The San Diego 100 closed out its 2026 edition at Lake Cuyamaca on Sunday with 126 of 188 starters under the 32-hour cut-off, headed by men's champion Juan Rocha in 19:54:05 and women's champion Laura Liedle in 23:26:23. Both winners benefited from one of the cooler iterations of the race in recent memory, with overnight temperatures dropping into the high 30s on the Cuyamaca high points and only short windows of warm exposure through the Noble Canyon and Pioneer Mail sections. The 53-mile loop start in Pine Valley produced the largest finishers' field the race has seen in three years.
Rocha, a 32-year-old from Northern California making his hundred-mile debut, ran his entire race in or near the front. He passed early-leader Tucker Garrett at mile 51 on the Sunrise Trail descent, took a shorter aid stop at Pine Creek and ran an even-paced second loop to come home in 19:54:05 with a margin of just over an hour. Nicholas Kopp of Albuquerque was second in 20:54:52 and Michael Palo of Tucson held off a fast-closing Adam Fisher to take third in 21:30:10. The men's top-five all bettered 22 hours, an unusually deep performance for a course that historically rewards even pacing more than raw closing speed.
Liedle's sub-24 was the race's headline women's mark and only the eleventh ever recorded on the modern Cuyamaca course. She ran in tandem with second-placed Kelly Young of San Diego through the first 50 miles before pulling clear after Sunrise on the second loop. Liedle, who has been quietly accumulating top-five finishes at California's Western States qualifiers since 2024, said her plan had been to "save the night" rather than push aggressively into the headlamp section, and the 23:26:23 finish vindicated that approach. Young held second in 24:31:47 and Alyssa Malley of Bend rounded out the women's podium in 25:23:08.
Conditions played a meaningful role. The race typically has a midday high in the low 80s on the exposed southern stretches, but on Saturday the Cuyamaca region capped out at 71 degrees and dropped fast through the evening. The 67 per cent finish rate is higher than the multi-year average and reflects both the weather and a more conservative early pace through the lead group, which avoided the early-mile splits that have historically defined the race's drop curve. Race director Scotty Mills told the Pine Valley finish line that the cut-off behaviour at Sunrise mile 67 was the smoothest he had seen in five editions.
San Diego 100 is one of two Western States qualifiers held in the first week of May, and the men's and women's top-three each return to Auburn next year with a Hardrock or WS lottery ticket secured. Liedle is now an automatic Western States 100 qualifier with the under-24 mark and the win, and the men's top-three each clear the eight-hour-thirty Mountain Hardwear performance threshold at the SD100 distance. The wider U.S. ultra calendar now turns to the West Coast, where the rest of May is anchored by Quad Rock 50 in Bellvue and Cascade Crest 100 entries in the Pacific Northwest later this month.