Update from 9/28 via Instagram:

We continue to work with our local partners and the US Forest and we are hopeful to host you in Big Bear for the Kodiak Ultra Marathons by UTMB in a few weeks. Things are looking positive, but we will confirm the final courses in the coming days. Thank you for your continued patience!

The race is supposed to happen October 11-12, that’s less than 2 weeks away. As of September 30th the Line Fire is only 78% contained with daily updates still not showing any signs that this is under control. This is a super tough situation for everyone involved trying to keep people safe and an event operation going. Runners, signed up to race with accommodations booked are getting anxious.

The Pacific Northwest’s and Canada’s first and only UTMB World Series event happened this past weekend in Whistler, Canada. I was there, I ran the 70K, I got myself a 100K index and 3 stones. There’s a lot more to report from this event that many were boycotting, others were cynically watching from the sidelines, and many more didn’t know about any controversy and signed up to race. Here are the top results, for full results, as always, visit the UTMB website:

100K – (70K, 3 Stones)

Women:

1. Emma Patterson – USA – 09:10:17
2. Julie Lesage – Canada – 09:33:27
3. Jennie Labrie – Canada – 09:50:51

Men:

1. Richard Cook – USA – 07:42:45
2. Elliot Holtham – Canada – 07:54:10
3. Luke Nichols – Australia – 08:18:45

180. Mathias Eichler – Germany – 16:23:31

50K – (49K, 2 Stones)

Women:

1. Katie Morgan – Great Britain – 05:20:09
2. Laurie Proulx – USA – 05:26:36
3. Heidi Ohrling – Canada – 05:45:10

Men:

1. Cade Michael – USA – 04:20:50
2. David Norris – USA – 04:30:20
3. Andrew Newell – USA – 04:51:01

20K – (24K, 1 Stone)

Women:

1. Rachel Hebaus – USA – 03:06:00
2. Anne Baylot – Canada – 03:11:44
3. Marguerite Royer – Canada – 03:17:03

Men:

1. Jonathan Gendron – Canada – 02:32:32
2. Misael Zapien – Canada – 02:41:11
3. John Dean – Canada – 02:45:05

Below are the numbers broken down by distance and gender:

• 100K Starters: 215 – DNF: 15 – Finishers: 200. Women: 34 (17%), Men: 166 (83%).
• 50K Starters: 238 – DNF: 8 – Finishers: 230. Women: 66 (29%), Men: 164 (71%).
• 20K Starters: 310 – DNF: 6 – Finishers: 307. Women: 119 (39%), Men: 188 (61%).

In total Ultra Trail Whistler by UTMB saw just 763 starters and 737 finishers – which is a super low DNF rate, due to some very generous cut-off times. 219 (30%) women and 518 (70%) men reached the finish line and earned themselves their respective stones and an UTMB index (or directly punched their ticket to the Finals in Chamonix for 2025).

I’ll reserve my overall thoughts about this event for another post, maybe you even get a race recap too. But it’s clear from these numbers that this was a tiny event by UTMB standards. The business folks in their organization cannot be happy about this. This isn’t sustainable for a global corporation – in fact, as reported last week – Mauritius had 703 starters and the local organizers just pulled out of their contract with UTMB and cancelled any further runnings of a UTMB event on the island. On the other hand, this was a first year event – with considerable headwinds – and the course was managed smartly, requiring just three aid stations. The atmosphere on the ground was positive and supportive – exactly what is needed for runners to complete this monster of a race course and wanting to come back next year and bring some friends. I doubt UTMB owning this event directly – not like the Mauritius event – would leave so little runway and pull the plug after just one year. Whistler as a location is just too good of a place to not have a trail race.

Anyways, this coming weekend we’re heading to France’s beautiful Côte d’Azur for the Nice Côte d’Azur by UTMB event. Ironman just held the Women’s World Championship in Nice last weekend on September 22nd.

From their official press announcement:

After 20 years of fruitful collaboration, the paths of the Marathon du Mont-Blanc and Salomon will separate in 2025. 
…
A new story is about to be written, with new projects that we will soon be unveiling.

This is a massive change. Salomon helped grow this event into the largest, just as big as UTMB, trail running event in the Chamonix valley (the world?!) By Salomon leaving their sponsorship they are also taking their Golden Trail Series with them from the event.

Will be fascinating to see what happens next with the event, who will come in as title sponsor to take over, and how Salomon will reshape the Golden Trail Series going forward.

More in the good and productive updates department from Strava:

But with all the noise on Segments and leaderboards, we know it can be hard to suss out which segments are worth riding or running and who holds the CR. We’re doing something about that.

Incoming improvements include:

• Verified Segments
• Leaderboard Clean-Up
• Segment Decluttering

Now we just need my watch to record the correct GPS route, so when I’m chasing after a segment it actually tracks it correctly… sigh.

Bastian Benrath-Wright for BNN Bloomberg:

Switzerland and Italy tweaked their mountain border under the Matterhorn peak as climate change in the Alps is melting the glaciers that have historically marked the frontier between the two countries.

There’s so much more to come in the coming decades.

Alright, for next year’s big dance around Mont Blanc UTMB announced the dates for the 2025 edition. One could say this wasn’t hard to guess – the races always happen the last week of August – but now it’s official: August 25 – 31, 2025 will be UTMB Finals week. There’s no individual breakdown of what race will be on which date, but we can assume that the tentative start dates will go as follows:

• OCC: Thursday, 28 August 2025
• CCC: Friday, 29 August 2025
• UTMB: Friday, 29 August 2025

(Again, this is just assumption on my part and these dates aren’t fully announced yet. UTMB might have a few surprises up their sleeves.)

The ECC calendar is updated to reflect the change.

According to Wider, a French trail magazine we will not see a 2025 edition of the Mauritius by UTMB event (quotes auto translated into English):

YOTTA SPORTS today announces its decision to break its contract with the UTMB, and not to organize the 2nd edition of the UTMB WORLD SERIES stage “Mauritius by UTMB”. The organizer, an actor in the development of outdoor sporting events, explains this.

I had been wondering about this for a bit now as the 2025 dates hadn’t been updated yet on the UTMB website. Announced just over two years ago, Mauritius joined Mountain Ultra-Trail in South Africa as the second World Series event in Africa. The first edition in 2024 had only 703 starters making it one of the smallest UTMB events. Given the remote island location it seemed that UTMB was trying to attract affluent trail runners looking for a destination race, rather than just cater to the locals. This seemed to have not penciled out for the organizers in Mauritius.

This growing pressure imposed by UTMB is increasingly difficult to bear. It also impacts local partners who are struggling to find a return on investment that is commensurate with their efforts. This situation endangers the economic sustainability of the project while risking disappointing the participants, for whom YOTTA SPORTS is committed to always offering the best possible service.

This is the second ‘island race’ splitting with UTMB after Transvulcania and UTMB separated ways about a year ago. I had been fascinated with all the island races joining UTMB. There’s clearly a tourism angle they are trying to exploit here, and I don’t mean exploit in a negative way: “Tell runners to come visit an island that relies heavily on tourism money, preferably not during peak season and let the local economy reap the rewards.

I don’t pretend to understand the economics of events of this scale, but squeezing the local race organizers (to the point that they are running out of water at aid stations – a problem I heard again happening at Grindstone this year) is not the way to build lasting partnerships and a healthy World Series. Maybe their shortsightedness is good for our sport and the faster they stumble the faster they have to make adjustments and learn? Or go away all together as some would hope.

Another observation: The Mauritius event seems to have not been an event owned by UTMB/Ironman directly but one that fell into their franchise category. If UTMB is willing to take on these type of partnerships we maybe see more regular movement on the calendar with races joining and departing the World Series.

I have not updated the ECC calendar yet as I am still waiting on confirmation from UTMB on this.

UPDATE: The subdomain mauritius.utmb.world now resolves back to utmb.world, thus indicating that the race does not exist anymore/is not part of the series anymore. ECC calendar is updated to reflect the change.

Via the Trail Talk WhatsApp group.

Marley Dickinson for Canadian Running (again!) with the story:

Canadian athleisure brand Lululemon has ended its partnership with American ultrarunner Camille Herron after she and her husband, Conor Holt, were implicated in a Wikipedia editing scandal.

Very quick response time here from Lulu, did not expect anything to happen that fast or that decisive. I guess we enter a new era of ‘Fuck Around And Find Out’?

The inaugural Whistler by UMTB event is this weekend (Sept -28-29, 2024), with a start and finish at Whistler Creekside, BC. The event offers 3 race distances:

• 70km with 3,850 meters of vert in the 100K category for 3 running stones
• 50km with 2,600 meters of vert in the 50K category for 2 running stones
• 25km with 1,550 meters of vert in the 20K category for 1 running stone

Since the controversial announcement about a year ago the noise has died down and the race organization has been quietly putting the pieces together to build the race weekend, away from the drama. This is a brand new event for UTMB/Ironman and first year events have lots of possibilities for things going sideways and rough patches needing to be ironed out. That, combined with the watchful eyes of the ‘haters’ who hope for a big stumble makes this event quite delicate for the organizers. To top this all off the team just sent out a weather advisory for the area with an incoming storm possibly bringing snow to the high country. If that storm lingers, and snow accumulates it could result in last minute race course changes. Never fun. UPDATE: Snowing on Whistler mountain right now.

The full starting list for all three races just posted last night with 948 runners signed up for one of the three distances:

• 70km – 249 runners
• 50km – 292 runners
• 25km – 407 runners

David NORRIS, 23rd at OCC 2024 is running the 50km race with bib 1001. I’m bib 242 in the 70km race if you want to follow along.

I also will be reporting from race weekend in Whistler. I’m wanting to capture the event beyond the drama and hopefully will be able to share a real and measured picture of how UTMB deals with creating a brand new event (rather than taking over an established event and keeping the RD on board to run the day to day operations). Also: Whistler is cool and I will be having some great poutine!

Finally a new feature announced by Strava that’s actually useful?

As soon as you open the app, the new Quick Edit feature helps you make the most common edits on your latest device upload.

Quick editing the titles of activities. No more complicated editing or boring titles. Kudos to that.

Episode: 317 with Rosanna Buchauer:

Rosanna follows up her incredible performance at Lavaredo earlier in the Summer with a stunning 3rd place finish at CCC in Chamonix at the UTMB World Series Finals. Here on Signletrack we chat about her race, misplaced chocolate, the surprise Western States Golden Ticket reception, and her upcoming trip to the Snowman Race in Bhutan.

LINKS

• Rosanna Buchauer on Instagram
• Rosanna Buchauer on UTMB
• Snowman Race
• Cover shot by Helge Roeske for Dynafit

I’ve been enjoying the ‘Second Nature‘ podcast by Aaron Lutze and Dylan Bowman quite a bit. I tend to measure how much I enjoy a podcast on how often I want to jump into the conversation with my own 2 cents. Especially the last two episodes ‘Brands and Athletes at UTMB‘ and ‘Business is Hard‘ were money – as the two hosts would say.

What makes these two episodes so great is that in them the hosts share and admit how hard it is to run a business. It’s not always peaches and cream. On any other day Aaron and Dylan are basically in the business of being perpetual hype men, but here they share some realities on how challenging it is to scale a media business from the ground up. Any listener needs a bit inside knowledge to read between lines here to get the full picture. I myself am sort of putting puzzle pieces together as they don’t divulge too many details, but these episodes nonetheless are refreshing, honest ,and challenging, which is fantastic and very much needed in our outdoor business world.

As a side note: I can’t figure out the ‘Second Nature’ publishing strategy. It seems that some days the episodes drops first on Youtube, somedays they are announced on Substack or Instagram, and other days they are immediately in my podcast player – the only place to “enjoy” podcasts, if you ask me.

Conor Holt, Camille’s husband, training partner, and coach sends a press release to Run Ultra:

Camille had nothing to do with this. I am 100% responsible and apologize for any athletes affected by this and the wrong I did. 

Not sure about the authenticity of this press release, but we have a response where Conor seems to be owning it all and with it trying to free Camille from any implications.

Episode 316 with Julie Urbanski:

Julie and I ran OCC. And while we both ran the same race we had very different days out there on the trails around Mont Blanc. Here we share our stories, our challenges, and our celebrations. And here’s to more gelato in town cheering on runners and connecting in person.

LINKS

• Julie Urbanski on Instagram
• Team RunRun
• Team RunRun on Instagram
• OCC Results on Electric Cable Car

The work of the Pro Trail Runners Association is split into various working groups. One of them is the Women’s Equality Working Group:

The group is working on major issues such as enhancing women participation in trail running and pregnancy deferrals at races. Other areas of interest include freezing global rankings during pregnancy (ongoing conversation), assuring better media exposure for women during races, creating positive examples with storytelling to encourage female participation or anyone that identifies as a women.

Spearheaded by Kaytlin Gerbin and Eszer Csillag this working group has several “PTRA Athletes Supporting” the work of that group, one of them is Camille Herron. In light of today’s news I wonder for how much longer.

Another busy weekend for UTMB comes to a close. South America’s Paraty Brazil was of three events that happened around the globe, and below are the top results. Full results on UTMB’s website.

PTR 110 (100K 3 Stones):

Women:

1. Giovanna MARTINS – Brazil – 14:07:42
2. Isadora DE ALBUQUERQUE ROSSO – Brazil – 14:55:04
3. Johanna SIMMER – Austria – 16:25:15

Men:

1. Celio Augusto ROSA – Brazil – 11:52:44
2. Rogério SILVESTRIN – Brazil – 11:53:14
3. Remigio HUAMAN QUISPE – Peru – 12:02:08

PTR 55 (50K 2 Stones):

Women:

1. Leticia DA SILVA SALTORI – Brazil – 07:33:25
2. Jasieli TAGLIARI DALLA ROSA – Brazil – 08:20:43
3. Sandra C KRUGER – Brazil – 08:52:24

Men:

1. Vicente MACHADO – Brazil – 06:54:25
2. Wilton NASCIMENTO – Brazil – 06:58:31
3. Wellington ROBERTO NORONHA – Brazil – 07:09:30

PTR 35 (20K 1 Stone):

Women:

1. Emilia GIUSTINIANI – Argentia – 03:21:44
2. Antonia SÁNCHEZ LAGOS – Chile – 03:30:22
3. Yeni Paola MORALES PULIDO – Colombia – 03:44:16

Men:

1. Alan LIMA – Brazil – 02:52:40
2. André MAPA – Brazil – 02:55:48
3. Iuri VINUTO JOSINO – Brazil – 02:57:13

PTR 20 (20K 1 Stone):

Women:

1. Bianca FERREIRA – Brazil – 02:35:08
2. Roze RODRIGUES PADILHA – Brazil – 02:46:54
3. Sthéfanny RÉUS BORGES – Brazil – 02:51:23

Men:

1. Agustin ALANIZ – Argentia – 02:05:11
2. Bernardo PENTEADO – Brazil – 02:06:37
3. Jonathan SANTOS DA SILVA DIAS – Brazil – 02:08:05

Below are the numbers broken down by distance and gender:

• 110K Starters: 301 – DNF: 35 – Finishers: 245. Women: 34 (14%), Men: 211 (86%)
• 55K Starters: 488 – DNF: 36 – Finishers: 415. Women: 103 (25%), Men: 312 (75%)
• 35K Starters: 517 – DNF: 1 – Finishers: 495. Women: 171 (35%), Men: 324 (65%)
• 20K Starters: 805 – DNF: 5 – Finishers: 798. Women: 377 (47%), Men: 420 (53%)

In total Paraty Brazil saw 2,111 starters, 1,953 finishers. 685 (35%) women and 1,267 (65%) men crossed the finish line and earned themselves their respective stones and an UTMB index (or directly punched their ticket to the Finals in Chamonix for 2025).

I’ll share the numbers of the Grindstone Trail Running Festival and Julian Alps Trail Run events later this week. Next up on the calendar is the infamous brand new Whistler by UTMB event on September 28-29, 2024. What’s somewhat surprising is that UTMB Live website currently doesn’t show any announcements about an upcoming live tracking for the races. Update: UTMB just added the Whistler live-tracking to their website.

Episode 315 with special guest Scott Michie (never got around to posting this episode while already running around in Chamonix eating gelato):

Finally I got Scott Michie on Singletrack. It’s only taken 315 episodes. And all it took was Scott heading back to Chamonix for another dance around that big white mountain. Over the last few years Scott and I have trained together, run many trails, and climbed many mountains. And in a couple of weeks we’ll both be in Chamonix together. He will run UTMB, for the second time while I put on a bib for OCC. In this episode we’ll chat about Scott’s experience at UTMB a couple years ago and how he’s approaching training and preparation differently. Oh, and we’re both very very excited about it all.

LINKS

Scott Michie on Strava

Anton Krupicka, still, or again on top of his game with his post race Strava update:

I went to Grindstone with three goals: A) win, B) podium (so as to qualify for UTMB), C) finish (so as to get my first Hardrock lottery qualifier in a decade). I guess two out of three ain’t bad, but even if I had won, this was not a good race.

First on, congrats Anton! Secondly: How do the continues haters of UTMB feel about one of their heroes making such a pro-UTMB declaration? Thirdly: I’d love to know what inspired Anton to set his sights again on this goal. Back in February he was quoted saying the following:

“It’s all manufactured controversy. This is all just made up. So many people just want to have the magical experience of circumnavigating the mountain and doing it with others, because there’s this strong communal feeling when you’re doing it. And all the other shit? No one actually cares.”

That’s right Anton… all the other shit… no one cares.

Marley Dickinson for Canadian Running:

Acclaimed American ultrarunner Camille Herron, who has more than 12 ultrarunning world records to her name, along with her coach and husband, Conor Holt, have found themselves at the centre of a Wikipedia controversy. It stems from several edits to the Wikipedia pages of ultrarunners Kilian Jornet and Courtney Dauwalter, which degraded their accomplishments, while also adding accolades to Herron’s own page. The edits have been traced back to Herron’s email and Holt’s IP address.

It’s important here to not just call out Camille, who’s the runner and household name, but her husband Conor Holt too, who’s known the work her social media pages and speak on her behalf in several occasions.

The fluffing of her own page is petty, but kind of funny. The repeated! altering of other people’s pages is so low, so dumb, so unprofessional and so inappropriate, at what point do her sponsors consider their options?

She’s been on top of her game for many years, has won so many titles and holds so many records. She has achieved so much for women and runners everywhere. Now this all goes down the toilet. Fantastic way of brand destruction.

Great detailed reporting by Canadian Running, by the way.

I don’t often talk about races disappearing from our landscape, but here’s one. The RDs of the remote, challenging 100 Miler (and shorter distances) through the Idaho and Wyoming wilderness are retiring and the race is going to be on hiatus for 2025:

It is with no small measure of sadness that we feel compelled to announce that 2024 was the final year for RD Jeremy Smith and RD Jeff Fullmer as race directors of the Palisades Ultra.

The announcement by RD Jeremy Smith and RD Jeff Fullmer (who were on Singletrack back in 2019) keeps the door open for a return of the races in 2026.

If we are able to find the right person within the next 12 months, we will with gratitude and relief undergo the necessary formalities to transfer ownership as soon as possible, to hopefully avoid any more than a 1-year interruption to the event!

Anyone looking to take over this event?