2025 Was the Year Everything We Thought Was Impossible Became Routine
Step back from the individual stories and look at the bigger picture. 2025 wasn’t just a good year for trail and ultra running. It was a paradigm shift. A year where records we assumed would stand forever crumbled like they were made of sand.
Let’s run through the damage.
Ann Trason’s Leadville record stood for 31 years. Gone.
When Trason ran 18:06:24 at the 1994 Leadville 100, she was at the absolute peak of her powers. She’d already won six consecutive Western States titles. She was racing against the Tarahumara runners from Mexico’s Copper Canyons. She finished second overall that day, behind only Juan Herrera, who passed her with 13 miles to go. The record felt untouchable because Trason was untouchable.
Anne Flower, an emergency room doctor who decided to enter the race two weeks before it started, ran 17:58:19. Eight minutes faster. On her first attempt at 100 miles. She averaged 10:47 per mile at altitude for nearly 18 hours. When asked about it afterward, she shrugged and noted that she “should probably be breaking records set in the 1990s” because of better training, nutrition, and shoes.
She’s not wrong. But that doesn’t make it any less stunning.
Courtney Dauwalter’s Hardrock record, set just the year before. Gone.
Katie Schide ran 25:50:23 in the counterclockwise direction, becoming the first woman to break 26 hours at Hardrock in either direction. She beat Dauwalter’s 2023 counterclockwise mark of 26:14:08 by nearly 24 minutes. She also beat Dauwalter’s 2024 clockwise record of 26:11:49, making her time the fastest any woman has ever run Hardrock, period.
Schide led from the start, built a 35 minute gap on Dauwalter’s splits by mile 30, and never looked back. She crossed 13 mountain passes above 12,000 feet, summited Handies Peak at 14,048 feet, and ran through the night in the San Juan Mountains like she owned the place.
The American 100K record. Gone.
Charlie Lawrence, already the 50 mile world record holder, showed up to the Desert Solstice Track Invitational in Phoenix with one goal: break six hours for 100 kilometers. He came up 95 seconds short, finishing in 6:07:10, but that was still good enough to shatter Jim Walmsley’s American record of 6:09:26, which had stood since 2021.
Lawrence’s time is the fourth fastest 100K ever run on a ratifiable course. Only Aleksandr Sorokin of Lithuania (twice) and Japan’s Jumpei Yamaguchi have gone faster. Lawrence ran 250 laps around a 400 meter track, averaging 3:41 per kilometer, and walked away talking about what he needs to fix to finally crack that six hour barrier.
The women’s 100 mile world record. Gone.
Caitriona Jennings of Ireland, a 45 year old former Olympic marathoner (London 2012), showed up to the Tunnel Hill 100 Mile in Vienna, Illinois, for her first ever 100 mile race. She averaged 7:34 per mile for 160.9 kilometers. For nearly the first 80 miles, her splits varied by no more than a second or two from 7:26 pace.
Her final time: 12:37:04. That’s five and a half minutes faster than Camille Herron’s 2017 mark of 12:42:40, which had stood as one of the most bulletproof records in ultrarunning.
Jennings held the Irish records at 50K (3:16:33) and 100K (7:43:01) going into the race. She’s won the IAU 50K European Championships. She’s placed in the top ten at Comrades four times. But 100 miles was supposed to be different. The distance breaks people who aren’t ready.
Jennings flew home to Ireland the next day, took a quick nap, and cycled into her office job on Monday morning. Normal stuff.
The women’s 50 mile world record. Gone.
Earlier that same day at Tunnel Hill, Anne Flower added another world record to her collection. She ran 5:18:57, obliterating Courtney Olsen’s 2024 mark of 5:31:56 by nearly 13 minutes. That’s almost 13 minutes off a record that was itself less than a year old.
Flower averaged 6:23 per mile for 50 miles on a flat, crushed gravel rail trail. She made a last minute decision to race Tunnel Hill instead of a road marathon, showed up, and ran one of the most dominant performances the distance has ever seen.
This is the same person who broke Trason’s Leadville record three months earlier. The same person who won the Javelina 100K in 2024. The same person who balances all of this with a full time job as an ER doc in Colorado Springs.
Courtney Olsen’s 100K American record. Gone.
On the same day Jennings and Flower were rewriting the record books at Tunnel Hill, Olsen was running the 100K distance in the same event. She finished in 6:59:55, becoming only the second woman ever to break seven hours for 100K in a ratified event. New American record. Casual.
And that’s not even the full list.
Tove Alexandersson of Sweden won the Short Trail event at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships by over 30 minutes. Thirty. Minutes. In a 45K race. She’s primarily an orienteer and ski mountaineer, and she showed up and made everyone else look like they were running in sand.
Rachel Entrekin won her 18th consecutive ultra, including course records at High Lonesome 100 and the Mammoth 200. She finished a 208 mile race with 30,000 feet of climbing and asked, “Who’s in for one more loop?”
Ludovic Pommeret defended his Hardrock title at age 49, two weeks before his 50th birthday, running the fifth fastest time in race history at 22:21. A French podium sweep followed, with Mathieu Blanchard and Louison Coiffet sharing silver.
Tara Dower set a new overall supported FKT on Vermont’s Long Trail, covering 272 miles in 3 days, 18 hours, and 29 minutes. This after setting the overall supported Appalachian Trail FKT in 2024, beating Karel Sabbe’s 2018 mark by more than 13 hours.
David Hedges reclaimed the supported Nolan’s 14 FKT after François D’Haene had briefly taken it earlier in 2025. The record bounced back and forth like a tennis ball.
Kilian Jornet climbed 72 fourteeners across Colorado, California, and Washington by foot and bike in 31 days, covering 3,197 miles with 403,690 feet of elevation gain.
Sarah Webster of the UK set a new world record at the IAU 24 Hour World Championships, running 278.622 kilometers (173.127 miles) and beating the previous mark by over 8 kilometers.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum.
The depth of competition has exploded. At Western States 2024, Leah Yingling ran 17:33:54 to finish tenth among women. That time would have won the race in 38 of its previous 51 years. The tenth place finisher, running a time that would have been a winning performance for four decades.
Chris Myers ran the fastest men’s tenth place time ever at the same race. Ida Nilsson shattered the women’s masters record. Tyler Green destroyed the men’s masters record. For the first time in Western States history, six women finished under 17 hours.
The next generation is already pushing the established stars. Hans Troyer won the 2025 JFK 50 Mile and is one of the fastest rising names in American ultrarunning. Rod Farvard pushed Walmsley to the edge at Western States 2024, leading as late as mile 79. Ryan Montgomery, Caleb Olson, Chris Myers, and dozens of others are nipping at the heels of the athletes who dominated the last decade.
What’s driving this?
Better nutrition, obviously. The science of fueling for ultra distances has advanced dramatically. Isotonic gels allow athletes to absorb far more carbohydrates without GI distress. Personalized nutrition plans are now standard at the elite level.
Smarter training. More athletes are working with dedicated coaches, strength trainers, sports psychologists, and nutritionists. Katie Schide’s program includes all of the above. The marginal gains compound.
Shoes that actually work. Carbon plates and advanced foams have revolutionized road running, and that technology has migrated to trails. The shoes athletes are racing in today would have been science fiction ten years ago.
More money in the sport. Prize purses at major ultras have grown substantially. Sponsorships are more lucrative. This attracts athletes who might have gone to road running, triathlon, or other endurance sports a decade ago. The talent pool is deeper than it’s ever been.
More professionalization across the board. Athletes like Schide and Walmsley treat this like the professional sport it has become. Course reconnaissance, altitude camps, periodized training, recovery protocols. Nothing is left to chance.
And critically, more athletes believe the old records are breakable. Once Dauwalter started annihilating course records at Western States, Hardrock, and UTMB, it shifted the collective psychology. If those marks could fall, what else was possible?
The quotes tell the story.
After Katie Schide won Western States 2024, she noted: “Last year we saw the top ten women totally exploding what everyone thought was possible. It seems like it is going to happen again today.”
Courtney Dauwalter, watching Schide’s performance at that same race from afar, called it “the floodgates opening.”
Anne Flower, after breaking Trason’s Leadville record: “I feel like we should be breaking records set in the 1990s. We have better training, better nutrition, better shoes.”
The language is telling. These athletes don’t see old records as sacred. They see them as targets.
What does this mean for the sport?
We’re watching trail running grow up in real time. The records that fall today will fall again tomorrow. Schide’s Hardrock mark will be challenged. Jennings’s 100 mile time is within reach for several athletes. Flower’s 50 mile record will attract attention from road specialists looking to test themselves at ultra distances.
The sport is gaining visibility, legitimacy, and investment. The World Mountain and Trail Running Championships are drawing deeper fields every year. Major brands are investing in trail running teams. Coverage has improved dramatically, with live broadcasts of UTMB, Western States, and other major events reaching global audiences.
And the athletes keep getting faster. Not incrementally. Dramatically. In ways that make you question what the actual human limits are.
What should you take from this?
If you’re a competitive runner, the bar has risen. The days when showing up fit and talented was enough to contend are over. At the elite level, every detail matters.
If you’re a recreational runner, this is the most exciting time in the sport’s history to be paying attention. The performances are mind bending. The rivalries are compelling. The characters are genuine. Trail running has arrived.
And if you’re someone who has never run a trail race but has thought about it? Stop thinking. Start running.
The records prove that human potential is far greater than we assumed. The distances that seemed impossible a decade ago are routine now. The times that seemed untouchable have been touched, broken, and rewritten.
Get out there. Run something stupid. The only thing holding you back is your own imagination.
The old guard set the standards. The new generation is tearing them apart. And somewhere on a trail right now, an athlete nobody has heard of yet is training for the performance that will make us recalibrate everything we thought we knew.
That’s the beautiful thing about this sport. The next record is always one race away.
Written from somewhere on a trail, probably behind schedule.