Seven weeks out from the 27 June start at Olympic Valley, Kilian Jornet has confirmed that next Sunday's Zegama-Aizkorri marathon will function as the central calibration race in his Western States 100 build-up. Speaking to Spanish trail outlet Carreras de Montaña on Thursday, the Catalan said he was preparing for Zegama "mostly by feel," resisting the structured taper protocols favoured by his rivals and instead reading his body session by session as he layers in the longer climbing efforts that have defined his training over the past month above La Cerdanya.
Zegama itself is a familiar examination. Jornet has won the Basque mountain classic a record eleven times and has used the 42-kilometre, 2,700-metre vertical course as a benchmark since his teenage years. Race day temperatures along the Aizkorri ridge are usually cool and damp, conditions that play to his strengths but which now sit awkwardly against the heat-acclimation work essential for Auburn in late June. To bridge the gap, Jornet has been adding sauna and steam-room sessions twice a week at his base in Norway, replicating the heat-stress protocol he first used before his 2025 Western States podium.
The 2026 Western States entry list itself is the deepest in years, with Jornet's name set against Jim Walmsley, who recently committed to defending his crown after settling into a new Hoka contract; Hayden Hawks; and a returning Adam Peterman. The women's race headline is Courtney Dauwalter's bid for a fourth title, recalibrated after her wrong-turn drama at the Cocodona 250. The Memorial Day weekend training camp at Foresthill from 23 to 25 May will be the next major staging post for many entrants, although Jornet is expected to skip the camp in favour of a private course recce in early June.
Inside Jornet's circle, the principal concern is not fitness but the steady drumbeat of mountain races on his calendar. Following Zegama on 17 May, the Catalan plans a return to the Sierre-Zinal start line in August and his fifth Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc bid in late August, a triple objective that requires him to thread the needle between sharpness and accumulated fatigue. He has been candid that part of why he is racing the events that "everybody shows up to" is the competitive pull, telling Advnture earlier this year that he has done enough exploration and now wants the duels.
For the Western States organisation, the Jornet narrative is more than a marquee storyline. The race's record of 14:09:28, set by Walmsley in 2019 and threatened by Jornet's 14:13 finish in 2025, has slowly become the central talking point of the build-up. Race director Craig Thornley said this week that conditions in the Sierra were on the cooler side of average for May, with the snowpack on the high country predicted to clear by the second week of June, opening the prospect of a fast, dry course. If Jornet emerges from Zegama healthy, the conversation about Western States will tilt sharply from "can he win" to "can he run an outright record."