We’re doing this again! For the second year Arc of Attrition by UTMB kicks off the UTMB World Series for another season.

For full results visit the UTMB website, below the top runners by race:

Arc 100 161KM (100M – 4 Stones) – Full Results

Women:

1. Anne-Sofie POLLESTAD – Norway – 22:28:24
2. Charlotte FISHER – Great Britain – 23:49:08
3. Hannah RICKMAN – Great Britain – 24:47:38

Men:

1. Hugh TIBBS – Great Britain – 19:10:09
2. Simon WITHERS – Great Britain – 19:14:44
3. Samuel SKINNER – Great Britain – 20:14:33

Arc 50 80KM (100K – 3 Stones) – Full Results

Women:

1. Gemma HILLIER MOSES – Great Britain – 08:12:56
2. Aroa SIO – Spain – 09:31:30
3. Katie KAARS SIJPESTEIJN – Great Britain – 09:33:15

Men:

1. Kristian JONES – Great Britain – 07:09:41
2. Keith WIGLEY – Great Britain – 07:27:45
3. Lewis BOWNESS – Great Britain – 07:38:32

Arc 25 40KM (50K – 2 Stones) – Full Results

Race about to start

Full event summary to follow

Next up we’re heading to Oceania for the Tarawera Ultra-Trail in New Zealand on 14 – 15 February 2026.

Just like last year UTMB shared their calendar of events for the coming year. Last year I speculated wrongly that by announcing the calendar at the beginning of the year it might be set in stone and they won’t expand to new races. But they started off 2025 with 50 events and ended with 64. This year in 2026 the calendar boasts 64 events around the world and UTMB CEO Frédéric Lénart suggested in Mile and Stone earlier this week that they’d be at 64 events for 2026. Let the speculations begin on what that number will be at the end of the year.

PS: The Electric Cable Car UTMB World Series Calendar is updated and simplified to account for the ever-changing nature of their events calendar, and the ongoing changes to the races they are offering at each event. Oh, and to accommodate the ever-increasing busyness of my own schedule.

PPS: One things of note: Ultra Trail Whistler‘s date is now moved from the original September date to mid-August.

For the newly launched ‘Trailhead Media’ Buzz Burrell is trying to solve the puzzle for us:

I’ve made an attempt to aggregate all eight major international awards and rankings into a singular list, which will, hopefully, once and for all, show who the best runners were in 2025.

Should UROY really be considered part of a list of “international awards” since it’s only considering North American athletes?

Via Reddit user ‘SnooObjections3770‘:

I built this UTMB lottery chance calculator for myself and figured I’d share it in case it’s useful to anyone else.

How accurate is this tool? No idea, but if you want to make yourself mad you can play around with it and see how it becomes more and more of a challenge to get to race in Chamonix each August.

The official lottery results are already out, and if you got in – congratulations. It seems this year it was harder to get selected, required more stones, and more luck with it, and this of course surprised no one.

Patagonia on their blog:

Today Patagonia filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the entrepreneur, drag queen, and activist Pattie Gonia. While we wish we didn’t have to do this – and actively engaged with Pattie for several years to avoid this – it has become necessary to protect the brand we have spent the last 50 years building.

That’s how trademark law works and how brands have to protect their IP. This clash was a longtime coming.

Episode 340 with Austin Corbett:

Austin is taking the big leap into self-employment and joins me on Singletrack to chat about his new business Point to Point Photography. As a trained photographer with years of experience making connections in the outdoor industry Austin is ready to step behind the lens and share his vision of running on trails in wild places with the world.

Links

• Austin on Instagram
• Point to Point Photography

In a interview with Mile & Stone UTMB CEO Frédéric Lénart shares a few interesting tidbits:

• 69% of athletes identified as elite participated in at least one of the circuit’s races, again an increase compared to 2024 (+10%), with a very high level of competition at the Hoka UTMB Mont-Blanc.
• Revenue has grown; we will be around 30 million euros, compared to 25 million in 2024. 
• We have just over 100 employees, the company is starting to be well-structured, and we can say that we have moved past the survival issues the group faced during the Covid phase to be profitable today, yes.
•  I think we will be at 63 or 64 events in 2026. In the medium term, the goal is to have 90-95 in 2030. 
• [We’re] remaining committed to not exceeding the 10,000-runner cap [at the UTMB Finals in Chamonix].
• [On the Dacia partnership:] Yes, the partnership reached the end of its four-year term.
• Their departure is a logistical challenge for us; we do not have an identified automotive partner at the moment, but we are working on it.

These comments above (bolding left from the newsletter) are all pertaining to the business side of the operation. Some things stick out to me:

• The point about the elites racing at the Finals is of course a response to the WMTRC but also a sign of pride for UTMB that the spearhead of our sport is taking the product UTMB created and maintains serious.
• Profitability is good for UTMB and for our sport as a whole – no desperate moves should be expected here.
• The number of races really surprises me. We’re already sitting at 64 events for the year 2026. So either Lénart got the numbers wrong or they are planning on NO additional expansion for 2026. (Maybe they anticipate a couple races leaving the series and being replaced by new ones. But if they don’t grow by a few races this year, then their projected number of 90-95 by 2030 feels like a bit of a stretch to me.)
• With Dacia leaving which other ‘mobility partner’ aka car company brand would you like to see jumping in sponsoring the UTMB World Series?

First time for an outdoor athlete to get covered/made fun of on Saturday Night Life? First time for a North Face sweater to make it into a clip on SNL?

Definitely the first time for a previous guest on Singletrack to get the SNL treatment.

Funny too that SNL, based out of urban NYC is getting into this “climbing thing” when it’s a skyscraper in the middle of a metropolitan area, rather than some rock somewhere in the outdoors.

Scott Baldwin on his blog ‘Front Pack Sports‘:

If you’ve spent any time running in Europe, there’s a good chance you already know KIPRUN. If you haven’t, 2026 is likely the year that changes.

At TRE, one of the most interesting conversations we had wasn’t with a legacy giant or a hype-driven newcomer — it was with KIPRUN, Decathlon’s performance running brand. KIPRUN has been around since 2008, operating in more than 70 countries, but the U.S. running scene hasn’t fully felt their impact yet.

If you’re not familiar, Decathlon in Europe is like the Dick’s Sporting Goods in the US, but with all kinds of private label brands, think REI Co-Op.

Brands coming into the market at lower price point will add pressure on existing players, especially in today’s economic climate threatened by tariffs and wars. It will be fascinating how incumbents will respond to this.

Jessy Carveth curates 26 names for Marathon Handbook into a listicle, including a few from the trail running world:

• 13th – Courtney Dauwalter
• 12th – Katie Schide
• 10th – Lazarus Lake

Inexplicably missing from that list: Kilian Jornet.

In a lengthy post titled ‘Trail Running 2026, where are we, where are we going.‘ Kilian Jornet blogs (blogs!) about he sees as trends for 2026 and beyond for our sport and culture.

First of all I want to express that those are just some opinions and thoughts I had when thinking on what’s going on with trailrunning at that time. I therefore have biases, first as an elite athlete I would have tendency to focus more on events that elite found more relevant versus what the big mass of participants might find important or not, I’m also European and part of the European – and at some degree American – trail scenes mostly, and even if I’m informed of what’s going on in other parts, probably I have some bias there. Those are only that, opinions based on what I’m observing in 10 different aspects of the sport.

This, without me having to say it, is of course must-read material for anyone interested in our sport.

I largely agree with him and see similar trends and issue emerge. The one thing I am surprised he doesn’t mention though is the challenge of climate change for our sport. But aside from this one quibble this one is ‘chef’s kiss – no (just one) notes.

Published by Callwey in a English and German edition:

This book showcases the full fascination of running off the beaten track in all its facets: from portraits of influential figures and legendary races to the most beautiful routes around the globe.

Kimi on Instagram about the project:

I’ve been writing since April 2025. It was a rollercoaster ride, let me tell you. A daily up and down of emotions, nervous breakdowns, worries, excitement, and overall: dedication.

Release date is 17 March 2026. Excited for this one. (With a US release date not until 1 September 2026… sad face.)

Wall Street Journal article (here’s the Apple News link) summarizing a research report from the German Kiel Institute:

Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.
…
By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

U.S.A. U.S.A.

Or as John Gruber at Daring Fireball comments:

This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance.

But the real reason for me posting this hear is that there are a lot of ‘predictions for 2026’ podcasts and articles floating around and most of them are skirting around one of the biggest issues our world is facing in many decades: “political uncertainties”… to put it mildly.

Must read interview with Kilian Jornet in the New York Times Magazine (there’s a podcast version available too), conducted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro:

Jornet, 38, is a professional ultramarathoner and mountaineer whose life’s work is literally to run — or ski — up mountains. Even in the world of elite athletes, he is exceptional.
…
His VO2 max (a key indicator of aerobic endurance) is one of the highest ever recorded; his stamina has been studied by researchers; and he has pushed the limits of what is considered physically possible.

It’s great, and noteworthy that “one of us” is featured in the NYT and somewhat understandably that the actual “new information” a super fan can gleam from an article like this is actually minimal. Nonetheless, still incredibly cool that trail running has arrived now at this scale. Or as the NYT puts it “ultra-marathoning”.

Freetrail Fantasy developer (not sure this is his real title) Travis Loncar on Instagram announcing the new feature:

Spent some time this week implementing a simple microblogging setup for the fantasy site inspired by NHL Trade Rumors (thanks @ryanthrower) and Hacker News. Idea is to provide a feed of discrete but generally brief posts about pro trail running happenings for people to scan and optionally comment on…

Microblogging on the open web is back, baby!

Episode 339 with Ryan Kerrigan :

This week we’re opening the much anticipated registration for Beast of Big Creek. Who better to help me launch all this than the person who reached out first when I wanted to get Beast on the radar of The International Skyrunning Federation. Ryan Kerrigan is the executive director of Skyrunning USA and on Singletrack we chat about the history of skyrunning and the process it took to bring the Skyrunner World Seriers back to the US. 2026 will be an exciting time in short and steep trail and mountain racing.

Links

• Beast of Big Creek
• Skyrunning USA
• International Skyrunning Federation
• Skyrunner World Series

The latest Freetrail episode with Katie and Jim was meant to celebrate these two winning ‘Trail Runner of the Year’. During the conversation Dylan Bowman points out that out of the 4 Americans (of the twenty athletes in the top ten at this year’s TROY) 3 of them (Ben, Katie and Jim) live in France and don’t actually resides this side of the Atlantic. This leads to DBO asking the innocent yet fateful question if Katie would ever think of moving back to the US. And here’s where Katie does something that hardly any of the pro athletes have dared to do this past year: she drops the reality that her partner is French and if they’d move over here he’d be an immigrant and that this might be difficult right now. Of course poor cheerleader DBO didn’t even have this perspective on his radar and immediately shifted the conversation since this reality can’t ever come up as a topic – “shut up and dribble” and all. But massive kudos to Katie for not shying away from pointing out that America isn’t the “Garden of Eden” that it once was and increasingly it’s safer and better (hello healthcare!) to live literally anywhere else but here. Jim too at the WMTRC hinted at the fact that wearing the ‘red white and blue’ while representing team USA isn’t what it once was.

Man oh man, we’re having the Winter Olympics in Cortina/Milano coming up here shortly and the Soccer World Cup later this summer. This will be a rough year for fans of Sports Team USA.

Rob Slade has this insane story for ‘Live for the Outdoors‘:

Speaking to the RunUltra podcast, Sarah [Porter] explained what happened next: “I got a message saying that there were threats coming in and it’s quite dangerous. They were talking about executing me on Standedge, were talking about the fact I was going to be on my own in the night. They were very serious threats. Those threats also went through to the Spine team. By the time I got to Standedge a team from the Spine Race met me and said ‘we’re withdrawing you from the race and we need you to get off course’.

Jesus, fucking Christ…

The threats are linked to some of the humanitarian and charity work that Sarah does (you can see her Spine Race fundraiser here), which involves evacuating and supporting women and girls from war zones, and also helping women break barriers in male dominated spaces.

I can’t even with people…

Via UTMB’s Strava post, which was shared just four hours after the opening of the registration:

You reached the starting line at record speed this year!

The TDS 2026 as well as the YCC Cadets and Juniors are SOLD OUT! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your enthusiasm

Just an insane interest in racing in Chamonix, again. One that certainly doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

In 2024 late into March there were still bibs available for TDS. In 2025 it took several days. in 2026 just a few hours.

DCRainmaker has the roundup of updates and improvements:

Suunto has just rolled out a pretty solid update, continuing a seemingly recent trend over most of the last 6-8 months of more frequent and more notable firmware updates. The updates during this timeframe have been a blend of long-needed changes (like a decade long in some cases) and minor new features. I’ll quickly go through a few of the items that stood out to me the most.

These firmware updates seem pretty impressive and I feel like could be marketed better to the general public. Nowadays everyone has a phone and is used to regular OS updates that are widely marketed and advertised. It would suit tech companies like Suunto if they’d speak in a bit more pedestrian terms encouraging the average user to get more engaged and excited about these product improvements, that are huge value adds to their products which users are getting for free.