After a podium finish at the 2025 Sierre-Zinal and a win at the 2025 Hardrock 100, America’s Katie Schide comes to the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail continuing her year of multi-distance racing. In the following interview, Katie talks about her hat choices for iRunFar interviews over the years, recceing the course earlier this year, her transition between the various races she’s done this summer, and what she thinks about this race course.
For more on who’s racing, check out our in-depth women’s and men’s previews and follow our live race coverage on Saturday.
[Editor’s Note: If you are unable to see the video above, click here to access it.]
Katie Schide Pre-2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Meghan Hicks of iRunFar. I’m with Katie Schide. It’s a couple days before the Trail World Championships Long Trail. We’re here in the Pyrenees of Spain. Hi, Katie.
Katie Schide: Hey, Meghan. Good to see you.
iRunFar: You are looking really good in your Team USA outfit.
Schide: Thank you. This hat is actually a special throwback to our second ever conversation at the Madeira Island Ultra [Trail], the MUIT in 2019.
iRunFar: I have very fond recollections of trying to tell myself to stare at your eyes and not at your hat during that interview. So we’re doing the same here.
Schide: [laughs] People have to go check the archives on that one to see what hat I was wearing.
iRunFar: We’re definitely going to link it from the interview now so people can go. So we have moved from Madeira, Portugal to Canfranc, Spain. Trail World Championships. The Long Trail race is on Saturday, and the World Championships themselves start tomorrow. How are you feeling going into your first time here at the Trail World Champs?
Schide: Yeah. I’m excited. I mean, I’ve been following Trail World Champs for a long time, but I guess the two most recent ones were Thailand and Innsbruck. And I had a great time following those from afar, and always thought it would be cool to have a USA team kit and get to run on a team for the U.S., and I am finally here. It feels weird. I’ve been thinking about this for, I guess, two, maybe even more than two years now, so it’s cool to be here.
iRunFar: I have wondered what sort of the emotion and feeling is like. Is there a little bit of an American expat living in Southern France, but you’re an American. You’re in the Team USA kit. Is there a mix of emotions in how to occupy the space as a member of Team USA?
Schide: Yeah. It’s a good question because I don’t live in the U.S., but my only passport is American. I just voted in one of our intermediate elections two days ago on my computer.
iRunFar: Amazing.
Schide: Still an active voter. I guess I still feel most of my family and friends, although I have made friends since moving to Europe. I mean, I do have a huge portion …
iRunFar: [laughs] Thanks for clarifying.
Schide: I don’t want to sound like I don’t know anyone here. But, yeah, I mean, most of my history is in the U.S., and that’s where a lot of people I love live. And I do feel really connected, I guess, from a sport side, just because there are different approaches to sport in Europe and the U.S. And I feel really lucky to have grown up in the U.S. where there were a lot of opportunities for young girls to be part of lots of different sporting teams, and just in general in school. So I feel proud to come from that, and I think that’s something more I’m thinking about than my address.
iRunFar: Cool. Also, you know, modern era, we all interact with each other pretty widely.
Schide: Yeah.
iRunFar: But I mean, it is, because you get used to European life that there’s daily things that are just very different here that we as guests love to come and enjoy, and that are now kind of inherent to your life here.
Schide: Yeah. And it’s the same way for us when we go to the U.S. Like, there’s no place to get pancakes in a diner here, things like that.
iRunFar: There’s no places to get really good pastries. Few places in America. Where you can get those pretty readily here.
Schide: We actually live in a pretty rural place in France. We also don’t have access to bakeries.
iRunFar: A travesty.
Schide: Yeah.
iRunFar: The last time we saw you was at the finish line of Hardrock [100]. That was mid-July, where you won and set a course record. Since then, you did two quite different races. You did an uphill pavement race, I think, near your home, and then you also were podium at Sierre-Zinal. And then now we’re here at something that’s like a half Hardrock-ish type event. You have had some diversity in your racing schedule this year.
Schide: Yeah. That was part of the plan.
iRunFar: Okay.
Schide: I mean, Sierre-Zinal actually wasn’t part of the original plan, but the plan this year, at least the way I thought of this year, was for it to be different and try new things. Not, I mean, I love Western States, UTMB, and like, Diagonale des Fous, the classic big hitters, but it’s also really fun to do different distances. I feel like somehow I ended up in this, I’ve heard myself described as a 100-mile specialist, which I never intended to be.
iRunFar: I don’t want to be, guys!
Schide: Yeah. I really just want to be involved in the sport in its entirety.
iRunFar: Mm hmm.
Schide: And those are the athletes that have always inspired me the most. People who could be really strong at short races and then also perform really well at ultras. So that was always something that inspired me. And yeah, starting off with the MUIT, which is in the 15-hour range, I guess, but has this kind of night start. Whereas here, it’s more like a mini ultra. I mean, it’s still an ultra. Like, really anything over two hours is really long, but at least there’s no night part to this race, so that’s a huge difference.
iRunFar: Touch wood on that one. Right?
Schide: Yeah. Hopefully. I’m not sure how much I agree with the predicted times from the race organization. They’re quite optimistic in our abilities, I think.
iRunFar: Very aggressive splits.
Schide: Yeah. So it’s been a cool year already. I feel like I’ve done every single type of race. I also did, like, the French Cross Country Championships in March. So I feel like I hit every distance other than, like, the hurdles or something.
iRunFar: Definitely have checked off the race diversity goal for this year.
Schide: Yeah. So it’s been fun, and I think this is one last, fun, different distance to add.
iRunFar: Talk a little bit about the behind the scenes, the preparation and transitioning from Hardrock mid-July to Sierre-Zinal, which is a race that’s done in a little over two hours in August.
Schide: Three.
iRunFar: Sorry. Three. And then here, which is going to be who knows how many hours on Saturday?
Schide: Man, getting back from Hardrock was a lot more fatiguing than I expected. Because the race is a lot slower than Western States or UTMB, my body definitely felt better quite quickly. But just mentally, I think with all the travel, and I’m sure the altitude didn’t help me feel super fresh either. Yeah. Just getting back to France, was feeling pretty fatigued and just kind of like I needed a breather. And when I saw that Sierre-Zinal kind of fit in the schedule, it kind of gave me the second wave of excitement because I’d always wanted to do it again.
iRunFar: Oh, cool.
Schide: So that kind of gave me a fun thing to look forward to in August. And then it was all the focus was on UTMB supporting Germain [Grangier]. And so I also had that time in Chamonix where I didn’t do the 100-mile race, but I was certainly not fresh after that week. It’s quite tiring, as you guys know.
iRunFar: Crewing a 100 miler is a thing.
Schide: Just being in Chamonix for that week is exhausting and trying to get some training in at the same time. I feel like a lot has happened since Hardrock and just trying to keep some consistent good training in between. Not, like, overdo anything. Just, yeah, keep things steady.
iRunFar: Do you feel like you fit in what you wanted to fit in or what you thought was good for just trying to bridge the gaps between these races?
Schide: I’m not sure. I think I sort of just put all the trust into my coach.
iRunFar: Okay.
Schide: I don’t think I had the mental space to really think about everything in too much detail.
iRunFar: Yeah. You did what you were told.
Schide: Was just like, follow the plan, trust the process. It’s worked for me in past years, and there’s no reason why that doesn’t need to work for the last couple weeks.
iRunFar: Yes. So, turning our sights to this race, this event, to this course. You said off camera that you came here post Sierre-Zinal to recce the course, and everybody’s talking about how unique this course is. For folks who aren’t here and who won’t see it, want to describe what this course is going to be like?
Schide: Yeah. The way I described it, I think, after the first day or two of doing some recon, was that it’s an 80k Skyrace.
iRunFar: Okay.
Schide: Yeah. It’s just like a lot of off trail, not a lot of runnable parts, the few little parts, but even then it’s not anything too fast other than the first couple k on the road.
iRunFar: Hey. We’re running, guys.
Schide: Yeah. And then it’s all very dynamic from there. I think it will run a lot faster than in training, just with the flags, because a lot of what takes a while when you’re just doing recon is just figuring out where you need to go, because these are not established trails in a lot of places. So it’ll kind of be cool to not have to think about navigation. Yeah. It’s definitely a mountain race. My biggest concern was that if the weather wasn’t good, I didn’t know what their backup plan was, because everything around here is really exposed.
iRunFar: Mm hmm.
Schide: But it looks like we’re going to be okay.
iRunFar: Touch wood on that one.
Schide: It should be a beautiful course and, like, truly a mountain trail race.
iRunFar: So, the race organization is saying that the winning men might run this in around nine hours, and the winning women in maybe, like, 10.5. How are we feeling about that?
Schide: I honestly didn’t do any in-depth splits or anything. I’d put some general times so I knew how many gels to take in between aid stations, but I can’t even, I honestly haven’t even looked at that plan in three weeks, so I don’t even remember. But, yeah, that would be fast.
iRunFar: Okay.
Schide: But I do think the dynamics of having marks as opposed to navigating on your own could change the speed completely.
iRunFar: And being able to see other people sort of out in the distance and being like, “Oh, I’m going that general direction, too.”
Schide: Because I spent a lot of time just navigating cows, being terrified of sheepdogs.
iRunFar: Okay.
Schide: Lightning storms. So I think there’s a lot of time to shave off.
iRunFar: There’s lots of different parts of the course. There’s sort of typical trails here and there, when you get below treeline, and like you said, there’s some ridgelines. There’s some steep ups and downs off of peaks. You live in a remote part of France. You have mountains there. How does this compare to your own training grounds and what you normally choose to go out and train on?
Schide: Yeah. Actually, so when I came to do some recon in the second week of August, it was kind of to know where and what should I be training for over the next few weeks. And the best part of seeing the course was just being like, “Great. Training from home is absolutely perfect.”
iRunFar: Perfect.
Schide: Yeah. I don’t need to do anything special. I can leave from my door, and it’s close enough to the race course. Yeah. I mean, I’m not running off trail on purpose, but our trails at home are very technical, and rocky. So very similar.
iRunFar: Katie Schide, best of luck at your first Trail World Championships, and best of luck also to Team USA.
Schide: Thank you. Yes.
