Katie Schide would never tell you this, but she is one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time.

That fact is indisputable after her course-record win at the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) on Friday.

The 32-year-old American flew over the cobbled streets of Chamonix, France, with an ear-to-ear grin on her face to cross the line in 22 hours, 9 minutes, and 31 seconds—shattering none other than Courtney Dauwalter’s 2021 course record by 21 minutes.

It’s the first of Dauwalter’s seemingly untouchable course records, which include the Western States 100, the Hardrock 100 (in both directions), and Grand Raid Reunion, to go down.

In case that isn’t enough: Schide became just the fourth person to win the Western States 100 and UTMB in the same summer, joining the exclusive club with Nikki Kimball (2007), Kilian Jornet (2007), and Dauwalter (2023). And she’s just the fifth woman and ninth runner overall to win UTMB more than once.

Her results speak for themselves even when Schide won’t. While Jim Walmsley announced his intention to go after the historic Western States/UTMB double in April, Schide only told the world three weeks ago that she would return to Chamonix on August 30 for another 106-mile lap around the Mont Blanc massif.

“It’s just two more years of training,” Schide, 32, said about her meteoric rise through the sport and this race, where she’s now finished sixth, (2019), eighth (2021), and two firsts in four tries, along with taking second at the CCC 100K in 2018 and the OCC 50K in 2023.

But for what she lacks in public brashness, she makes up for in her fearless racing style.

Check out our UTMB Hub for previews, profiles, analysis, and much more added daily by our team on the ground in Chamonix.

An Essentially Wire-to-Wire Win

Many thought the women’s 2024 UTMB field was the deepest in history. And yet, despite Schide returning to defend her 2022 title after winning Western States in June, she wasn’t considered by many to be the clear favorite. Kiwi Ruth Croft and Blandine L’Hirondel of France—who have both won OCC and CCC—had targets on their backs with the chance to become the first woman to win all three UTMB World Series Finals titles.

China’s Lin Chen and Fu-Zhao Xiang, who took third at Western States this summer, were also in the mix, along with Canadian Marianne Hogan, who took second at UTMB behind Schide in 2022 despite tearing her psoas mid-race. The list of formidable women goes on.

But Schide quietly held an audacious goal for the last weekend in August: run the 106-mile race with more than 32,000 feet of climbing in under 22 hours. And she put that plan into motion from the gun.

At first, that meant slowing herself down. She wrote down her first few targeted splits to make sure she didn’t go out too fast and hit them on the nose.

“I think in this race I just went in more confident in myself and I wasn’t surprised that I was fast, whereas in 2022 I was kind of freaking out ’cause I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t really mean to do that this time,’” Schide said about the first few hours of the race. “ I meant to do it and I was just focused on trying not to die too hard at the end.”

Despite the hot pace, she was nowhere to be seen in the lead pack of women which included L’Hirondel, Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret of France, and Hogan as they tore through the first town of Les Houches 7K into the race. But by the time the race reached Saint Gervais at 21K and 1:48 elapsed, Schide had a four and a half minute gap over L’Hirondel in second and sat in an astonishing 20th overall.

She wouldn’t run with another woman during the race again.

Ever the consummate professional, Schide moved efficiently yet in an unhurried manner through aid stations, taking on a combination of liquid calories and gels from her nutrition sponsor Never Second, white bread and butter sandwiches that she had made herself before the race, as well as some quesadillas from her crew. She changed her sweaty shirt once night fell, and layered and de-layered as the temperatures rose and fell with the elevation and the sun.

She reached Les Chapieux (51K) in 5:07 elapsed—more than 30 minutes ahead of course record pace. That gap grew to 40 minutes by Arête du Mont-Favre (73K). Notably, she was also 22 minutes ahead of her own splits from 2022, when she faded hard en route to the win.

Her lead over the course record and the rest of the field continued to grow through the night—including through the crux from Courmayeur, Italy, to Champex-Lac, Switzerland, which includes a burly 2,600-foot climb up over 4.5K to the Bertone Refuge and then another kicker up to the highpoint of the course, the Grand Col Ferret, before a 4,500-foot descent over 23.8K.

Nighttime decimated the men’s field. By sunrise, the women’s race had hardly changed.

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The Women’s Field Levels-Up

Schide marched up the 2,450-foot climb of Grand Col Ferret (105K) in the second-fastest ascent behind Dauwalter in 2023. At that point, the only race was between Schide and the ghost of Dauwalter’s past. Schide had a 51-minute lead.

Hogan, meanwhile, hoofed it up the climb a minute faster in second, 28 minutes back. But on the never-ending descent, a chronic hamstring injury flared. She tripped and broke her finger shortly thereafter.

“I’ve been dealing with some hamstring issues since June, and I knew they might show up today,” Hogan said. “I fell and broke my finger, and it was kind of good news because it made me forget about my hamstring for a while because the finger was really painful.”

Hogan forged ahead. Meanwhile after some lows over the first 50K, Croft methodically worked her way through the field to fifth behind Schide, Hogan, L’Hirondel in third, and Emily Hawgood (who is from Zimbabwe but lives in Roseville, California) in fourth.

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By La Fouly (116K), Schide’s gap over the course record had extended to an hour and she showed no signs of slowing. But as the sun crept higher into the bluebird sky, the weather did its best to thwart her progress. Temperatures soared into the upper 70s by midday. Schide and her crew were prepared. Using homemade ice cubes as well as extras from fellow American Cody Lind’s crew, Schide employed her full heat protocol she knows so well from the past two years at Western States, cooling herself down with water and ice.

In Trient, Switzerland, at 146K, Schide received the blow that her partner, Germain Granger, had dropped from the race after holding onto second place until that point. By Vallorcine, France,  (158K) the heat started making her feel light-headed and she fell slightly off her unrelenting pace. But the work had already been done. She ran into Chamonix with a 40-minute lead.

“It was hard at the end. The last two hours were very difficult, you can talk to the camera runner!” Schide said after the race, referring to the camera runner filming for the race livestream. “I really wanted to try to go under 22 hours and I just went into it as if it was a time trial and I had the strongest woman there to help me do that.”

Sure enough, a battle was brewing among the strong women behind. The machine that is Croft blitzed up the final climb with poles in hand to the La Flégère ski resort and surpassed a struggling Hogan without a fight. She seemed to continue to only gain momentum all the way to the finish and a second place  in her UTMB debut. She stopped the clock at 22:48:37.

“I felt just really strong, partly due to my coach Scott Johnston, and mentally pretty relaxed to be honest, just trying not to take it too seriously and just wanted to try and have as much fun as you can over 170 kilometers,” Croft said. “I think it’s slightly psychotic, but for the most part I did have quite a lot of fun.”

Hogan held on despite the pain in both her finger—which also impeded her ability to use her poles and grab food and fluids—and in her hamstring to take third in 23:11:15.

“I had so many of my family members and so many members of the brands that I represent that have become family to me. And it was  really special for me to see so many loved ones out on the course,” Hogan said. “That’s really what kept me going and, and I’ll be forever be grateful for them to have spent a little less than 24 hours following me along the course today.”

In a testament to the up-leveling of the field, in particular the women’s field, Schide, Croft, and Hogan are only the third, fourth, and fifth women’s performances under 24 hours, behind Dauwalter (2021) and Schide (2022).

Chen ran consistently all day to work her way up from the back of the top 10 to fourth (24:16:33) and L’Hirondel held on for fifth (24:35:54). Sabrina Stanley of Silverton, Colorado, finished seventh (25:32:10) to back up her eighth place from last year and claim the honor of second American.

Find the full results here.

A Legend is Born

The Western States/UTMB double has thwarted scores of top runners for two decades. While Western States requires speed and a superhuman ability to withstand scorching heat, UTMB, while largely runnable, is a true mountain race that demands runners have the aerobic and muscular ability to withstand endless climbs and quad-crushing descents, along with a familiarity of moving through ever-changing weather and terrain.

It’s a nearly impossible balance to strike. But for Schide, focusing on Western States for two years may have been exactly the stimulus she needed to break Daulwater’s historic time.

After finishing runner-up to Dauwalter at Western States in 2023, Schide went all-in on nailing the hot, fast California 100-miler this June. For the second year in a row, she left her home in Saint-Dalmas-le-Selvage, France, and after winning the Canyons by UTMB 100K in April in course-record time, put in another training block in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The focus on fast, runnable terrain and long, hot days in the Grand Canyon paid off. Schide won Western States in the second fastest time ever.

While UTMB wasn’t her focus—she had registered by the deadline in January, but she bought the race insurance just in case—she viewed the emphasis on speed over the spring as a critical component to lowering her time in this mountain race. She recovered from Western  States quickly, and most importantly, had the motivation to make her fourth lap around Mont Blanc.

“Reuniting with my running poles after a two-year hiatus has been a welcome change to the endless runnable kms that defined the last two springs,” Schide wrote on Instagram on August 26. “I’m truly excited/curious/nervous to see where I’m at, having prepared specifically for this next race in a much shorter time frame than past years, but with more confidence about what I used to consider my biggest weakness (the actual running).”

A childhood playing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and later working there as a hut caretaker during college. A decade of racing on the trails. And a decade of consistent hard work. The innate mountain instincts and skills, the finesse of speed, and the genuine joy for racing on the trails. It all seems to have conspired for Schide this summer, elevating her to the absolute highest level of the sport at a time it’s growing, professionalizing, and getting faster at a faster rate than ever before.

“I really wanted to try to go under 22 hours and I just went as if it was a time trial and I had the strongest woman there to help me do that,” Schide said.

She’s now won nine out of 11 races since 2022, only succumbing to Dauwalter at Western States in 2022 and Toni McCann, who won CCC yesterday, at the 2023 OCC.

Schide didn’t hit her A goal. But she still landed in a galaxy that until this year essentially nobody thought was possible: surpassing Dauwalter, who over the past half a decade has proven she’s head-and-shoulders above everyone else.

Safe to say, Schide has joined—in fact, at this particular race, surpassed—her ranks.

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