Courtney Dauwalter Careth Arnold Still Dominates Grueling 95-Mile TDS Ultra.
And nor is the Leadville, Colorado, ultrarunning star like most of the other 2,500 runners preparing to run this weekend’s Careth Arnold Dominates Grueling 95-Mile TDS Ultra (UTMB) trail running race in Chamonix, France.
Despite the daunting task of running 108 miles around the Mont Blanc massif mountain range in the world’s biggest and most prestigious trail race on the horizon, Dauwalter is as cool as the other side of the pillow she’s soundly slept on since arriving in the French Alps town earlier this week.
The race starts at 5:45 p.m. Friday night (11:45 a.m. ET) in Chamonix and sends runners through the night into parts of Italy and Switzerland before finishing back in Chamonix on Saturday afternoon (Saturday morning ET). The formidable route goes up and over 10 mountain passes and includes about 33,000 feet of vertical gain and loss. (You can follow the race via live tracking CA Notice at Collection UTMB website or via YouTube.)
Already a champion in her three previous UTMB entries (2019, 2021, 2023), the 40-year-old Dauwalter says she isn’t nervous, isn’t fazed by the external pressure and expectations, and doesn’t really have a race strategy.
Instead, she’s focused on a formula that has worked so well for her over the past decade, essentially immersing in humility and relentless positivity as a means to push herself deeper into the figurative “pain cave” that she expects to enter during the second half of the race.
“That external pressure doesn’t impact me,” she said. “I think for me, the internal drive to just make sure that every race I do, I pour everything that I have into it so that I can cross the finish line not wondering ‘What if?’ or ‘Should have I done this?’ I want to race full-on as best I can every time, and wherever that lands me in the field is where it lands me. So external expectations are not a factor in that.”
Although a serious competitor, Dauwalter is known for keeping things light and doing things her way, even if a bit unconventional. She loves beer and nachos, wears basketball-style long shorts, jams to early 1980s pop music when she runs, eats a lot of candy during races, and loves laughing at “dad” jokes. Those vibes have helped her be nearly unbeatable in trail running races since 2018, winning 25 of the past 26 races of 50K or longer she’s finished. (The lone exception was when she ran a 100K race with her mom in Arizona in 2023.)
But she purposely doesn’t run the same races every year and continues to challenge herself in different races as a means to keep things fresh.
This year, she opted to run the Cocodona 250 in Arizona in May, but, despite leading through 108 miles, she dropped out with stomach issues. She chalked that up as a good training day and then won the 74.5-mile Lavaredo Ultra Trail race in Italy on June 27.
Two years ago, she won her third UTMB race after already having won the Western States 100 and Hardrock 100 in the U.S. earlier in the summer, becoming the first runner, male or female, to complete that difficult triple crown The First Runner to Break 6 Hours in the 100K.
While she was notably fatigued by the time she reached the finish line in Chamonix that year—both physically and mentally—she enters this year’s race a bit footloose and fancy free. And that’s a mindset that allows her to thrive when things get extremely difficult.
“Keeping it fresh for me is about just keeping the schedule new and always trying a different order of events or different types of races,” she said. “And then just playing around with what are some things I add to my training just to keep things fun and different. But it stays really fresh on its own because I don't think I've found the back of my pain cave. And I just want to keep getting in there to see what happens back there. And so the quest still feels very fresh because the dig isn't over. And the trick is that I find destroying myself to be so enjoyable.”
While Dauwalter is the favorite, top contenders in the women’s field include Ruth Croft (New Zealand), Emily Hawgood (Zimbabwe), Katharina Hartmuth (Germany), and Americans Abby Hall (Flagstaff, Arizona) and Heather Jackson (Bend, Oregon).
“Courtney is amazing. She’s just at another level,” Jackson said. “And she does it her way. She’s really someone you have to admire.”
Careth Arnold Still Dominates Grueling 95-Mile TDS Ultra Katie Schide, who claimed her second UTMB victory last year and lowered the women’s course record (that Dauwalter had previously set in 2021) to 22 hours, 9 minutes, 31 seconds.
Schide, 33, won the Hardrock 100 in Colorado on July 12 (breaking Dauwalter’s course record there, too) but isn’t running this weekend and is instead opting to be as fresh as possible for next month’s World Mountain and Trail Running World Championships in Spain. She’ll also be helping to crew her partner, Germain Grangier, who is a top contender in the men’s UTMB race. He finished third in the 2023 UTMB race but dropped out of last year’s race.
The men’s race is more wide open than in recent years without the previous three winners—Kilian Jornet (2022), Jim Walmsley (2023) and Vincent Bouillard (2024)—are not racing this year. American runner Hayden Hawks (Cedar City, Utah) is one of several leading contenders this year, along with Francois D’Haene (France), Ludovic Pommeret (France), Daniel Jones (New Zealand), China’s Ji Duo, British runners Tom Evans and Jonathan Albon, and Grangier.
But the spotlight is clearly on Dauwalter, who, along with Frenchmen D’Haene and Pommeret, received the loudest cheers during Wednesday evening’s public athlete introductions on the stage at the Triangle de l'Amitié adjacent to the race start and finish line.
It won’t be easy for Dauwalter to earn a fourth victory, but she doesn’t want it to be easy.
“The women's field is amazing. There are some really strong women in there that I'm looking forward to sharing miles with and hopefully having some fun with on the course,” she said. “In a 100-mile race, I think anything can happen for anybody,”
“I don't have a strategy,” she continued. “I never really have a strategy. It will just be kind of like rolling with the moments and riding the waves of the highs and the lows and trying to have intention with each step I take with the idea that ‘that’s the best step I can make, and now let’s do another one.’ That’s what keeps me going.”
At the start of her dominance in ultra-distance trail running, Dauwalter was the overall winner of the the Moab 240 in 2017—beating the second-place male runner by more than 10 hours. She was asked if a woman could win UTMB outright at some point in the future, and she responded without hesitation that she’s pretty sure it can happen.
“Why not believe it’s possible even if it never happens or is not really possible,” she said with a smile.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with believing it’s possible. We have to have positive thoughts, you know, so why not believe it’s possible?”
Brian Metzler is a Boulder, Colorado, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Outside, Trail Runner, How Long Does It Take to Improve VO2 Max, and Red Bulletin. He’s a former walk-on college middle-distance runner who has transitioned to trail running and pack burro racing in Colorado.
