How She Did It: Katie Schide’s Western States Winning Formula

By Jason Koop,
Head Coach of CTS Ultrarunning,
Author of “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning, 2nd Ed”

Part 1: Inside the High-Performance Team

Now that the dust has settled after the 2024 Western States Endurance Run (WSER), I’ve been humbled by the outpouring of congratulations and gratitude from friends, family, colleagues, and of course, athletes. Before the start, I believed an elite women’s podium sweep with Katie Schide, Fuzhao Xiang, and Eszter Csillag was possible. I also recognized it was improbable, just because so many variables needed to fall into place on race day to lead to that outcome. Here’s the story of how my colleagues and I collaborated to put Katie Schide in a position to win Western States.

Starting at the Beginning

Katie Schide was a talented and accomplished ultramarathon competitor before I ever met her. Before her breakout win at the 2022 Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, she won the 90km Marathon Mont Blanc in 2019 and finished top 10 in UTMB twice. We started working together in the fall of 2021 and my main objective for 2022 was to focus her training on more running and fewer extraneous activities. After winning UTMB in 2022, we set our eyes on the 2023 WSER. Katie progressed well and in her debut at WSER she set the second fastest women’s finishing time in history, behind race winner and new course record holder Courtney Dauwalter.

“How are we going to get better through training?”

At the end of each season, this is the question I ask myself about every athlete I work with. In Part 2 of this article, I’ll take you through some of the details on how we answered this question for Katie Schide. But a second component of answering this question meant looking beyond myself and borrowing from high performance team concepts that are used successfully in other sports, like Formula 1 auto racing and other motorsports, professional tennis, and elite marathon running (remember the projects to break the 2-hour marathon barrier?).

Here’s how we designed and implemented a High Performance Concept for Ultramarathon

The High-Performance Team Concept

As with race day performance, innumerable variables must fall the right way for athletes to arrive at the start line of a major race with a legitimate chance to win. I decided to build individual teams around each elite athlete, using different domain experts based on the athlete’s personality, support system, and strengths and weaknesses. To create the teams I looked for three things: People I could trust, people of exceptional skill, and people with load management experience.

Domain expertise and trustworthiness make intuitive sense as selection criteria. Load management experience was critical, though. I needed people who could look at everything an athlete was doing and incorporate their area of expertise (e.g., strength training) in a way that added to the athlete rather than detracted from them.

Katie Schide’s High Performance Team primarily included me, Sarah Scozzaro for strength and mobility training, and Meredith Terranova for nutrition. I brought in additional experts for specific tasks, like physical therapy, when warranted as well as sports psychology that she had before we put the rest of the team together.

Katie Schide’s Strength Training Program  

Sarah Scozzaro RRCA, NSCA-PT, NASM-PES earned her Masters degree in Exercise Science with a concentration in Performance Enhancement and Injury Prevention, and has certifications in personal training and Restorative Exercise. I brought Sarah into Katie’s HPT because I intended to increase Katie’s overall running volume and speed going into 2024. We felt it was important to incorporate strength training and mobility work to increase her durability and physical resilience.

(l-r) Jason Koop, Katie Schide, and Sarah Scozzaro after the 2024 Western States Endurance Run.

Key aspects of Sarah’s Strength and Mobility Program for Katie Schide:

• Periodized: Started with higher volume of foundational strength exercises early in the season when running volume was lower. Heavier phase of lifting in the spring before Canyons 100k, then reduced strength training workload and more mobility work between Canyons and WSER.
• Schedule and equipment: Normally two lifting sessions per week, using at-home equipment (e.g., dumbells, barbel, resistance bands, etc.) rather than a commercial gym.
• Two-rep reserve: Although she lifted heavy for part of the program, Sarah instructed Katie not to go to failure. Rather, she used a “two-rep reserve”, which means she adjusted the weight and rep count so she could complete a set with the theoretical capability to complete two more reps.

Katie Schide’s peak paces-by-distance at 2024 WSER

Western States is a “runner’s ultramarathon”, meaning athletes who want to do well need to be able to run relatively fast (7:00 – 8:30 min mile pace) on smooth terrain for large portions of the race to contend for the win. See the graphic above for Katie’s peak pace-by-distance in parts of WSER. Transitioning from European races (Katie is an American who lives in France) that feature steep, mountainous terrain meant strengthening and improving mobility through the hips and ankles.

Katie Schide’s Nutrition Program 

Meredith Terranova earned her bachelor’s degree in Human Nutrition and Consumer Science from the University of Houston in 1997 and has been helping clients reach their nutritional goals since 2004. In 2020, she earned her Master’s in Advanced Nutrition and Human Performance. As a member of the HPT, Meredith was in charge of ensuring that Katie’s diet adequately supported the elevated training workload Sarah and I intended to implement.

Key aspects of Meredith’s Nutrition Program for Katie Schide:

• Increased protein intake: Meredith had Katie consume approximately 120-130 grams of protein per day. Living in the mountains in France through the winter, canned anchovies and sardines were a frequent choice because of availability, along with recovery drinks and protein powders.
• Mixed macronutrient, whole food diet: Katie loves food, so Meredith did not have to make major modifications to Katie’s normal food choices. Some details they focused on included adding more iron-rich foods and trying to consume about 250-300 grams of carbohydrate per day.
• 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour during runs: Despite the trend toward consumption of large amounts (i.e., 100-120 g/hr) of carbohydrate during exercise, Katie prefers and performs well on about 60-65 grams of carbohydrate per hour.

Race day nutrition strategies at WSER in 2024 included advice to take advantage of ice at aid stations for cooling to reduce reliance on fluid intake for core temperature control, and subsequently reduce the risk of stomach upset. Specifically for Katie, Meredith also recommended liquid calories only in the early miles at WSER, and then a transition to varied nutrition sources, including gels, chews, aid station snacks and sandwiches.

Katie Schide eating and getting ice in her hat at Michigan Bluff.

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Constant Monitoring and Communication

You’ll notice there are no wild and crazy training modalities or recommendations in the contributions from Sarah or Meredith. There were times we needed to get creative to solve problems, but for the most part, the programming stuck to fundamentals, sports science principles, and the sum of our experience coaching athletes. Even the suite of tools we used was pretty simple: TrainingPeaks for workout scheduling, subjective feedback from Katie, and training file analysis (along with WKO5); MyFitnessPal for dietary tracking; and the HRV4Training app to monitor heart rate variability (more on that in Part 2). Constant communication amongst team members and with Katie was critical to the HPT’s success. Because the team was spread across the country, I travel a lot, and Katie lives in France, we used Whatsapp for many of our conversations and for sharing feedback.

Overall, Katie’s victory at WSER and the podium sweep with Fuzhao Xiang and Eszter Csillag prove that a High Performance Team concept and utilizing other domain experts works for ultramarathon athletes. In my view, one of the HPT’s greatest benefits was having many expert eyes an athlete’s objective and subjective data. Sarah, Meredith, and I viewed Katie’s data through our own unique lenses, and Sarah and Meredith interpreted some things differently than I would have, and vice versa.

I’m excited to expand the High-Performance Team concept with more athletes in 2025 and beyond. And before that, check back in next week for more in-depth information about the run training aspect of Katie’s WSER preparation.