Answerman/AnotherDataPoint:
"No, I'm also looking at the 5:47 he ran at JFK last year and the 6:40 he also ran at Lake Sonoma."
Wake up, he won that JFK and the 6:40 still placed him ahead of both Tollefson and King that day... are they cheats too because they had bad days?
"The real talented roadies and track runners debut really well at ultras usually"
FYI: JW won his 2014 ultra debut @ Old Gabe in a course record.
As for 100K worlds, twice as far has he'd ever run, he seemed to race in his typical style but blew up : from irufar: "After the first lap, American Jim Walmsley took off and blazed ahead of the field, eventually building a five-minute lead on everyone. Every lap he’d shrug seeming to say, “Yeah, I know this is way too fast,†but he couldn’t help himself... Walmsley continued to hold the lead mid-race, coming through 50k in 3:05:20. The next lap he gave up three and a half minutes to the other front runners… and although he kept his composure, it was clear that his run at the front would soon end."
You see this as "floundering," but now we know it was a sign of his potential.