By Mathias Eichler

One last hurrah before the end of the year. Runners, get ready for a fun and festive holiday 10K trail race at Squaxin Park in Olympia, WA on December 14.

One last hurrah before the end of the year. Runners, get ready for a fun and festive holiday 10K trail races at Squaxin Park in Olympia, WA on December 14.

US Selection Process for WMTRC 2025

1 November 2024

Nancy Hobbs gathers all the info for ATRA (American Trail Running Association):

Team USA will compete in the third World Mountain and Trail Running Championships (WMTRC) slated for September 24-28, 2025, in Canfranc-Pirineos, Spain.
…
USA Track & Field (USATF) plans to field a team of 48 athletes with the following event allocations:
VERTICAL MOUNTAIN – 4 men & 4 women
CLASSIC MOUNTAIN race – 4 men & 4 women
40 km TRAIL race – 6 men & 6 women
80 km TRAIL race – 6 men & 6 women
U20 CLASSIC MOUNTAIN race – 4 men & 4 women

The races selected for qualification are:

VERTICAL MOUNTAIN: Broken Arrow Ascent, Palisades Tahoe, CA – June 20.
CLASSIC UP/DOWN MOUNTAIN: Sunapee Scramble in Newbury, NH – June 1.
SHORT TRAIL – 44.5km: Broken Arrow Skyrace 46K in Palisades Tahoe, CA – June 21.
LONG TRAIL – 82km: Gorge Waterfalls 100K in Cascade Locks, OR – April 12.

There are lots of people with opinions on the selection of these races as qualifiers, especially the selection of Gorge Waterfalls as a qualifier for the Long Trail Race.

Jason Schlarb commenting on Freetrail’s announcement on IG:

We need to change!! This is obviously not a good race to qualify our US team. Canada qualifies the year prior!! The world champs race in Spain has 18,700ft of climbing in 85k and likely on gnar trails.

Daybreak Racing and DBo are in the comments defending their bid.

Fascinating.