Katarzyna Solinska: The UTMB ultra runner with big goals

Words by Micah Ling. Photography by Mountain Legacy.

The iconic Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) is a race around the Alps’ highest peak that covers more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) in total. It’s a global stage for the world’s greatest mountain runners to showcase their sport. In 2023, On athlete and Polish ultrarunner, Katarzyna Solinska, 33, rose to the occasion to take sixth place in the women’s race.

While training for exceptional performances like this takes up a good deal of Solinska’s time, she’s also a coach and an advocate for getting more young women into mountain running. Beyond her success as an athlete, Solinska wants others to experience the empowerment that comes with training hard and reaching their goals – however ambitious those goals may be.

Solinska grew up running and thrived on competition, joining her first running club aged just 12. She excelled at short and middle-distance races and always enjoyed pushing herself. But as she got older, her running practice was gradually overtaken by studying and focusing on a career. 

As it soon became clear, sitting behind a desk wasn’t the life for her. In 2016, Solinska picked up the pace again – first on the roads and then, eventually, on mountain trails. She gradually added more and more miles to her training regimen and started competing again.

Top of the world

Solinska’s first UTMB appearance was in 2021, for the CCC race. It was her first competitive 100k (62-mile) event, and she was incredibly nervous. Looking back, Solinska admits that she was unprepared, but adds that sometimes being unprepared is part of the learning process. You don’t know what you don’t know, until you find out. 

“I spent so much time in the aid stations, I didn’t have the mindset for competing. I was just enjoying the environment and taking it all in, which was amazing.” Having the first experience to set the tone, Solinska fell in love with ultra trail racing. “The fans, the atmosphere, having my family there.” Solinska was determined to come back with a more competitive edge. 

During training, Solinska’s coach, Inaki de la Parra, and her fiancé, Maciek Dombrowski, gave her the nickname, “Tamagotchi” because, just like the digital pets of the 1990s, she has the power to program herself to sleep, fuel, and run, on repeat. Solinska agrees it’s a fair comparison.

When Solinska returned to UTMB in 2022, she took on the big one—the Mont Blanc loop—her first 100-mile (161 km) race. Again, Solinska learned a great deal. Namely, that going fast means going slow. 

“I knew that on the downhills, my quads would be destroyed. So I had to be careful there.” She also learned quite a bit about nutrition. On her debut in the 100-mile distance, she wasn’t intentional enough about eating at regular intervals. “With 40km (24 miles) still to go, I had no energy. I was like the walking dead, sitting on every stone to the finish line.” 

Which brings us to Solinska’s 2023 race. With the experience from CCC and the 2022 Mont Blanc race, she was ready to really see what she could do. “We took a lot of lessons from last year [2022] and implemented them during the preparation for UTMB this year [2023]. I felt like we had a lot of knowledge about exactly how to prepare this time. I knew the course, and I also knew the importance of nutrition.” Solinska said that she also got her mental game to a healthy place. 

“The most important aspect of preparing for UTMB this time was the mental preparation. Mainly, to not take everything so seriously. To still have fun and enjoy what I’m doing in the race. That part of it made the experience so awesome.” 

And it all came together. “The On team was there right before the last downhill, and I was destroyed, but they were cheering for me, they called my name, and they gave me so much power. I was able to run the last downhill without walking. I’m a very emotional person, so it meant a lot to have my team there, waiting for me, cheering for me.”

Solinska said it was such a different story from last year. “Of course I had some setbacks, but overall, I just felt like I knew what I needed to do in every situation. I was so careful with eating. I ate every 30 minutes, one gel or two, and just kept on the calories.”

Still the same Solinska

When Solinska returned to her small-town home in Poland after the race, she was aware of her newfound notoriety but says her day-to-day life hasn’t changed. “I’m not a celebrity,” she says, “but it was a big deal for my country and my running community. Before this, no other woman had earned a top ten spot in UTMB, not even a man from Poland had achieved that. I’m the first one to be in the top ten – and it’s so cool to have that good result.” 

Solinska is happy to show others that consistently working in smaller ways toward big dreams and goals eventually pays off. She lives this knowledge-sharing ethos by running an endurance coaching company with her fiancé [called Trail is Our Way] working with athletes at all different levels to improve their ultra and mountain running skills. 

Solinska wants to coach as many women as possible. “More than 80 percent of my athletes are women. All different ages, and from all different backgrounds. Some are coming back to running after giving birth, some are starting it at an older age. I’m so happy to have so many women grinding toward their goals.

“When I was in high school, I ran track, but then I took 10 years away from sports. It’s never too late to come back to sports and return to running. It’s so important for your well-being to enjoy the outdoors and enjoy movement.” 

Future thinking

Looking ahead, Solinska is excited for 2024. She hasn’t finalized her schedule, but plans to kick off her racing at The 126-km (78-mile) Transgrancanaria ultra in Gran Canaria, Spain, in February. Then, once again, she plans to focus on UTMB in September and try to spend even more time in Chamonix leading up to the race. 

Eventually, Solinska would love to earn a golden ticket to the world’s oldest 100-mile (161 km) race, Western States – a bucket list event for her – but that will have to wait at least until 2025. She’s so busy that she still hasn’t even figured out when she’ll fit her wedding around all her other commitments: 

“We’re planning the wedding, but I don’t actually have an idea when it will be, because we just don’t have much time. Maybe after next year’s UTMB.” Solinska’s passion for training, coaching and racing is infectious, but running always comes first.

Read more about On UTMB ultrarunners Zachary Friedley, Antoine Charvolin and mountain adventures with Kirra Balmanno.