How Katie Schide Won UTMB After Winning Western States 

By Jason Koop,
Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning,
Author of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning”

What a wild ride! The 2024 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc was probably the most exciting of all my visits to UTMB, culminating in Katie Schide’s incredible win and record-setting victory. As has been the case in previous years, I was joined in Chamonix by a strong team of CTS Coaches supporting elite and age group runners across multiple events. It was a great experience for athletes and coaches during a wild year. The Men’s Elite field was decimated by DNFs, yet there were great performances from emerging talents like unheralded Men’s winner Vincent Bouillard and CTS Athlete Joaquin Lopez (3rd overall, first UTMB podium performance from a South American athlete). As the dust settles, here are some reflections on the 2024 UTMB overall and Katie Schide’s preparation and performance.

It was a weird UTMB

I’ve been searching for a reason why the Elite Men’s field fell apart so dramatically, and I can’t find one. The image below from social media shows the carnage. Sixteen of the top 20 favorites DNF’d, including two athletes I coach: Jiasheng Shen and Geramin Grangier. Then Bouillard, a full-time shoe engineer for Hoka, wins the race and Joaquin Lopez finishes third! 

 

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I love Lopez’s story, by the way. He first reached out to me through a standard website contact form. We put him into the normal process we have for all new athletes, paired him with CTS Coach Darcie Murphy, and they set out to create a plan for the 2024 UTMB. It’s a great illustration of a system working as designed. We created a coaching education and mentoring program, and an athlete intake and coach matching infrastructure, that makes great coaching accessible to any athlete. Joaquin didn’t need to “know somebody” or have sponsor connections to access a great coach, a fact that connects all the way back to the founding concepts of CTS nearly 25 years ago.

Anyhow, about the weirdness… It’s difficult to pinpoint any common thread to account for the decimation of the Men’s Elite field. The weather was good, course conditions were normal, the race pace was fast but not ludicrous. The field wasn’t hit with some outbreak of a stomach bug or COVID. There weren’t a rash of injuries. The pros just underperformed, but at the biggest and most prestigious race of the year. We went from the “Why is everyone so fast” narrative after Western States to, “Why is everyone so bad?” Was it a coincidence? Anomaly? Contagious failure, like a domino effect? It’s not like the cited reasons for the fast WSER times all of a sudden disappeared (super shoes, better training, high CHO racing strategies). We may never know the actual reasons, but I’m sure I’m not the only one scratching my head.

Katie Schide’s Winning Formula: Keep It Simple and Monitor Closely

When Katie Schide won the 100K race at Canyons Ultra in April, people said she was too fast too early in the year. When she won Western States in the second fastest women’s time ever, and an hour faster than her finishing time from 2023, people speculated she couldn’t recover in time for the 2024 UTMB. Too fast, too much volume, peaking too early, too much training. But what people fail to see was the long-range buildup, over a period of years, that created the durability and resilience to handle the high workload. Katie’s training is remarkably fundamental and uncomplicated, but it is also remarkably consistent and her execution – of training, nutrition, recovery, self-care – is impeccable. 

WSER then UTMB 

The biggest challenge to winning both Western States and UTMB in the same year is that the time between the events is too short to allow for full recovery after Western States and a training build that yields a second peak that’s bigger than the first. If you over-prioritize recovery, you sacrifice the training volume necessary to be competitive at UTMB. If you rush recovery to prioritize high training volume, you risk injury or fatigue blunting training progress. In order to thread this training needle, the apex of training was aimed at the period just before Western States, as opposed to between Western States and UTMB. After Western States, she could continue to leverage her current fitness, without the pressure of having to build more, all the while working on the specific demands of UTMB.   

How did we address this challenge? We built Katie’s sustainable training volume up to a very high level last year and kept it high through the winter with a combination of skiing and running. This meant that ramping up for Canyons and WSER didn’t require a massive increase in training volume or intensity. It might have looked like a lot on paper, but in reality each training block has some precedent based off of prior training. This is the power of constantly reviewing previous training. You find patterns that work and you can build from, thus increasing your chances of adaptation and reducing the risk of overfatigue and under-recovery.  

Although the training program was uncomplicated, all of us on Katie’s High Performance Team spent a lot of time monitoring her training, nutrition, and recovery data, along with subjective information on how she was feeling. Constant monitoring meant we were quicker to observe potential disruptions and account for them when micro adjustments could still be effective.

Training Specificity for WSER and UTMB

Western States and UTMB are different courses in different environments. Running fast on flat ground is important for Western States, but less race-specific for UTMB. In preparation for WSER, Katie ran on smoother faster trails similar to what she would see from Olympic Valley to Auburn. Prior to the 2024 UTMB she spent lots of time in the Chamonix area training on the course and on terrain similar to the race. Although her volume was generally less for her UTMB build up, the theme of being as specific to the terrain as possible remained the same. 

I’m proud of the work Katie has put in over the past few years and grateful that she entrusted her goals to me, Sarah Scozzaro for strength training, Meredith Terranova for nutrition, and a handful of other professionals in her High Performance Team. Now, on to the next goal!