After taking eight months off from ultra-distance trail racing, Katie Schide showed up in Madeira over the weekend to deliver a decisive victory at the World Trail Majors.
"A little dream of mine for a while now," says Schide of the 118k Madeira Island Ultra Trail race, which gains almost 19,700ft (6,000m) in elevation as it crosses the Portuguese island from west to south.
Schide previously raced the course back in 2019, when she came second to Courtney Dauwalter, and says, "there was a lot that went wrong." The last couple of years have seen the runner focus on bigger races like the UTMB finals and Western States, but after winning both of those in 2024, she clearly decided the time was right to come back for another go.
The weather conditions in the Atlantic weren't exactly favorable when the runners took off on Saturday night, and the runners faced cold temperatures, wind and rain, but that didn't seem to faze Schide. In her typically composed and efficient style, Schide had dropped Slovenia's Martina Klančnik Potrč by 12k into the race and maintained her strong lead throughout. As the weather cleared, she finished in a strong 14:20:56, more than two hours ahead of second-placed Potrč and only an hour slower than her partner Germaine Grangier, who took fifth in the men's race.
France's Mathilde Dujon rounded out the women's podium, while over the men's race, Paul Cornut-Chauvinc (France) took the win in 12:54:52, followed by Portugal's Miguel Arsénio and Romania's Raul Butaci in third.
Maine native Schide currently lives in Zurich, where she's working on her PhD in geology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Her win in Madeira comes just two weeks after she and Grangier announced they had left The North Face after three years of sponsorship and returned to Swiss brand On. That means she's finally ditched the Summit Vectiv Pro running shoes that she's worn for several big wins in recent years – images suggest she might have embraced the Cloudventure Peak 3 in their place.
The World Trail Majors is a new global competition series for ultra runners that launched in 2024. The non-profit series is for amateur ultra runners, but also a way for elite runners like Schide to win prize money. The race circuit entails 12 race,s including the Transgrancanaria, Black Canyon Ultras and Mt Fuji 100.
