How She Did It: Fuzhao Xiang’s Second Consecutive Western States Podium

 

 

Fuzhao Xiang has a strong chance of becoming the first Chinese athlete to win one of ultrarunning’s most prestigious races: Western States (WSER) or Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB). Her stellar performance at the 2024 WSER was the third-fastest female finish (16:20:03) in history. Athletes endured a hotter race day in 2025, which encouraged a slightly slower pace compared to last year. Nevertheless, Fuzhao’s 2025 time of 16:47:09 ranks 7^th on the list of all-time fastest female finishes at WSER and she finished second in the women’s race for the second consecutive year. A ton of things need to go right over 12 months to achieve back-to-back podium performances at Western States, so here’s a look at what went right and how she did it.

Western States 2024 to Western States 25

Fuzhao’s WSER24 performance was a phenomenal achievement, but what few people knew at the time was that seven, six, and five weeks before WSER24, Fuzhao barely ran at all. Due to a lower leg injury, she ran a combined total of three hours across those three weeks. Typically, that time frame is an important training block, so between the missed training and the injury treatments we’d scrambled to arrange, I was uncertain about how she’d fare during the race. She removed all doubt about her talent and tenacity by running strong all day and finishing an impressive second place to Katie Schide.

Following WSER24, Fuzhao recovered and set her sights on UTMB. Racing the double of WSER and UTMB was an ambitious goal, but we felt her post-WSER recovery and training set her up for a shot at a decent performance in France. UTMB24 defied a lot of pre-race predictions and there were a surprising number of DNFs from top athletes. Unfortunately, Fuzhao was one of them. Nevertheless, she regrouped and went on to finish the season with a win at the 105-kilometer Ultra-Trail Ninghai by UTMB in October.

Post-Season Training Adjustments

When I reflect on an athlete’s season and then look forward to the next year, I often look for opportunities to make them faster, more durable, and/or more resilient. In Fuzhao’s case, I wanted to increase the cumulative amount and consistency of her training by minimizing the days and weeks lost to injuries. We didn’t need to increase her planned training hours from 2024 to 2025, but we needed to improve her ability to complete the training.

To keep her in the game instead of the sidelines, I added Nicole Rassmussen to Fuzhao’s performance team to incorporate a steady focus on strength training. The benefit of the team approach is not just the addition of more expertise, but also additional sets of eyes on the athlete. Nicole was able to monitor Fuzhao’s training from a different perspective, which was helpful for balancing work and recovery.

Fuzhao Xiang’s 2025 Western States Training

Consistency and injury prevention were the top priorities in Fuzhao’s WSER25 training build. Based on her performance history, I was confident she had such strong foundation of aerobic fitness that we could afford to be conservative with training intensity. If we were chasing aerobic conditioning or needed to significantly increase her maximum aerobic capacity to increase her sustainable pace, then I would have felt more of a need to push for more high-intensity training.

Guiding Training by Intensity Factor

I focused Fuzhao’s training intensity on a piece of data that’s been interesting me. Four of the female athletes I’m working with have recorded six of the current top-10 fastest finishes at WSER (Katie Schide, Abby Hall, Fuzhao Xiang, and Eszter Csillag). During each of the runs that earned them a spot in that list, their Intensity Factor (IF) ranged from 0.68 to 0.71. Intensity Factor is a way to describe the relative intensity of a workout or run, calculated as a ratio of Normalised Graded Pace (NGP) to a runner’s threshold pace. If an athlete’s NGP for an hour was equal to his or her Functional Threshold Pace (FTP), their IF for that hour would be 1.0. An average IF of 0.7 for podium-level performances at WSER indicates that most of the race is run below threshold. That part wasn’t a big surprise, but the fact that IF varied so little between top-performing athletes in different editions of WSER was notable.

Fuzhao’s injury history indicated that higher intensity interval training created a reasonably high risk of future injuries. Therefore, to help keep Fuzhao injury free, I kept the relative intensity of her long runs to an IF of 0.7 and slowly made runs longer without making them harder. We focused her intensity on a weekly SteadyStateRun workout, didn’t do too much of interval work, and stopped high-intensity training in mid-May in preparation for WSER in late June.

Proven Heat Acclimation Protocols

Heat acclimation protocols received a lot of attention from media, coaches, and athletes this year. Although none of the athletes I worked with used heat suits or lots of extra layers of clothes, they all did some combination of sauna exposures and hot weather outdoor runs. Fuzhao used a two-phase heat acclimation protocol with about 90% of the heat exposures in a sauna and 10% running in hot weather around Auburn, California.

Fuzhao Xiang’s Western States Race Day

I was very confident in Fuzhao’s fitness and race readiness before WSER25. The steps we took to bolster her training consistency and avoid missed training opportunities worked. We had reduced days lost to injury and increased the depth of her fitness. Going into race day, I knew she had the tools to finish on the podium for a second straight year.

Race Strategy

For WSER25, Fuzhao stuck to the racing strategy that she likes best. In contrast to Abby Hall’s desire to assert herself early in the race, Fuzhao prefers to let the race play out in front of her and then respond. In the first few hours of the race, she was sitting in about 35^th place overall, and then she gradually and steadily passed 1-2 people between aid stations. Her pacing strategy was to stay steady and try to slow down less than her competitors as the race progresses.

Fuzhao also stuck to what she knew in terms of nutrition and cooling strategies on race day. As she did in 2024, she proved she can wolf down large volumes of food at aid stations, and she preferred to be doused with cold water than to jump into the kiddie pools full of ice in the CTS Aid Stations.

Final Word

Fuzhao Xiang has a very good chance of becoming the first Chinese runner to win either WSER or UTMB. The hero of her 2025 story, so far, is her training consistency. The steps we took to prevent injuries and increase resilience worked, which meant more completed days of high quality training in the leadup to WSER25, and hopefully sets her up for success at an UTMB race later in the summer.