The 11th edition of the Tsaigu Trail ran Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 in Linhai, a city of 1.11 million in Zhejiang Province, about three hours' drive south of Shanghai. It drew 6,413 runners from 34 countries and regions across three distances: 105km, 50km (31 miles) and 25km (15.5 miles).
Jim Walmsley had not finished an ultramarathon all year. He dropped out of the Western States 100 in June. In August he abandoned UTMB with a knee injury. Two months later, he picked a race he had never run, in a country where he had never competed, and won it in course-record time.
Walmsley covered the 105km (65-mile) Tsaigu Trail in 10 hours, 53 minutes and 34 seconds, taking 26 minutes and 15 seconds off the previous record. The 2023 UTMB champion and four-time Western States winner is the first American man to win UTMB.
The 105km is the flagship. Nearly 90 percent of the route is natural mountain trail. It starts at Xingshan Gate, part of a city wall first built in 402 AD and now a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level. The course crosses the Kuocang Mountains and climbs Mishailang, the range's 1,382m (4,535ft) main peak, before dropping into Ziyang Street, a commercial street in continuous use for more than a thousand years. Start and finish are both inside the old city, with the mountain in between. Average climbing is 63 meters per kilometer — about 333 feet per mile.
The three distances carry 6,677m (21,900ft), 2,629m (8,625ft) and 1,034m (3,392ft) of gain. Cutoffs are 28:30, 10:45 and 6:00. The winner finished in 10:53; the course stays open until 28:30 — the same route has to hold both the front of the field and the back.
The race is ITRA-certified, carries a UTMB Index and serves as a Western States qualifier. Prize money totaled 1.2 million yuan (about 19,500) for the 105km winners and 70,000 yuan ($10,500) for the 50km winners.
In the women's 105km, Xiang Fuzhao of China won in 13:30. She first ran this course in 2015, when the race drew just over 300 people.
In the 50km, Yang Chunlong of China won the men's race in 4:10:05, taking 4:28 off the course record. Tove Alexandersson of Sweden won the women's race in 4:25:44, fifth overall, after falling twice and finishing with both knees bleeding. Courtney Dauwalter of the United States, who in 2023 became the first person to win Western States, UTMB and Hardrock 100 in the same year, was third among the women.
The finish line sits on Ziyang Street, and the city treats race weekend as a public holiday. Aid stations served local food — seaweed cakes, meringue-like fritters known as danqing yangwei, and mai bing, a thin wheat flatbread. After the finish, Ziyang Street hosts a market where runners eat free on their race bibs. Shops, guesthouses and restaurants offer discounts to anyone wearing one.
Organizers put 37 national-level referees on the course. They walked the route repeatedly during preparation, ran two rounds of risk assessment and published a written protocol for suspending the race. More than 1,600 volunteers worked the start, finish, aid stations and road crossings. Every runner carried live GPS tracking, so the race office could see where each one was.
Linhai was founded more than 2,100 years ago. Its wall runs 6,280 meters, of which 4,730 meters survive. Luo Zhewen, one of China's most prominent architectural historians, described it as the prototype for the Ming Great Wall outside Beijing. In 2012 it was added to China's Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage.
The race began in 2014 at Jiufeng Mountain in Huangyan and moved to Kuocang Mountain in Linhai in 2015, when just over 300 runners took part. The field has grown nearly every year since: about 4,500 in 2024, when 14,400 people pre-registered and a lottery was introduced for the first time; 6,000 in 2025, when a three-race Grand Slam series was added; and 6,413 this year, roughly 20 times the first edition.
According to organizers, the 2025 race generated more than 30 million yuan (about 22.5 million) indirectly. The Taizhou Prefectural City heritage area received 24.89 million visitors in 2025.
