Sophia Laukli Returns to Trail Racing, Will Start in Chamonix this Weekend

By Gavin Kentch

There have been a lot of articles written in the past year about the importance of trail running as an outlet for Sophia Laukli, and the sense of balance that this provides her. Here’s a piece in The Guardian, here’s one on something called “run Powered by Outside” that used to just be a well-regarded print magazine known as Outside, and here’s one on this very website by, well, this reporter.

The angle is not an original one by this point, but it is a truly interesting one: The same athlete who won the Golden Trail World Series in 2023, the highest level of international trail running on the planet, won a World Cup nordic skiing race just a few months later. That’s honestly really interesting; the discussion of the importance of balance, and of the two sports complementing each other, basically writes itself.

But what happens when that balance is thrown out of alignment?

Laukli did her final ski race of the 2023/2024 season on March 23, placing a heady second in the 30-kilometer interval-start skate at Norwegian national championships (see above Strava post). On the one hand, only a quasi-unretired Therese Johaug was ahead of her in Lillehammer; on the other hand, Johaug won by nearly 3 minutes. In an interval-start race. But second in all of Norway is none too shabby, not to mention that, fun fact, Laukli’s best ever finish in an American national championship is still just third, on three different occasions.

By the evening of March 27, per Strava, Laukli was in Annecy, France, for trail running camp with her Salomon team. There was running. There was bicycling. There was a vertical kilometer race on March 30, and a long bike ride through the mountains of Corsica on April 2.

The most ominous Strava activity of all for a dual-sport professional athlete soon ensued: silence. Laukli did not post again until April 25, which saw her back on a bicycle outside of Oslo. A steady diet of rollerskiing soon followed. And then, finally, on May 26, mirabile visu: Afternoon Run.

I am not, actually, trying to be deeply dramatic here. All that happened, as Laukli later recounted, was that she made what was in retrospect too ambitious a return to trail running. She was done in not so much by legs unaccustomed to running — she had dutifully kept that up during the ski season (in which, it must be said, she also logged 17 top-30 finishes in World Cup ski races, including one individual win and one relay podium) — as by a winter training diet of roads and treadmills that had left her legs insufficiently inured to the particular challenges of trail running. A spring bike crash on the wrong knee did not help matters any. Put all that together and you get tendonitis in one knee, and several weeks off from running in any form. Not great for the defending World Trail Series champion.

But this is where being a skier, too, really came in handy.

“Even though I was trying to switch to the running season,” Laukli wrote to Nordic Insights in late May, “I quickly saw that I could still take advantage of skiing and all of the training I could get in via rollerskiing. Having two sports and therefore one to ‘fall back on’ in terms of training helps a lot, and I know is quite unique, so that’s what I tried to focus on. I could basically train just as well by rollerskiing only, so even if it was slightly less interesting for a few weeks, I could still be very productive in my training which doesn’t typically happen for an ‘injured’ athlete.”

Laukli continued, “So it took some time to learn and put things in perspective, but once I found out how to adapt plans/goals and acknowledge that there can actually be some positives that come out of it, I can just see this as a great learning experience for the future and something that helps me be a better athlete. Now that there’s a bit more of an ‘end in sight’ for the injury (as long as I don’t jinx it and/or rush things), I can finally start looking forward to the running season and summer racing again.”

“It was really my first encounter with any sort of ‘injury’ so it’s been a bit of a learning experience,” mused Laukli of her several weeks’ worth of time off from running.

[Read Listen more: Sophia Laukli opens up about dealing with injury on the Running Long podcast]

“Up until now I’ve been pretty lucky with running and skiing where most everything has gone my way. I realize I really took that for granted because taking about six weeks off from running now felt never ending, when in reality I know it could have been so much worse with other injuries. The biggest takeaway was just learning how to be an athlete when things maybe don’t go your way, and I feel lucky that it has taken me until now to have to learn that.

“Initially, I definitely struggled when I realized I needed to start changing my plans and sit races out. It then became frustrating and a little more daunting when week after week it wasn’t improving at all. As someone who loves to plan and have everything dialed, realizing I maybe needed to stop any sort of planning and switch to a ‘wait and see’ mentality was hard to learn.”

All that said, however, Laukli underscored that she had been able to maintain consistent training via rollerskiing, and was thankful that things hadn’t been worse.

If Laukli spent her spring looking forward to having the summer running season back, the summer running season was doubtless looking forward to having Laukli back as well.

Sophia Laukli graces the header image for the Marathon du Mont Blanc page on the Golden Trail Series site (to be fair, she did win the race last year). She is the header image for the series’s announcement of the 2024 race calendar (to be fair, she did win the overall series last year). She is the lead athlete mentioned, on the women’s side, in the Golden Trail Series post embedded above teasing this weekend’s races. Race organizers are likely pleased to have a marketable star back in action again.

As the post notes, elite athletes race in Chamonix on Sunday. Laukli’s preparation this week, again per Strava, includes, well, a three-hour rollerski on Monday morning and a three-hour rollerski on Wednesday morning, before a 90-minute run today. There’s that balance again.

Finally, and turning to the standings, there have been three races held so far in this year’s Golden Trail World Series. There are five regular-season races remaining, plus the series finale in Switzerland in October. No matter how good Laukli’s current running fitness is (and while Laukli is a talent, she is also human and returning from injury), simple math underscores the extent to which she starts behind the eight ball vis-à-vis this year’s overall season title. This is a nine-race series that awards 200 points to the winner of each race; first place in the women’s field (Malen Osa of Spain, also a Salomon athlete) currently has 500 points; Laukli has zero. You can find full current standings here, under “results.”

The flagship 42km race begins in Chamonix at 7:30 a.m. local time Sunday morning. Live coverage should be available through the Golden Trail page, either here or here, starting at 7 a.m. local time. Central European Time, or CET, is 10 hours ahead of Alaska and six hours ahead of the East Coast.

You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.