Leadville Trail 100 2026 Results: Macdonald and Hickory Win on the Fire Reroute

Adrian Macdonald won the 2026 Leadville Trail 100 in 15:47:23 on Saturday, August 22, his third win after 2021 and 2022, and Mckendree Hickory won the women's race in 19:39:12. It was the first running of the course the race rebuilt around the Willow Fire closures nine days before the start, a loop of Turquoise Lake in place of Sugarloaf and Powerline that the race puts at 99.7 miles. 387 of the 656 starters finished inside the 30-hour cutoff.

Who won the 2026 Leadville Trail 100?

1. 1Adrian Macdonald, 15:47:23
2. 2Matthew Zupan, 16:15:25
3. 3Tim Tollefson, 16:45:14
4. 4Mikey Mitch, 17:48:07
5. 5Corky Patton, 19:03:10

Macdonald, 37, of Fort Collins, was fifth through Merilee's Corner at mile 8 and second at Twin Lakes, a minute and a half behind Mitch Klomp. He took the lead on the climb to Hope Pass, crossed the summit outbound in 6:39:16, and nobody got near him again. Through Winfield he was 9 minutes up on Klomp and 26 on Zupan. He crossed the timing checkpoint a mile from town in 15:37:27 and finished ten minutes later, 28 minutes ahead of Zupan.

Zupan, 30, of Reno, ran the race from behind. He was eleventh at Merilee's Corner and fifth at Winfield, moved to third over Hope Pass inbound and to second at Twin Lakes, and held it the rest of the way. Tollefson, 41, of Mammoth Lakes, sat fourth from Twin Lakes outbound all the way to Outward Bound at mile 78, then went past Mitch on the road to Turquoise Lake Dam to take third. The full list is on Athlinks.

Who won the women's race at Leadville 2026?

1. 1Mckendree Hickory, 19:39:12 (tenth overall)
2. 2Jacquie Mannhard, 20:28:37
3. 3Emma Wood, 20:33:33
4. 4Ailsa Macdonald, 20:42:07
5. 5Silke Koester, 22:16:47

The women's race belonged to Ailsa Macdonald for 78 miles. Macdonald, 46, of Cochrane, Alberta, was the first woman through every station from Merilee's Corner to Outward Bound inbound, where she came through in 15:24:20, nine minutes clear of Hickory. Hickory, 38, of Steamboat Springs, had started in sixth and moved up one place at a time all day. She led at Turquoise Lake Dam, mile 84, and by Merilee's Corner at mile 89 the gap was seventeen minutes. In the last ten miles Mannhard and Wood came past Macdonald too, and she finished fourth.

Mannhard, 41, of Boulder, was second woman through the first half and fourth from Twin Lakes inbound to Outward Bound before closing again. Wood, 32, runs for Leadville itself. Koester, 43, of Boulder, was fifth.

Beyond the podium

Mikey Mitch was fourth in 17:48:07. Five summers ago this was Michael Mitchell's first hundred: the longest race he'd run before Leadville 2021 was a 10K on a track, and the TikTok account that has since made him Mikey Mitch to a quarter million followers was still a year away. On Saturday he ran fourth to Twin Lakes outbound, third from there over Hope Pass, through Winfield and all the way back to Outward Bound, and gave the place up only to Tollefson in the last twenty miles. Fifth was 75 minutes behind him.

Mitch Klomp, 32, of Fort Collins, led the race through Merilee's Corner, Half Pipe and Twin Lakes outbound and was second over Hope Pass inbound in 9:38:54, nineteen minutes behind Macdonald and two ahead of Zupan. He stopped there.

Lexi Watts finished her first hundred in 29:28:10, 32 minutes inside the cutoff. The Draper, Utah runner, 30, brought 350,000 TikTok followers along for the training; her bio counts sixteen marathons and one 50-miler, and the summer's videos were Leadville all the way. She was through Winfield at halfway in 14:02:25, back over Hope Pass in 16:31:42, through Outward Bound in 23:00:05 and Merilee's Corner, mile 89, in 26:37:21, and ran the last ten miles in just under three hours to get in before 10 a.m.

Andy Glaze, the Redlands, California firefighter whose streak of 100-mile weeks stands at 336, with a million TikTok followers watching it, finished in 27:52:20. It's his third straight Leadville buckle, and it came after a summer that already held the Cocodona 250, the Summer Spine Race and the Crazy Mountain 100.

Leadville's own Marvin Sandoval, a Leadman finisher with ten sub-nine-hour buckles from the August bike race, was home in 22:53:58.

Kyle Coon, the blind Paralympic triathlete from Carbondale, fifth in Tokyo and the first totally blind athlete under eleven hours at an Ironman, ran with guides to Winfield, reaching halfway in 14:55:52, and stopped there. Junko Kazukawa, 63, of Denver, the two-time cancer survivor who in 2015 became the first person to finish the Leadwoman series and the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning in one year, also turned at Winfield, in 14:13:43.

387 runners finished inside 30 hours, 94 of them women, and 109 of them under 25 hours for the big buckle. The last official finisher was James Bennett, 35, of Dover, in 29:52:25. Rowell Campos, 50, of Hong Kong, crossed the line 34 seconds after the clock ran out.

How did the Willow Fire change the 2026 Leadville course?

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 was available this year. The Willow Fire closed Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain and Powerline, and the race rerouted: runners headed west out of Leadville and around Turquoise Lake, turned, came back east around the lake, and rejoined the traditional course into Outward Bound. May Queen was gone from the course, Carter Summit and Turquoise Lake Dam were new, and the route had twelve aid stations and three crew locations.

Hope Pass, the Winfield turnaround, the 4 a.m. start and the 30-hour cutoff all survived. On the morning of the gun the race put the rerouted course at 99.7 miles with 13,357 feet of climb, so this year's Leadville was, on the race's own numbers, not quite a hundred miles. The climb figure moved three times in race week: posted with the map on August 13, lowered on August 18, raised on August 19, and lowered again on August 20, two days before the start. The full aid-station table is on the race's course page.

Start time, cutoffs and buckles

Everyone started together at 4 a.m. mountain time on Saturday, and every runner's time runs from that gun. 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.

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.

This year's times were run on a different course. They stand on their own, and the records belong to the traditional line.

The field going in

The defending champion did not start. David Roche, who won the last two editions and lowered the course record both times, was 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 was the man to beat. 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 had a little less vert and a little more road, but it was 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 shared his entry while co-hosting the week's Rest Day episode of the Freetrail podcast.

What is the Leadville Trail 100?

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.