Trail Runner

When I first met Miao Yao, I only saw the top of her head. I was having lunch with a group of journalists, Yao’s husband, and a few staffers from one of her sponsors, but I was most interested in getting to know the woman whose head was literally resting on the table—exhausted from no sleep and 100K of French Alps.

For the tightknit expat trail running community in the Chamonix valley, Emily Schmitz’s performance is the highlight of a historic week. Our Chamonix correspondent spoke to a half-dozen locals for the inside scoop. Sometime around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, August 29, my WhatsApp lit up. It was scattered with messages from friends up and down the Chamonix valley. Just caught Schmitz in Courmayeur earlier, she is looking good! So far….

Rachel Enkrekin broke the UTMB system. Quite literally—when she won the Cocodona 250 outright this spring, UTMB officials didn’t know how to score her performance on the UTMB Index, its internal athlete ranking system. That’s because women’s performances are graded against the men. So despite being by all accounts a pre-race favorite at least for the top 10 at the 2026 UTMB, she wasn’t invited to any of the pre-race interviews or the elite athlete presentation.

In looking at her resume, a UTMB victory might have felt inevitable for France’s Blandine L’Hirondel—including an OCC victory in 2021, a CCC victory in 2022, a podium finish at UTMB in 2023, and a fifth place at the same event in 2024. And yet, the way the Frenchwoman won, by grabbing the lead before the halfway mark and holding it to the line, still seemed surprising.

Don’t try to put Caleb Olson in a box. The 2025 Western States champ backed up last year’s breakout performance with a podium finish at the 2026 UTMB today. They couldn’t be more different 100-milers, but then again, Olson’s a very different athlete than he was, by design. “I’ve moved on from Western States,” he said at the finish line, not long after becoming only one of three athletes to ever break the 19-hour mark at UTMB.

All doubts have been silenced. After flying a little too close to the sun at Western States in June, Hans Troyer rebounded with a third-place finish at CCC, the 100K UTMB World Championship, on Friday evening. “I think that I got the best out of myself today,” he told Trail Runner at the finish.

Friends, the greatest night and day (plus another night and another day) in trail running is finally here: Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) has commenced. After a two hour delay due to storms, just under 2,000 runners took off under tempestuous skies in downtown Chamonix, France, at 7:45 p.m. on Friday, August 28.

Frédéric Tranchand is the defending “short course” world champion. He’s won seven medals at the world orienteering championships. But in the end, it was perhaps his humble homefield advantage that proved most instrumental in his victory on Thursday, August 27, at OCC, the “50K” championship during the UTMB World Series Finals. “I’m living here in the valley, so I know the course very well,” he told Trail Runner at the finish. “The course passed right next to my home.

Lauren Gregory was nervous to move up to the 50K distance this year. But in the end, at the world’s most important “50K” (that’s actually a 60K), ironically it was her track speed that mattered the most. Until just a few kilometers left, it looked like Naomi Lang (Scotland) had the W in the bag. But then Sara Alonso (Spain) went into turbo mode on the final descent, gobbling up a 90-second gap to less than 30. That’s when Gregory said hold my soft flask.

As the summer heat winds down and the trail running world recovers from UTMB, September brings some excellent trail-running shoes to enhance your autumn miles—whether on speedy gravel paths or twisty mountain switchbacks. Salomon’s New Aero Blaze 4 GRVL, Dropping September 1, Is the Best Value of the Year at $140 As the gravel category of running shoes becomes more popular, Salomon is releasing a light trail and gravel version of its fun, responsive Aero Blaze road runner.