The Ultra Minute ⛰️ September 3, 2024
UTMB wrap-up, all the ultrarunning news outside of Chamonix you missed last week, and the races to watch this weekend
Happy Tuesday, ultrarunners! In this week’s TUM, I have a wrap-up of the big storylines from UTMB last week, as well as a bunch of stuff you might have missed while your attention was dialed into Chamonix, and the races to watch this week:
UTMB Wrap-Up
🇫🇷 Vincent Bouillard, an amateur runner who works as a senior materials engineer for Hoka, took the win at the UTMB. This was incredible to watch, and inspiring to see a non-pro runner take the top step at the sport’s most premier event. Freetrail Pod has a great post-race interview with Vincent and Run’s recap tells the story of how he took the win.
🇺🇸 Katie Schide won the women’s race, taking the lead early on and running to a new course record, besting Courtney Dauwalter’s time by 1 hour and 19 minutes, and winning the Western States / UTMB double! Don’t miss iRunFar’s post-race interview with Katie and Trail Runner Magazine’s recap of how the race went down.
5️⃣ Ludovic Pommeret took 5th place, making two consecutive years finishing 5th at UTMB, and remarkably this year he did it after winning Hardrock (and setting a new course record) earlier this summer. At 49, “Ageless Legend Ludo” continues to inspire.
❤️🩹 DNFs were a major story in the men’s race, with defending champ Jim Walmsley, former champ Pau Capell, 2022 runner-up Mathieu Blanchard, and 2022 third-place finisher Tom Evans all exiting the race in the overnight hours.
🇺🇸 Hayden Hawks won the CCC, taking his first win at the race since 2017 and besting that time by 4 minutes. Catch Freetrail’s post-race interview with Hayden to get his take on how the race went down. Coros also has a great write-up on Hayden’s win, including lots of data from training and the race.
🇿🇦 Toni McCann stepped up to her first 100k race and delivered, taking the win after running out front all day. Watching the live stream, my toddlers and I were cheering her on, chanting “Go Toni, go!” as she held her lead over Martyna Mlynarczyk climb after climb. Don’t miss Freetrail’s post-race interview with Toni.
🇺🇸 Eli Hemming won OCC, becoming the first American ever to do so, while 🇨🇳 Miao Yao won the women’s race, becoming the first Chinese ever to do so. Catch Trail Runner Magazine’s recap of how the race went down and Freetrail’s post-race interview with Eli.
🧐 Feeling inspired to run UTMB now after last week’s action? UltraSignup broke down how to get into the race and demystified the process.
😰 Now that you know how to get into the race, you’ll need to know how to train for it too. Fortunately,
has us covered in his article, “How to prepare for UTMB.”📣 Lastly, there’s been quite a bit of controversy surrounding UTMB over the past year, with Kilian Jornet and Zach Miller even briefly calling for a boycott of the race. Doug Mayer at Trail Runner Magazine sums it all up for us, outlining the changes UTMB has made, and their path forward.
Meanwhile, outside of UTMB
🐐 Kilian does Kilian things - Kilian linked together all eighty-two 4,000m peaks in the alps in 19 days using only human power to link them together. Many are calling this his most challenging and impressive feat to date. I’ve included some photos from Kilian’s Instagram below, but you should definitely check out his Instagram and scroll through some of the posts if you haven’t already.
I also found this highlight video someone on YouTube pieced together, which is pretty nice, but here’s to hoping a proper documentary is in the works 🤞🏼
🇩🇰 New 6 day world record - Stine Rex set a new women’s six-day world record, running an incredible distance of 567.6 mi / 913.4 km around a 0.89 mi / 1.4 km loop!
🍁 New Long Trail FKT - Will Peterson set a new fastest known time of 3 days, 21 hours, and 10 minutes on The Long Trail, breaking the 4 day barrier. I enjoyed how Will described it as a group effort in his Instagram post:
The long story short is that an incredible group of dozens locals came together over the past few days and broke the 4-day speed barrier on the Long Trail (3 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes), a barrier which had stood impenetrable for over 20 years.
I feel truly privileged to be a part of this group as the runner.
🛣️ New FKT on the LA Freeway - Anton Krupicka set a blazing fast FKT on the “LA Freeway” route. Interestingly, Anton first publicly shared his dream to “run” this route in his 2013 blog post, “Schemin’ and Dreamin’.” And no, it’s not actually an LA Freeway. This is a rugged off-trail mountain traverse along the Continental Divide.
🦖 No secrets - David and Megan Roche bared all, hosting a “no secrets” episode of their podcast where they shared all the details behind David’s Leadville 100 win:
👟 Rod Farvard goes pro - Runner-up at this year’s Western States, Rod Farvard, signed with Hoka and Never Second. And while not taking anything away from Rod’s incredible run into second place at Western States, Tim Tollefson saw a golden opportunity to make a joke:
Races to watch this week
It’s relatively quiet with UTMB behind us, but there’s still an exciting lineup of races ahead of us this Fall. And, with the number of high profile DNFs in the men’s race at UTMB, might we expect to see some of these athletes lining up at start lines in the coming months?
This week, we have the Wasatch 100, which starts Friday September 6, and the legendary Tor des Géants kicks off Sunday the 8th! To get you properly excited, and because I know you’re going to be craving trail running footage after the week we just had, I’ll leave you with this throwback from Jeff Pelletier, who ran Tor des Géants in 2018 and documented his experience:
That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a friend (or several!) and encourage them to subscribe at this link so it lands in their inbox next week.
See y’all on the trail,
Ken
Is Katie Schide the GOAT?... oh wait, no it's Kilian lol
Thanks for sharing my guide on how to prepare for UTMB. I really appreciate it.