At the end of September, athletes from around the world gathered in Canfranc, Spain, for the 2025 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships. Unlike most trail and ultra races throughout the year, this was a chance for athletes to represent their countries on the world stage. It’s a unique format for racing, and several The North Face athletes had strong showings on the Pyrenean trails.
The biennial championships, comprising four major races across four days, are one of the biggest events on the off-road running calendar and attract many of the top athletes from around the world. The North Face had athletes running in two of those four races, both the Trail World Championships Short Trail and Long Trail. Both race routes were held on much more technical terrain than traditional trail races, and many athletes likened the courses more to skyrunning — with ridges, exposure, and endless rocks — than the more manicured trails that many events are gravitating toward.
Excelling in these courses required the right combination of technical skills and endurance, and several The North Face team members did exactly that.
Thanks so much to The North Face for sponsoring iRunFar’s coverage of the 2025 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships!
Zach Miller running with full focus with 10 kilometers to go at the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
The North Face Runners in the 2025 Trail World Championships Short Trail
Short may have been a bit of a misnomer for the 2025 Trail World Championships Short Trail event, a 45-kilometer (28 miles) race featuring more than 3,600 meters (12,000 feet) of elevation gain on the storied CanfrancCanfranc Marathon course. With a 1,400-meter (4,600 feet) climb straight out of the gate, which was followed by a technical descent and three more major climbs, the route rewarded fitness, pacing, and the ability to move smoothly and efficiently over difficult terrain. The North Face’s rising star Ruby Lindquist — who said she loved the course — ran a steady race throughout the day to take home 11th in 5:57:07 as the second American finisher in a competitive women’s race. She was within a minute of 10th place.
“Usually I can tell before races when I’m warming up how my body’s feeling, and if it’s going to be a decent day or not. Unfortunately, sometimes I just feel really laggy, but when I was warming up before this race, I was feeling pretty good,” Lindquist said. “And when I started, the first two hours felt really good.” Lindquist went on to explain, “I couldn’t figure out if it was just the adrenaline or if I actually felt good.” Adrenaline or not, Lindquist took full advantage. “I kind of just rode it the whole race. I was fortunate to have a really good day.”
Lindquist, 26, was a member of The North Face’s Athlete Development Program, which provides funding and education for athletes to accelerate their careers in outdoor sports. She signed a contract with The North Face after the program concluded last year.
“The North Face was the first group who helped me believe that I had a future in this,” Lindquist said. “I think that they really supported me at a time where I was at the very beginning of this career, where I didn’t even know if this could be a thing.”
The North Face’s Ruby Lindquist had a breakout performance at the 2025 Trail World Championships Short Trail, finishing in 11th place. Photo: World Mountain and Trail Running Championships
This run was perhaps the Alaskan runner’s biggest result on the world stage and capped off an impressive year. She won the Big Alta 28k in March before finishing second at Mt. Fuji Kai 70k a month later.
“Leading into [the Trail World Championships], my biggest drive was just that I’ve never competed on a stage that big, and I always had this feeling, if I do compete on a world stage, I could do pretty well,” Lindquist said. “But you just don’t know if you haven’t done it.”
She added, “Representing your country at the world championships is a pretty incredible and special honor.”
One of the unique aspects of the Trail World Championships events is that there’s also a team competition, with the times of the top three athletes from a nation adding together to form a final team time. Lindquist was the second American to finish, and was therefore a scoring member of the silver-medal winning women’s Team USA for the Short Trail.
In the men’s race, The North Face runner Seth Ruhling battled back from a tough start to finish as the fourth American and 32nd overall in 5:27:04. Ruhling ran a course record at the Black Canyon 100k in February before placing sixth at the Western States 100 in his 100-mile debut. The Trail World Championships Short Trail was a far cry from the much flatter and smoother California trails that Ruhling had spent the start of his year excelling on, but in a field of nearly 200 men containing some of the top technical runners in the world, Ruhling’s result shows incredible versatility.
Fellow The North Face runner Johnny Luna Lima, competing for Brazil, finished 70th in 5:46:39, and American Michelino Sunseri finished 81st in 5:53:11.
Seth Ruhling descending during the 2025 Trail World Championships Short Trail. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
The North Face Runners in the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail
While the Trail World Championships Long Trail race was only 81 kilometers (50.3 miles) in length, many of the top men were estimating finish times of nine to 10 hours. That is to say, the terrain on the mountainous loop around Canfranc, with 5,078 meters (16,600 feet) of elevation gain, was relatively slow and remarkably technical. Reaching the same high point as the prior day’s Short Trail and completing the route of the World Mountain Running Championships Uphill race, which took place two days before, there was no shortage of vert, rocks, and challenges.
Zach Miller leads two Team USA teammates on the first climb of the course, 5k into the event. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Zach Miller, one of the biggest names in American trail running and a perennial fan favorite for his candidness and all-out racing style, made it to as high as 10th place more than halfway through the race before finishing 18th in 9:44:01.
“I still haven’t sat down and jotted all my thoughts, but I’ve been telling people I’ve had mixed feelings about my about my performance,” Miller said. “What I don’t have mixed feelings about is that the course itself was really cool. The race that they put together this year was a very proper mountain race.”
Early on in the race, Miller was asking about the positions of his teammates and was visibly excited to hear how well everyone was doing.
“Our team was very good this year. All the guys on it are very good runners,” Miller said. “So I was like, ‘Well, I’d at least like to really try to score for the team.’ I was the third guy for our team, even though I would’ve liked to have been higher up in the field, I did score, so I was happy about that.”
Miller’s top-20 finish came just two months after his fifth-place finish at the Hardrock 100. Miller was part of the Team USA men’s team that also placed second at the Trail World Championships Long Trail in 2023, when Miller placed sixth overall, sandwiched between two other Team USA runners.
“I’ve been in world championships for a number of years now and I think this one was hands-down the most competitive one I’ve been to,” Miller said. “Which also made it very fun, because even though I was hoping to be higher up in the in the finish rankings, those guys out front just ran faster than I was thinking it was going to go, which was very impressive. The competitiveness was really cool, because all day long you were just battling.”
Tracen Knopp, another The North Face athlete competing for the U.S., used an impressive second half of the race to finish 25th in 9:58:03 in his debut at the world championships. Knopp, from Alaska, methodically moved his way up throughout the race, from 42nd just before 30k to 31st by 65k. He continued to pick off more runners in front of him to finish 25th.
“I thought Tracen did quite well,” Miller said. “The world championships are a challenging, competitive format, and a top 25 for him — that was strong work.”
Miller and Knopp’s finishes meant two of the top four runners on the second-place American men’s team were The North Face athletes, impressive performances on a true mountain course that tested every aspect of a runner’s skill, perseverance, and dedication.
Tracen Knopp ran an incredibly consistent race for his debut at Trail World Championships. Photo: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Paddy O’Leary, the charismatic Irish runner for The North Face, had an admittedly tough race in the Long Trail but gutted it out to the finish. He was 109th in 12:13:32. Though his performance in this race wasn’t what he had hoped for, he still had an impressive 2025, with a top-25 finish at Transgrancanaria Marathon and a fourth-place finish at the Big Alta 28k.
In the women’s Long Trail race, The North Face had two athletes competing for their countries. Germany’s Ida-Sophie Hegemann, who thrives in races with lots of elevation gain, finished 28th in 11:57:46. American Klaire Rhodes was 35th in 12:15:39, just two months after she placed fourth at the Eiger Ultra Trail 41k.
[Editor’s Note: This article is sponsored by The North Face. Thank you to the brands for their sponsorship of iRunFar, which helps to make iRunFar happen and is free for all to enjoy. Learn more about our sponsored articles.]
The North Face’s Paddy O’Leary running for Team Ireland at the 2025 Trail World Championships Long Trail. Photo: iRunFar/Meghan Hicks
