Leadville Trail 100 2026: Results and the Fire Reroute

The Leadville Trail 100 starts at 4 a.m. mountain time on Saturday, August 22, when the town of Leadville, Colorado sends its runners out of Sixth Street and onto the Race Across the Sky. The 2026 edition is not quite the race anyone entered: the Willow Fire closed Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline this summer, and nine days before the gun the race published a rebuilt course that loops Turquoise Lake in place of its most famous early climbs. This page carries the new course, how to follow the race live, and the results as they settle, from the first finisher on Saturday evening to the last buckle earned against the 10 a.m. clock on Sunday.

What the Leadville Trail 100 is

The Leadville Trail 100 Run began in 1983 as an attempt to save a collapsing mining town, and it worked. Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States, and every August it empties out at 4 a.m. to watch the field leave. The course is an out-and-back on trails and dirt roads along the Colorado Trail, starting at 10,200 feet and never dropping below 9,200.

The centerpiece is Hope Pass at 12,532 feet, crossed outbound and again on the return, with the Twin Lakes crossings on either side of it. The turnaround is the old mining site at Winfield, at halfway. Entry is by lottery each winter, the race is produced by Life Time, and in a typical year roughly half the field finishes.

The 2026 course: rerouted around the Willow Fire

The traditional race leaves Leadville and takes on Sugarloaf and the Powerline descent early, by way of the May Queen aid station at the far end of Turquoise Lake. None of that is available this year. The Willow Fire closed Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline, and the race rerouted: runners head west out of Leadville and around Turquoise Lake, turn, come back east around the lake, and rejoin the traditional course into Outward Bound. May Queen is gone from the course, Carter Summit and Turquoise Lake Dam are new, and the route has twelve aid stations and three crew locations.

Hope Pass, the Winfield turnaround, the 4 a.m. start and the 30-hour cutoff all survive. As of August 20, the race puts the rerouted course at 99.7 miles with 14,005 feet of climb, so this year's Leadville is, on the race's own numbers, not quite a hundred miles. It has moved those figures twice in race week: it posted the map on August 13, revised the pair down on August 18, and raised the climb again on August 19, three days before the gun. The full aid-station table is on the race's course page.

Start time, cutoffs and buckles

Everyone starts together at 4 a.m. mountain time on Saturday, and every runner's time runs from that gun, whenever they cross the start line. A finish under 25 hours earns the large gold and silver belt buckle. The official cutoff is 30 hours, which runs out at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning.

How to follow the race live

Live timing is on Athlinks, which fills in as runners come through the timing points on course; give the page a moment to load.

The records, and what a fast time means this year

Both course records fell in 2025. David Roche defended his title and broke his own record in 15:12:30, and Anne Flower, in her hundred-mile debut, ran 17:58:19 for second overall, taking down Ann Trason's women's mark after 31 years.

Whatever happens on Saturday happens on a different course. The times run on this year's reroute stand on their own, and the records belong to the traditional line.

Who is racing the 2026 Leadville 100

The defending champion is not. David Roche, who won the last two editions and lowered the course record both times, is out after foot surgery: a torn plantar fascia from last October never fully settled, a June sprain followed, and an August 3 MRI found a stress injury of his fifth metatarsal, the kind that often will not heal without an operation. He said goodbye to the race in his own words on Wednesday: to everyone racing on Saturday, he wrote, "I will be with you in spirit every step of the way," and, "See you next year."

With Roche out, Adrian Macdonald is the man to beat. He won the race in 2021 and 2022, and he posted from Leadville on Thursday about a build spent not knowing whether the race would happen at all, a wait he broke with a win at the Speedgoat 30K. Of the reroute he wrote that it has a little less vert and a little more road, but it is still a hundred miles above 10,000 feet with Hope Pass twice, and "I can't wait to get started at 4 a.m. on Saturday."

Tim Tollefson is racing too, an entry he shared while co-hosting this week's Rest Day episode of the Freetrail podcast. And so is Michael Mitchell, better known as Mikey Mitch to a TikTok and Instagram following a quarter million strong, who ran his first hundred on this course and has spent race week in Leadville. Leadville publishes no start list, so the field reveals itself through the runners; names will be added here as they say they are in.

The results

The podiums will appear here as they settle. If the front of the race runs anything like last year, the men's winner finishes early on Saturday evening and the women's winner later that night, and the last finishers come to the line on Sunday morning against the 10 a.m. cutoff.