Race Calendar 2025
How I'm choosing my races for next year
With the end of the year quickly approaching, I’m working on solidifying my racing goals for 2025. This past year has taught me a lot about what I can handle in terms of racing frequency, what gets me excited, and how to choose races. I always have a hard time calling any decision final because whenever I set out on one path, I wonder where the other one would have led. With that said, here’s my current plan for next year (reserving the right to adjust as I go).
Transgrancanaria Classic 120km - February 21
Gorge Waterfalls 100km - April 12
Twisted Fork 30km - June 14
Western States 100 - June 28
Pending Qualification - Canfrac Spain World Champs Long Course - September 27
Ultra-trail Cape Town 100km - November 22
The first two races on this schedule feel pretty set in stone for me. I’m very excited to be going out to the Canary Islands with a fun group of local Salt Lake area friends, and this is a race I’ve been wanting to take a shot at for years. It’s also part of the World Trail Majors, a series that seems cool to me and I’d like to support. The turnaround between TGC and Gorge 100k is a little tight for my liking but I feel like the training for TGC should set me up nicely after a couple weeks of recovering to give Gorge a solid effort to try to qualify for the USA World Championship team.
After that, we’ll see what happens. Twisted Fork in Park City is being revived! It looks amazing and has a surprisingly deep field already signed up, so I can’t wait to participate there but I’m not exactly sure what distance I’ll end up doing. I wish I could hold my spot in Western States for another year because I definitely want to do it again at some point. The race itself was amazing, but I hated the toll it took on my body after and some of the flatter, faster training required for it wasn’t my favorite. The entry process is inconvenient and difficult enough that I may end up racing it again so that I don’t lose my spot, and if I’m going to race it I want to go all in on it again and give it my best effort. We are also expecting our first baby in May and the idea of training and traveling out to race my at my best while managing that big new life change is daunting. So yeah, we’ll see. I’m on the entrants list currently.
If I’m able to get a spot on the World Championship team I would absolutely love a second chance to give it my all, which might mean that if I make the team it makes the decision not to do Western States a bit easier. I want to write more in detail about my last experience at the World Championships in Austria in 2023 because it was such a memorable, eye-opening day but I’ll save that for another time. It’s a special opportunity and one that I would be honored to have in 2025 if it works out. If not, I’d like to wrap up the year by participating in a second World Trail Major race, and UTCT seems like the perfect one. Cape Town is one of my favorite places I’ve ever raced and it would be fun to try to improve on 2023’s second place there and go for the win.
I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else is planning on doing! With so many great athletes in the sport right now it’s always exciting to see start lines getting deeper and deeper. Plus half the fun of racing is dreaming and scheming about future travels and adventures.
But you’ll have the “baby bump” at WSER this year! That’s like a guaranteed podium finish….😜
Excited to see how the year goes, and congrats on the news!