A Franklin native is America’s 100-mile ultra-running champion.
After placing 29th at last year’s Ultra Trail du-Mont Blanc race in Europe, the world’s most competitive trail ultramarathon, Canyon Woodward recently took part in the event’s North American qualifier. With a first-place finish in the Canyons Endurance Run through northern California, Woodward staked a claim as an early UTMB favorite.
“I would say the first half of the race was one of the best stretches of racing I can remember. I felt like I was just really on my game,” said Woodward of the 100-mile trek through the Sierra Nevada. “I really had no idea what to expect overall, because this was a new course that was totally different. Last year they had to change it because of the huge snowpack in the Sierras and this was a course that hadn’t been run before, so I didn’t really know what to expect time-wise. It hurt, but I feel great about that.”
Due to heavy snow forcing organizers to change the course the night before last year’s race, Woodward took a wrong turn down a poorly-marked fork in the trail, dropping from 3rd to 11th, adding two extra miles and roughly 40 minutes to his trek. After a herculean effort to pull himself back into 3rd, Woodward entered this year’s event as a clear frontrunner, along with fellow American Zach Garner.
“It was a really fun battle back and forth between me and Zach, who I viewed as my primary competition,” said Woodward. “He would grind past me on every climb, but downhill running is really my strength, so I’d fly by him on the descents and we just kept flip-flopping back and forth. ... I think we definitely went into it seeing each other as the primary ones to beat. There were a couple of pre-race preview articles where that was kind of the consensus going in.”
While the two had never met head-to-head, close observers felt Garner would compete for gold after winning the Bear 100 race through Utah and Idaho last September. In the race’s brutal first 30 miles, which featured most of the course’s 17,000 feet of elevation gain, the rivals tested the limits of human endurance.
“We pushed each other super-hard – probably way too hard for how early it was in the race, in retrospect. I think both of us paid the price for it a little bit later on,” said Woodward with a laugh. “Roughly the first 50 [kilometers] we were flip-flopping back and forth snatching the lead from each other, and from roughly mile 30 to 50 there was a stretch that was fairly sustained downhill. I really looked at that as my opportunity to open up a convincing gap on him since downhill running is really my strength, so I just hammered that 20-mile stretch. We got some wicked weather during that stretch, too – a crazy hailstorm came through with lightning, but I was having a blast. I managed to open up around a 20-minute lead on him.”
While a 20-minute lead would be near-insurmountable in most other races, the Canyons Endurance Run is another animal entirely. But with just a quarter of the race remaining, Garner suffered the same fate as Woodward did last year.
“The second half was painful – it got hot, and I got a little bit dehydrated and threw up around the 56-mile mark, but my stomach was able to recover quickly from that to refuel and rehydrate and keep moving along well,” said Woodward. “We ran into some nasty weather again in the evening with some really cold rain and getting down into the 40s after a hot day, so that was hard. And then Zach unfortunately took a wrong turn around mile 75, or thereabouts. It was a bummer, but it also took some of the heat off of my butt, and I had a super-comfortable lead over the next person at that point.”
With Garner out of the picture for all intents and purposes, Woodward was able to coast through the final 20 miles, crossing the finish line in just 18 hours and 54 minutes. His time was 20 minutes faster than that of second-place Canadian Nicholas Lightbody, and qualified him for UTMB 2025. Ahead of this year’s race through the European Alps of France, Italy and Switzerland, Woodward says he’ll begin preparing on the trails of WNC.
“I have no more races planned in between now and the UTMB. I’ll mostly just be training hard in the mountains, hammering the [Appalachian Trail], the Bartram Trail and the dirt roads around my house,” he said. “I feel like every race is a pretty rich learning opportunity – even with this past one I’m making lots of notes afterword, and most of it at this point is more kind of minor tweaks, but I’m always thinking about ways to improve. This summer I’m planning to seek out a good bit more vertical training in the lead-up to it, as opposed to more flat dirt-road running. I’ll try and really stack the elevation gain to prepare a little bit better.”
Having held his own with the world’s best ultra-runners last year, Woodward will compete in his third UTMB this August as one of just three major qualifying champions, along with the first-place finishers from the European and Asia-Pacific regions. After improving his finish from 48th in 2022 to 29th in 2023, the global rising star says he’s gunning for an even better place.
“I’ve got my sights set on the top-10 at some point in that race,” he said. “I don’t know that it’s gonna be this year, but that’s the goal that I’m running for. It could be this year, it could be a few years down the road, but I’m hoping to at the very least keep on improving and keeping the trajectory going in the right direction.”