Do You Need Speed Work for Ultras? What UTMB 2026 Actually Showed¶
Rachel Entrekin finished second at UTMB on August 29 in 22:15:54, in her first attempt at the race. Asked afterward what she might have done differently, she said this:
"Maybe if I had some workouts I would have got first. But I'm not going to do that, I'll just get second."
She was joking. The last four words are the punchline, and the top comment on Trail Runner's clip just quotes them back with applause emoji.
The clip picked up more than 17,000 likes in half a day anyway, and underneath it the comments stopped being about the joke and turned into a real argument about training. A coach: "Ok how am I gonna get my athletes to do speed work now." Someone else, with eighteen replies under it: "Grinding is required for most of us people."
That argument is worth having, but not on the strength of one throwaway line. The more useful thing is what Entrekin actually did in the month before the race. She laid it out in detail four days beforehand, and almost nobody is quoting that part.
What she actually did for four weeks¶
In her pre-race interview with iRunFar on August 25, Entrekin laid out the preparation in plain terms. She arrived in Chamonix a little over a month before the race. She ran a full lap of the 107-mile course within the first four or five days. Then she kept going back.
She ran the Les Houches to Courmayeur section again with a British runner she met on the trail. She led a guided tour group that finished at 3:00 p.m., then went out and ran extra sections afterward. When her partner arrived she took him out on the course too, and by her own count the two of them covered about 60 miles of it.
Her reason was not complicated: "The reason I wanted to come early was to get familiar with the course."
Two of her lines are worth sitting with, because they are the whole argument.
The first is about what repetition did:
"Each time I've done the course, it's felt easier and easier, and I've gotten faster every time."
The second is about what would have happened without it:
"If I had not had the opportunity to come over early and had just arrived the week before, I think I probably would have DNFed at 50."
She does not say 50 what. Fifty kilometers is the first quarter of the race, fifty miles is not quite halfway, and either way the sentence says the same thing: a second-place finisher believes that arriving on the normal schedule would have ended her race rather than slowed it down.
The winner did the same thing, from a different direction¶
Blandine L'Hirondel won the race in 21:54:49, the first woman to go under 22 hours at UTMB, and became only the second woman to win UTMB, CCC, and OCC.
She and Entrekin ran nearly together through 67 kilometers. L'Hirondel then pulled away in the hours after Courmayeur. iRunFar's account of that stretch credits her "deep knowledge of these trails," and she came in having already placed top five at UTMB twice and won both CCC and OCC.
We do not know how she trains, and this post is not going to guess. What is on the record is that the two women at the front of the race had both spent a lot of time on that ground before Friday, and that the commentary reached for their familiarity with it to explain the decisive hours.
What this does not mean¶
It does not mean training is optional, and it does not mean intervals are useless.
Entrekin is a professional runner who won the Cocodona 250 this year. She turned down an automatic entry to the High Lonesome 100 specifically so she could prepare properly, saying it "didn't feel like I would be giving this race any respect." She paced six people at four races in six weeks instead of racing herself. That is a person organizing an entire season around one start line.
The commenter who wrote "grinding is required for most of us people" is right, and is arguing with something Entrekin did not say. She did not say she avoided hard work. She said she does not do workouts, meaning structured interval sessions, and she is clear that the tradeoff might have cost her the win.
Speed work also does real things. It raises the ceiling you spend the race well underneath, and for shorter or flatter ultras where you are running most of the distance, that ceiling matters more. A 50k on rolling singletrack is a different event from 32,000 feet of climbing across three countries.
The honest read of UTMB 2026 is narrower and more useful, and it comes from Entrekin alone rather than from the result sheet. She spent a month on that terrain, she says it made her faster every time through, and she says that without it her race would likely have ended early. One runner's account is not a study. It is still the most specific thing anyone said out loud this week about why the training worked.
Specificity when you cannot move to Chamonix¶
Most of us cannot take a month off to live at the base of a race course. That is a circumstance, not a failure of commitment, and it does not put course-specific training out of reach.
What Entrekin got from those laps breaks into pieces you can find closer to home.
Grade, not just distance. UTMB averages roughly 300 feet of climb per mile. If your goal race climbs 200 feet per mile and your training runs climb 40, you are training a different sport. Vertical gain per mile is the number to match, and it is the one most training logs leave out.
Surface and technicality. Entrekin called the last ten miles into Chamonix "rocky and quite steep," and said that the first time she ran it she lost the trail and thought she was lost. Rocky descending on dead legs is a skill that only rocky descending teaches.
The specific thing that will hurt. She went and found the worst part of the course before race day so it would not be a surprise on the day. You can do the same with the hardest climb on your course, or the surface, or the exposure, even if you have to approximate it.
Repetition on one route. The signal in her account is not that she saw the course. It is that she ran it again and again and got faster each time on the same ground. Running your hardest local loop eight times over a block tells you more than eight different loops do, because only the repeat gives you a comparison.
If your race is drivable, one recon trip on the hardest quarter of the course is worth more than the same hours spent on your usual route. If it is not drivable, find the closest local match for grade and surface and run it until it is boring.
What NavRun does with this¶
NavRun's Course Familiarity looks at the races on your calendar and compares the course, in 0.1-mile segments, against the runs already in your history. It reports what portion of the course you have actually been on, lists the training runs that covered each part, and keeps the date you last ran each one.
That feeds the race pace estimate, which separates two things most predictors blend together. Pace on segments you have really run is labelled real. Pace on segments you have never touched is labelled estimated, adjusted for grade. You can see which parts of the number come from your own legs and which parts are arithmetic.
It is the same idea Entrekin ran on, measured against a training log instead of a month in the Alps. It does not tell you a number is good or bad. It tells you which parts of your race you have already been on, and which parts will be new at mile 70.
Common questions¶
Q: Should I stop doing speed work for my 100 miler?¶
No. Entrekin's point was about tradeoffs in her own training, not a recommendation. If you enjoy workouts and they are going well, keep them. The finding worth taking is that hours on terrain like your race's terrain are worth more than most training plans give them credit for.
Q: How much of a course should I run before race day?¶
There is no established threshold, and anyone giving you one is guessing. Entrekin ran the whole thing at least once and large sections several times. If you only get one trip, spend it on the hardest quarter and the finish, since that is the part you will meet with nothing left.
Q: Does running the course actually make you faster on it, or does it just help mentally?¶
Both, and they are hard to separate. Entrekin describes it as physical, saying each lap felt easier and her times improved. Knowing where a climb ends changes how you pace it, and pacing a climb correctly is a physical outcome.
Q: What if I can't get to my race course at all?¶
Match the numbers instead of the place. Vertical gain per mile, surface, typical segment length between aid, and the time of day you will be out there. A night run on rocky trail at home is closer to your race than a smooth daytime long run on the actual course would be at the wrong hour.
Q: Was Rachel Entrekin's time actually competitive?¶
Yes. She ran 22:15:54 for second, 21 minutes behind L'Hirondel's 21:54:49 and 94 seconds ahead of Emily Schmitz in third, in her first UTMB.
Q: Did anyone set a course record at UTMB 2026?¶
No. Ben Dhiman's 18:16:29 was the fastest time ever run at the race and the first sub-19, and L'Hirondel's 21:54:49 was the first women's sub-22. Neither counts as a course record, because wet weather forced a reroute around the Pyramides Calcaires section in Italy. The start was also delayed two hours by a forecast storm.
Takeaways¶
- Entrekin's "I'm not gonna do that" was about interval sessions, not about training. She spent a month running the course on repeat.
- She says arriving a week before instead of a month before says arriving a week out instead would likely have ended her race, not just slowed it.
- The winner had the same advantage from living with the terrain for years.
- Specificity you can copy: vertical gain per mile, surface, the hardest section, and repeats on one route so you have something to compare.
Read next: time on feet versus weekly mileage and power hiking for ultras.
Start with what you have already run¶
NavRun reads the running already in your history and shows you how much of your goal race you have been on.
Sources: iRunFar 2026 UTMB results, Rachel Entrekin pre-2026 UTMB interview, iRunFar, and Trail Runner's post-race interview clip.