Ultra-Trail Shudao by UTMB

In the 8th century, the Chinese poet Li Bai wrote a text famous across China 🇨🇳: The Difficult Paths toward Shu, in which he describes Sichuan's mountain routes as so steep that it would be easier to climb to the sky than to cross them ☁️. Twelve centuries later, someone had the idea to host an ultra-trail there. Li Bai would probably have opinions on it, but you can imagine we didn’t ask him...😅.

The Shudao (literally “the road of Shu”) is a network of mountain passes over 2,000 years, carved into cliff faces during the Qin Dynasty to connect the central China to the Sichuan basin 🏯. It was at the time the only land link between these two worlds separated by dizzying ranges, and for centuries, armies, traders, diplomats and entire caravans used these paths to sustain the empire 🧑‍🏫. In the Guangyuan area, in the Guangyuan, in the north of Sichuan, the network stretches over nearly 300 kilometers and centers more than 130 preserved heritage sites 🏛️. It is on this terrain, and nowhere else, that the Ultra-Trail Shudao by UTMB® laid down its first bibs 🎫. The race is very new, with only one inaugural edition on the books, but it arrived on the trail scene with a strong, already well-defined identity. 3,700 runners at the start for this first edition, of which 98% Chinese, and 37% women, a figure far from negligible in the global trail scene 👏. The race director Qian Xin showed wisdom not to simply drop a race format onto a landscape: his team spent five months working with archaeologists who specialize in the Route of Shu to design a course where every aid station and every checkpoint tells a part of the terrain it crosses 😌.

The flagship course, the "DSD 100K", links Jiange to Zhaohua over 104 km and 3,800 meters of positive elevation 📐, starting from Jiange Stadium and climbing to the summit of the Mount Daping at 1,073 meters. The rest of the course weaves through places whose names echo Chinese history like battle names in a school textbook: the Jianmen Pass with its 72 Peaks, these twin cliffs rising above the pass as if the mountain itself decided to filter passages for millennia 🦅, the Cuiyun Corridor and its Cypress alley where some trees are over 2,000 years old, and the Liujiayan cliff, where slogans of the Red Army carved into the rock during the Long March of the 1930s remind that this path also bore a revolution on its shoulders. The terraced rice fields shrouded in mist, bamboo forests and ancient merchants’ houses lit by lanterns complete a scene that feels as much like a historical film as a mountain race 🎋. The "CSD 70K" covers 70.5 km with 3,100 meters of elevation gain, and uses the most iconic sections of the same route in a format that still lets you sleep in a bed the next night, which is no small consolation 😄. The "MSD 50K" shows 42 km with 1,900 meters of elevation gain. The "ESD 20K", with its 21.5 km and 900 mD+, is the perfect distance for a first taste of the terrain without jinxing your knees for the rest of winter 😬.

On the Running Stones side, the "20K" yields 1, the "50K" 2and the "70K" and "100K" 3 apiece, to be accumulated from edition to edition as part of the international circuit 🪨. The race has also distinguished itself with its finisher medal in seeded paper: once planted in the ground, it blooms into flowers 🌸, and by an initiative Leave No Trace that invites runners to pick up litter along the course. On a Route of Shu preserved for 2,000 years, it’s only fitting to keep it that way as long as possible.

Guangyuan is a city of 3.5 million inhabitants in the north of Sichuan, about two hours’ drive from Chengdu, the provincial capital and the natural gateway to the region 🐼. Sichuan is especially known for its spicy cuisine and its huājiāo, Sichuan pepper, which numbs the tongue in a way that’s unique to this culinary world, and serves as a mental warm-up before 104 km of mountain 🌶️. The race takes place in November, with cool high-altitude temperatures and that golden autumn light that turns the Corridor Cuiyun’s ancient cypress trees into something that looks like a silk painting 📸.

What makes the Shudao unique among all UTMB World Series races is that its terrain wasn’t created for the race; it existed long before, charged with two millennia of human use, and the race slipped into it to challenge the boldest and most curious trail runners 🏔️.