When Nina Engelhard, clad in her Workforce Germany singlet, arm heaters, and shorts, crested the ultimate rise of the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Uphill race within the lead and crossed the end line 26 seconds forward of second-place Susanna Saapunki of Finland, there have been admittedly a couple of whispers amongst the gathered crowd, together with myself, asking, “Who’s that?” The race was a part of the four-day 2025 World Mountain and Path Working Championships, held in Canfranc, Spain, in late September, and gathered the world’s greatest mountain runners and path runners.
Simply three days later, when Engelhard ran to a commanding victory on the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Up and Down race — with a small, barely perceptible smile on her face for a lot of it — she had already made the transition from a relative unknown within the worldwide off-road operating world to an immediately recognizable face.
9 Engelhard solely meters away from profitable the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Uphill race. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Then, a lot to the chagrin of members of the media and people curious to be taught extra about her, Engelhard, who has no social media presence and retains her digital footprint to a minimal, turned her cellphone off for every week and went on trip to the Atlantic coast of Europe along with her household.
Every week after turning into a double mountain operating world champion, she returned to her full-time job as an environmental engineer and freely admits throughout our dialog, now a full month after the occasion, “I’m trying ahead to when all of the issues are over and I can return to my each day life and routines.”
The 28-year-old from Kassel, Germany, who solely actually began path racing in 2023, doesn’t practice with a coach, incessantly doesn’t race with a watch, and solely runs 50 to 70 kilometers every week — supplementing her each day train with swimming, rowing, and biking. She says, “I can’t say what a basic week seems like as a result of it’s actually determined every day.”
Opposite to most runners at her degree, she has no intention of leaving her common profession to pursue an expert operating way of life. In a world the place social media presence is very valued and high runners proceed to chase their subsequent sponsorship deal whereas constructing their public persona, Engelhard is an enigma along with her quiet confidence and dedication to doing issues her approach.
One will get the sense that when the media consideration from the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships dies down, Engelhard will quietly resume her on a regular basis life, solely to return to the general public eye when it’s time to pin a race bib on once more.
Successful the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Uphill race, and turning into identified to the better off-road operating world. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Discovering Function in Working
Engelhard grew up and lives in a small village outdoors Kassel, Germany. In the midst of the nation, it’s not surrounded by the mountainscape that the majority mountain runners select as their coaching terrain. Nonetheless, Engelhard’s household was lively — her dad a climber and paraglider, and her mother a “pastime runner,” as Engelhard calls her — and so they spent all their summer time holidays within the Alps. By age 11, Engelhard was becoming a member of her mother on common runs and getting quicker. Earlier than lengthy, she was recruited to affix the native operating membership.
The 13-year-old Engelhard skilled alongside runners of their twenties and older, however she thrived within the group atmosphere. She says, “It was a very nice group, and as much as at this time, lots of them are good mates, despite the fact that some left the membership.” The membership gave her operating some construction, and members would meet thrice every week to coach collectively. Earlier than becoming a member of, she mentioned, “I didn’t know what coaching for a function was as a result of we have been doing all issues only for enjoyable — being outdoors, being in movement.” Whereas Engelhard participated in lots of sports activities, together with swimming, ping-pong, trampoline, and judo, she says, “In operating, I discovered my absolute favourite pastime. I appeared to search out my function,” and he or she participated in a wide range of traditional observe and street operating occasions throughout her teenage years.
Driving bikes is simply one of many many cross-training actions Engelhard turns to. Picture courtesy of Nina Engelhard.
After ending college, Engelhard took a spot 12 months earlier than heading off to school, however not of the normal sort. She says, “Different mates of mine did an au pair 12 months abroad or one thing like this, and I used to be, ‘No, that’s too fundamental.’” As an alternative, she joined the German Military for a 12 months, not for a profession, however as a result of she needed to introduce extra self-discipline and be taught a distinct way of life. She says she emerged from the expertise with elevated self-confidence and belief in herself.
Discovering Trails
All through the following years at college — the place she earned a bachelor’s in forensic science and a grasp’s in ecotoxicology — she in the reduction of on her racing whereas nonetheless staying lively. It was within the couple of free months between ending her research in 2023 and beginning work that Engelhard discovered path operating.
She signed up for the 2023 Gamperney Berglauf race in Switzerland, an 8.8-kilometer route with 1,000 meters of elevation acquire. She received the sub-one-hour race by greater than two minutes. “It was overwhelming and really thrilling for me,” she says with a smile. “I had a lot enjoyable. It was fairly completely different from all of the previous races on the road or on the observe, and I used to be like, ‘Okay, I’ve to strive extra of these.’”
Engelhard’s first path race, the 2023 Gamperney Berglauf in Switzerland. She received and says she beloved the expertise. Picture courtesy of Nina Engelhard.
Lower than 4 months later, she raced the 2023 Großglockner Mountain Run, an iconic mountain race in Austria, putting second behind Kenyan mountain operating phenom Philaries Kisang by lower than a minute, forward of lots of the high mountain runners. It was additionally a race she’d return to in 2024 to win — this time forward of Kisang.
The German Athletics Federation instantly noticed her expertise and inspired her to attempt to qualify for Workforce Germany for the 2024 European Athletics Off-Street Working Championships Uphill and Up and Down mountain races. She received the qualifying race and was on her method to symbolize her nation, and says, “I had by no means dreamt of competing on a world degree as a result of sports activities for me have been all the time simply enjoyable.”
Going into the 2024 European Athletics Off-Street Working Championships as a relative unknown, Engelhard put no strain on herself and targeted on having fun with the racing. Simply getting to start out was an honor sufficient. She received the uphill race by 95 seconds, and as she places it, “It was an actual shock.” Two days later, she received the Up and Down race, turning into a double European mountain operating champion, only a 12 months after her first foray into off-road operating.
After the weekend and with little fanfare, she returned to her job with Germany’s Autobahn, the place she assesses and mitigates the environmental impacts of recent roads.
A Totally different Method
Most of the racers Engelhard competed towards on the European Athletics Off-Street Working Championships have been skilled runners, making their residing from sponsorship and racing. Nobody would have been stunned to see Engelhard pursue one thing related. However she didn’t, and for very calculated and private causes.
She says, “I earn my cash working as a result of I don’t wish to be informed which races I’ve to compete in.” She explains that she doesn’t need the strain to affix social media, which appears to come back hand in hand with sponsorship within the fashionable period. “I by no means obtained sucked into [social media] within the first place, after which I’ve by no means seen the purpose in being there and evaluating myself to others.” She additionally sees no motive for publicly sharing what she’s doing, saying, “I’m doing all of it for myself. I’m not that eager about what different folks do for each day coaching.”
Engelhard on her method to profitable the 2023 Hochfelln-Berglauf race in Germany. Picture courtesy of Nina Engelhard.
Englehard is prepared to acknowledge that there are potential advantages to residing a way of life of a totally skilled runner. She says, “I’ve six weeks of trip from work within the 12 months, and I’ve to distribute it cleverly if I wish to compete in lots of races. I’ve no actual trip as a result of the six weeks are largely spent on going to races.” However for Engelhard, the trade-offs of giving up her independence in trade for being paid to run don’t appear price it.
Trusting Instinct
Engelhard’s coaching is way from conventional. She solely runs 50 to 70 kilometers every week, filling in the remainder of her train wants with cross-training actions like biking, rowing, and swimming. She doesn’t work with a coach, saying, “For me, crucial factor is that I’ve enjoyable every day.” She’s additionally life like about most coaches, saying, “No operating coach would say 50 kilometers of operating every week is sufficient for competing internationally. So I’m staying with my approach of doing it.”
When requested what she thought would occur if she got a strict schedule, it’s clear that she is aware of herself properly. “I simply wouldn’t observe the coaching, plan, or schedule so strictly. I simply realize it.”
That’s to not say that Engelhard trains in a very free-form method. She is an engineer in spite of everything. She merely realizes that her life includes extra than simply coaching and racing; balancing all of the completely different facets permits her to thrive. She says, “I can’t practice on a hard and fast schedule as a result of I by no means know the way I’ll really feel after an extended day of labor, so if there have been a hard and fast arduous interval coaching, I’d be like, ‘No, I can’t do something.” As an alternative, she does arduous operating exercises when she will and does different sports activities on her straightforward days.
Engelhard descending within the lead in the course of the first lap of the two-lap 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Up and Down race. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
Engelhard believes that mountain operating requires far much less construction than street and observe operating, which she did earlier in her life. “Within the mountains, no race is comparable to a different race. Instances, paces, and coronary heart charges don’t depend that a lot. And that’s what I really like concerning the sport.”
Nonetheless, there’s a sure scientific method that Engelhard appears to take to the assorted facets of coaching, saying, “I’m eager about dietary issues and so forth, however I’m doing it for myself and testing it for myself and simply seeing what works greatest for me.” She’s adopted the method lengthy sufficient to say, “I get a sense very quick what works for me or what doesn’t.” Whereas it could be straightforward to categorize Engelhard’s watch-free and coach-free coaching as fancy-free or whimsical, on nearer inspection, evidently it’s the proper mix of science and instinct for somebody who values course of and information and nonetheless places the enjoyment of operating as her high precedence.
2025 World Mountain Working Championships and Past
After every week of rain and chilly climate in Canfranc, Spain, the morning of the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Uphill race — the primary occasion of the 2025 World Mountain and Path Working Championships — dawned clear and crisp. From 44 completely different nations, 107 racers lined as much as race 990 vertical meters (3,248 toes) over 6.4 kilometers (4 miles).
Like she did on the 2024 European Athletics Off-Street Working Championships Uphill race, Engelhard wasted no time attending to the entrance of the sector. This got here as a shock to many followers, as she ascended the course forward of a literal who’s who of ladies’s mountain operating. Maybe her efficiency ought to have been much less of a shock, provided that Engelhard had already earned double victory finally 12 months’s European mountain operating championships. That mentioned, along with eschewing a public persona, she was but to compete in any of the highest international mountain operating and brief distance path operating collection — just like the Mountain Working World Cup and the Golden Path World Sequence — the place most short-distance off-road runners at the moment minimize their enamel within the sport.
Engelhard says she by no means felt nice within the race, having to dig deep to remain forward of the chasing girls. She explains, “I needed to push myself on my limits, past my limits.” The look on her face within the race’s closing meters was pure agony and struggling, however she broke the tape to win her first mountain operating world championships title. “I simply felt actually dangerous,” she says, and the following days ready for the Up and Down race have been robust.
“I didn’t know if I might push myself so arduous once more,” she says, describing the psychological wrestle of the anticipation. However Sunday, the ultimate day of the competitors, noticed a very completely different Engelhard toe the road on the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Up and Down race. “Even whereas warming up, I felt nice and simply needed to benefit from the final occasion.” She took off from the gun, gaining the lead on the primary climb and lengthening it because the race went on. On the second climb, one might nearly make out a smile on her face as she handed cheering followers.
With loads of daylight behind her whereas main the race, Engelhard ran with a smile in the course of the second lap of the 2025 World Mountain Working Championships Up and Down race. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
She crossed the road to win her second mountain operating world champion title, with an enormous hole of slightly below two minutes forward of second place. She smiles when discussing the race, saying, “It was only a pleasure and a present.”
Every week later, after utilizing a few of her treasured trip days to spend time along with her household, Engelhard was again at work. Her co-workers threw her a celebration and informed her they watched the livestream of her races when they need to have been working. After the celebration, all of them went again to their each day duties. For Engelhard, it was again to biking, swimming, cross coaching, and operating — on daily basis a brand new alternative to do the issues she loves, on her personal phrases.
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