Western Washington Fat Ass History The Western Washington Fatass was started by Gene Trahern in 1993 and taken over by Ron Nichol in 2001. The original goal was to get runners off their fat asses after holiday gorging to get training kick-started. Originally, the course was a choice of a 50 mile or 50k course. The single loop 25k course was the "wimp" course and records were not kept for non-finishers of at least the 50k distance for the first several years. The course is described in Cheri Pompeo's book "50 Trail Runs of Western Washington" with the title "Western Washington's Favorite Loop". You will find here race results and reports from across the years. If anything is missing or incorrect please contact me.

The fat ass format originated in the late 70s as a way for runners to get together after the holidays to get back on track, share some miles, and probably some post-run beers, likely in a trailhead parking lot. The motto of fat ass events is "No awards, no aid, no wimps". The Western Washington (Tiger Mountain) Fat Ass follows this ethic, although, in classic fat ass style, all three elements have been broken:

In 2020, Matt Hagen created some custom wood finishers "medals" (woodals)
For many years donuts have been made available at the lower Tiger Mtn parking lot, along with a couple jugs of water
After the first few years, credit has been given to "wimp" single loop (25+k) finishes

Never the less, with these egregious violations of the ethic, the WWFA remains a popular non-event where runners can get together to cover some miles in usually terrible conditions, see friends they haven't seen in a while, and kick-start training after too much food and not enough exercise in the preceeding couple months.

Results

Year by year results can be found on the race history page