Rob Molke won the 2026 Javelina Jundred in 12:11:30. Heather Jackson won the women's race in 13:48:29.
The number people keep bringing up is smaller than either of those. Jackson was 8:15 behind Carla Molinaro at mile 71, and she won by 55 seconds. If you run a looped 100, you have probably asked whether eight minutes at mile 71 is even a gap. This post puts it into minutes per mile so you can see how it closed.
Javelina Jundred 2026 results: the podiums¶
The race finished on 2026-11-01 at McDowell Mountain Regional Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona. It is the desert loop 100 miler run on Jalloween weekend. I checked the names and times below against iRunFar and Ultramarathon Database, and I only list what both agree on.
| Race | Winner | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Men's 100 miles | Rob Molke | 12:11:30 |
| Women's 100 miles | Heather Jackson | 13:48:29 |
Molinaro was second in the women's race, 55 seconds behind Jackson. On the men's side, Molke's win came with a close challenge from Dusseau, and I am leaving the exact margin out because I could not tie it to one pair of finishers in both sources.
One factual line on what rode on it: the top two men and top two women earned Western States 2027 spots, and all four accepted.
How Jackson won from 8:15 down¶
Here is the women's race as the two sources describe it. Each row is Jackson's gap to Molinaro at that point.
| Mile | Gap | Who leads |
|---|---|---|
| 71 | 8:15 | Molinaro |
| 95.3 | 3:21 | Molinaro |
| 99.7 | 0:42 | Jackson |
| Finish | 0:55 | Jackson |
A gap table tells you how two runners moved relative to each other. It does not tell you how fast either one went, so the arithmetic below describes the gap, not anyone's pace.
Mile 71 to mile 95.3. The gap went from 8:15 to 3:21. That is 4:54 closed, or 294 seconds, over 24.3 miles. Spread evenly, it works out to about 12 seconds per mile. At that point of a 100 miler, 12 seconds per mile is a small number. Neither runner has to do anything dramatic for it to happen.
Mile 95.3 to mile 99.7. The gap went from 3:21 behind to 42 seconds ahead. That is 4:03 over 4.4 miles, which is 243 seconds, or about 55 seconds per mile. The rate of closing was roughly four and a half times faster than in the miles before it.
Mile 99.7 to the finish. The lead went from 42 seconds to 55.
That is the whole table. The first stretch took most of the time and a little of the gap per mile. The second took four miles and most of the swing. I will not guess at why, because neither source says what either runner felt or decided, and a table cannot say it for them. What the table does show is that a lead of 8:15 on a looped course is not far from 3:21, and 3:21 is not far from the lead changing hands. Over a long enough stretch, a gap is only a rate.
Same loops, opposite arcs¶
The other arc people are talking about is Des Linden's. According to the sources, she led the women's race from mile 41.1 to mile 60.3. Jackson's race went the other way: behind through the middle of the day and into the night, then level at the end of it. Same loops, same desert, two shapes. I am not grading either one. A lead at mile 60 and a lead at mile 99.7 both count as miles run.
I also looked for sleep data, since this series usually does. Neither source has any. Both winners finished in roughly 12 to 14 hours, which means there was no overnight stop to analyse, and I would rather say that in one sentence than invent a nap.
The weather got one line in the reports I read, and I am leaving it there: it was a desert race in early November.
What your own late-race splits show¶
A looped race hands every runner a lap-by-lap record, and the same gap arithmetic works on your own. You do not need a podium to use it.
- Pick two points late in a race you have run, say mile 70 and mile 95.
- Subtract the clock time at the first point from the clock time at the second.
- Divide by the miles between them to get a rate in minutes per mile.
- Do the same on another race, and look at the two side by side.
One race gives you a number. Two or three give you a shape, and the shape is yours. Some runners find they slow a little between mile 70 and mile 95 every time. Others find the last five miles are where they run their fastest. Either way, it is what your own history says, and it was there before any of this.
I built NavRun so nobody has to go through those hours out there alone, and this is a small part of it. Connect Strava, or Apple Health on the iPhone app, at navrun.app, and the runs you have already done fill in as your own record, ready to read the same way.
If you are looking at Javelina yourself, the forward-looking posts are Javelina Jundred Race Strategy: Lap Splits for Every Finish Goal and Javelina Jundred 2026 Race Week.