week, Drew has kept his mileage down. He does the bulk of his training in the mornings and rarely runs more than 70 miles a week, which is very light miles for an ultra-distance runner.
The last two years Drew has placed fifth (2022) and third (2021) at the fabled Western States 100-mile race.
When Holmen shows up for a race, he has proven to be very consistent, and always a threat to win. In 2019 Drew had his big breakthrough race, placing first at the U.S. National 5-mile championships in New York, finishing the rigorous Cayuga Trails in 7:33:27, almost 20 minutes ahead of second place. Before that event Drew had raced in eight trail races ranging from a half marathon to 50 kilometers, taking first three times and only finishing worse than fifth once. He was 24 when he started trail racing. Before that he ran for fitness at Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and then hooked up with a trail running group in San Francisco. In San Francisco Drew met Paddy O’Leary, an Irish scientist and professional trail runner. Paddy introduced Drew to a group of trail runners, and it wasn’t long before Holmen was training with them and hooked on the sport.
After winning the 2019, 50-mile U.S. national championship, Drew was signed by Strava, a Nike company, and moved to Boulder to train with other Nike runners.
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