Lining up for her fourth lap around Mont Blanc, the American living in France, Katie Schide, arrives at the 2024 UTMB just nine weeks after winning the 2024 Western States 100. In this interview, she talks about her recovery after racing in California, what keeps bringing her back to UTMB after winning it in 2022, and the parts of the race she’s most looking forward to.
For more on who’s racing, check out our in-depth women’s and men’s previews and follow our live race coverage starting Friday.
Katie Schide Pre-2024 UTMB Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Megan Hicks of iRunFar. I’m with Katie Schide. It’s a couple of days before the 2024 UTMB. Here we find ourselves again. Katie, how are you?
Schide: I’m doing well. Yeah. Happy to be back. Well, we’ve been here a bit, but it’s always nice to be back.
iRunFar: Yeah. Or weren’t you a surprise starting entrant on this entrance list as of late or is this something that you’ve been planning but we didn’t know about?
Schide: It wasn’t too much of a surprise. We were required to register in January and I registered, but I did take the runner’s insurance just in case I canceled. That’s how, I wasn’t sure, I wanted to wait until after Western States and just put everything on Western States and then decide after if I had the motivation mentally, if it made sense, if I felt okay, if I really wanted to do it. So I guess it’s a semi-surprise.
iRunFar: A planned unplanned plan.
Schide: Yeah, exactly.
iRunFar: So it has been close to seven weeks since we saw you on a hot afternoon at the finish line of Western States. Talk us through what these weeks have looked like. I think you have traveled a lot, you’ve rested a lot, and you’ve trained a bit?
Schide: Yeah, I haven’t traveled too much. I went home, I came back to the south of France two days after Western States, and then spent three weeks at home in the south, and then we came up here at the end of July. So yeah, we’ve been here for just over a month now, and that was always the plan because yeah, my partner, Germain, was always sure to do UTMB, so it was always the plan to come and …
iRunFar: Whether you were going to do a long race, a medium race, or not a race.
Schide: No race, or, yeah.
iRunFar: So yeah, straight home after Western States, a little bit of time at home and then now you’ve become a Chamonix Valley local?
Schide: Yeah, almost. Well, we were staying at the end of the valley, a bit removed. But yeah, we came in a lot to enjoy the food and coffee and see a few people.
iRunFar: And how about the recovery and conversion of the body and mind from all things Western States now to all things UTMB? How’s that been for you?
Schide: Yeah, it’s been really cool actually because I had a lot of fun taking on this challenge of Western States. But it just felt so nice to come back and be in the places that I prefer a little bit more and yeah, I get the poles out, wear a real backpack again. It kind of just felt like starting a new sport and I was lucky to not have any big injuries or anything coming out of Western States, so that made it relatively smooth, I guess. I think last year I played it pretty safe. Everyone told me UTMB after Western States and I listened and I did OCC and really enjoyed that.
iRunFar: And it turned out well for you.
Schide: Yeah, it was great, and I’m really happy I did that and this year I knew more or less how it feels to do Western States, how it feels to train for it, how it feels to come back. So I just had a bit more experience with how everything felt.
iRunFar: Yeah, so I think you sort of mentioned the mind there. You felt like the difference between the sport of Western States running and the sport of UTMB running was enough of a transition that this feels fresh to you?
Schide: Yeah, it does feel pretty fresh, especially because I took a year off UTMB and I’ve already done three UTMBs, so taking the year off kind of gave me the chance to miss it a little bit, and it also made me feel like it’s not something I have to do. Not that I ever really felt that, but I sort of put it on myself that it was my biggest focus of the whole year, which it is, I would say, I mean basically everyone on the start line. I’m in kind of a unique position that I did already finish the race. That was really my focus 100%.
iRunFar: Well, finish and do really good at too.
Schide: Yeah, and that’s a bonus for sure. And now I’m super happy to be here knowing that I, just having the past to look back on and just see what Western States training can bring me towards this race.
iRunFar: Yeah, I really enjoyed a social media post you said the other day about how you have a new confidence about the parts of this course that you were less confident about in the past, the more runnable stuff, courtesy of a couple of years of focused time on Western States. Yeah, just talk about that for a second.
Schide: Yeah, it’s the thing that always, I think it scares most of the French trail runners is the fast or the fast-pacedness of Western States. How much do you have to run. Yeah, you’re really running almost the entire race, and that’s pretty rare in Europe to find a race so long that’s like that. So it’s something that also scared me because yeah, it’s more how I came into the sport. It was not from a traditional high school cross-country running or high school, college, cross country/track background, but more from the side of hiking.
And so I feel like I really focused on my weaknesses for two years now, and yeah, I might miss some of that specificity that I had coming to the race in the past. But I’m just interested to see where that puts me.
iRunFar: Interesting for me is that somebody like you who’s already had a career defining performance or kind of all you could ask for at a previous UTMB before, but you’re back for either more, better, different, something along those lines. Just looking back at your prior UTMB experiences, what do you take from those that you’re like, “Oh, I want to just press repeat and do something I did really well again,” or something like, “Hmm, let’s try that different”?
Schide: Yeah. I’ve had some complicated moments on this course and some great ones.
iRunFar: Isn’t it such a European way to say that?
Schide: Yeah, I’m picking up the French English. Yeah, I’ve had some pretty bad moments on this racecourse. But I think that’s also what always made me the most proud at the end was just continuing even when things were really bad. And it’s something that helped me a lot in 2022 is just being at these points where I felt good and saying, “Oh wow, I feel so much better than the last two times I was here.”
And it’s something when I did have a pretty low moment in 2022 that got me through it because I was like, “Hey, I felt this bad for a 100k in the past and I made it so I can feel like this for an hour or two.”
But this year I think the thing that’s really motivating me is it’s something that ultimately made me the most interested to do it again was just the female start list is looking so good and…
iRunFar: So good.
Schide: … I really want to be here for it. We had just such a great group of women at Western States and we saw what that brought to all of us, and I want to be part of this group of women. I think it’s going to be similar to Western States with just the whole top 10, the whole top group of women is just really going to bring those times down. Not that the course is ever exactly the same. There are lots little changes.
iRunFar: It changes every year.
Schide: But in general, I think it’s going to be a really fast, strong year.
iRunFar: Seeing the times get just objectively faster and faster.
Schide: Yeah. And not just for the first one or two, but for everybody.
iRunFar: For me when it comes to the women’s competition, that’s the new dynamic that all of you are playing with in these races, is that there’s really no room for much more than a little blip or a little problem. If you drop quite a ways back, say five years ago at ultras, you could still make your way forward through the pack. I think those days may have come and gone for women’s ultrarunning at a race like this.
Schide: Yeah, we’re still not quite, unfortunately, we don’t have quite the density to be the men quite yet, but soon it’s coming and it’s exciting to see that. It makes us all bring our performances to a new level knowing we don’t have this space to mess up too much.
iRunFar: It’s an interesting race. You had a funny social media post the other day about like, “Oh, we’re going to go around the mountain and do all these climbs and descents and never summit anything.” However, it’s an extraordinary course in just so many different ways. You know it well, you’ve run it a couple of times, you’ve trained on it. Are there certain just landscape aspects or geography aspects that you’re thinking, I can’t wait to do that again?
Schide: I don’t run at night in training very often. Pretty rarely. That’s always something that’s the biggest, it’s pretty rare in training you would go out and run for the entire night for that long. And so that’s always the sort of cool part where you’re like, wow, we’re out here and everyone says you see the line of headlamps. It’s really those are special moments.
Other than that, I know the landscapes pretty well at this point, so it’s not usually new. But yeah, I do try to take a moment to look up and just be like, wow, this is really beautiful. Unfortunately, some of the best parts will hopefully be at night for me.
iRunFar: Fingers crossed they happen in the nighttime.
Schide: And missing Tete aux Vents last two years has been unfortunate because that’s also…
iRunFar: Really beautiful.
Schide: … a pretty great spot, but we’ll be in the trees this year.
iRunFar: Yeah, just brief glances of the terrain as you’re climbing. It’s funny to hear you also mention the night as being one of your favorites. It seems like that’s just a favorite of everybody.
Schide: I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite thing. It’s sort of the thing that makes ultrarunning more special to me than just going out for a long run because I wouldn’t normally choose to do that.
iRunFar: It’s also kind of different here because you simultaneously do the night during the more remote part of the course too. So it’s like you have this really wild and crazy evening for 40K and then you go to dark and relative like trail emptiness and then daytime comes again. It’s wild and crazy all day long. It’s just, I don’t know, that interplay of day and night and people and not people is just interesting.
Schide: The race for me is really those sections between Contamines and Courmayeur and then Courmayeur and Champex-Lac, it is completely different than when you see your crew every couple of hours at the end. So it’s a lot of things to manage and always stressful when you’re going through your plan at the last minute, trying to put the right things and never really knowing how it’s going to turn out.
iRunFar: Yeah. Well, I have a feeling it’s going to turn out just okay for you, or better than okay, let’s say. Best of luck to you on your, what is this, your fourth lap?
Schide: My fourth UTMB.
iRunFar: Best of luck.
Schide: Thank you.
