In a self-discipline that appeared to have misplaced momentum in recent times in France, the massive variety of high-profile path runners lacing up their cross-country spikes this 12 months, and their subsequent success, has introduced on an inflow of curiosity from the operating neighborhood.
Though they’ve some similarities, path operating and cross nation are completely completely different disciplines. Cross-country races are shorter, with distances often falling someplace between 2.5 and 7 miles, and often encompass quite a few loops of a course. The terrain is usually grass, interspersed with small however typically steep hills. This leads to a quick and fiercely aggressive race, requiring nerves of metal and intelligent ways.
Cross nation unites runners from all backgrounds — from cross-country specialists to highway, monitor, path, and triathlon racers. The cross-country season permits path runners to fluctuate their coaching over the winter months, see how they fare in opposition to completely different athletes, and have some enjoyable with their group within the mud.
The French Cross Nation Championships happen over two months in 2025, beginning on January 12 and ending on March 2. It consists of 4 levels: departmental, regional (quarterfinal), inter-regional (semifinal), and nationwide championships (last). The nationwide championships are one of many highlights of France’s operating calendar, drawing in over 10,000 spectators throughout the weekend. Every stage contains a short-format and long-format course, separated right into a girls’s race, a males’s senior race, and a males’s masters race. Right here, we take a look at outcomes from the lengthy format, which is round 6 miles (10 kilometers) for the lads and 5.5 miles (9k) for the ladies.
Blandine L’Hirondel racing the 2025 French Cross Nation Championships finals. Photograph: Mathieu Masbernard
Trying on the names of path runners who ran on this 12 months’s league, you’d be forgiven for considering that this was the line-up of a prestigious ultramarathon and never, the truth is, an intense 30-minute showdown in a subject. For the ladies, it was UTMB course record-holder, Katie Schide (U.S.) and two-time path world champion, Blandine L’Hirondel who stole the highlight, ending second and fifth respectively within the nationwide championships.
On the lads’s facet, path runner Emmanuel Meyssat took second place within the masters’ last.
Within the regional championships held within the Alps, 2023 Les Templiers winner Julie Roux took second within the girls’s race, whereas 2024 European path champion Clémentine Geoffray, and Anne-Lise Rousset Séguret took third and seventh locations respectively within the girls’s race. Rousset Séguret’s spectacular path resume contains putting second to Courtney Dauwalter on the 2023 Hardrock 100 after main for a lot of the race.
Within the males’s senior race, Thomas Cardin, additionally the 2024 European path champion, took fourth place. Benjamin Roubiol, runner-up to Cardin finally 12 months’s European path championships, took sixth whereas reigning UTMB males’s champion Vincent Bouillard was eighth.
Different well-known path runners who participated in at the very least two races have been Maryline Nakache, Théo Détienne, Sylvain Cachard, and Germain Grangier.
Thomas Cardin competing through the 2025 French cross nation season. Photograph: Ben Exbrayat
Path and Cross Nation: A Successful Mixture?
So why achieve this many path runners take part in cross-country races, and what makes them so profitable at this race format? I caught up with Blandine L’Hirondel, Maryline Nakache, and Thomas Cardin to study extra about their causes for competing within the cross-country season.
Blandine L’Hirondel: “I Love the Cross-Nation Environment”
L’Hirondel’s spectacular efficiency in cross nation is a testomony to her versatility as a runner. Arriving late to the operating scene in her mid-20s, she has risen rapidly via the ranks up to now eight years, with quite a few nationwide and world path operating titles, together with world champion in 2019 and 2022. In 2023, she positioned third at UTMB in her first 100 miler, and in 2024, she took third in Les Templiers.
L’Horondel says that her major purpose for collaborating within the cross-country season is that she loves the ambiance on the races, including: “the range of the athletes, and the household spirit make it actually particular.”
She makes use of cross nation to combine low quantity, excessive depth coaching through the winter months, earlier than returning to the paths in spring. “It’s actually essential for ultrarunners to work on their velocity,” she causes. “All the finest runners, for instance, Katie Schide and Jim Walmsley, are additionally actually quick over shorter distances on the flat.” Though she lives within the Pyrenees, within the southwest, L’Hirondel chooses to return to her native Normandy within the northwest of France for the cross-country season. It’s an opportunity for her to reconnect with family and friends and run for her native membership — a social and group facet she feels will be lacking in path racing.
L’Hirondel received her inter-regional cross-country race this 12 months in a extremely disputed race to the end line, simply 4 seconds forward of second place. Her fifth-place end (fourth French lady) within the last follows on from her third-place end in 2023. This 12 months’s course in Challans, on the west coast, got here after a dry spell, which means that the course was much less muddy and, due to this fact, so much quicker than L’Hirondel had anticipated — not splendid for a path runner used to slower, extra technical terrain.
Regardless of course circumstances not finest suited to her, Blandine L’Hirondel ran a robust race on the 2025 French Cross Nation Championships finals. Photograph: Mathieu Masbernard
L’Hirondel explains, “I got here into the race after a stable coaching block prepared for the mud and the hills, so once I noticed the course for the primary time, my confidence took a blow.”
Nonetheless, on the day of the race, regardless of a violent “head over heels” fall within the first mile, after which she needed to combat her approach again to the lead pack, and a course “extra suited to a monitor or highway runner,” L’Hirondel was greater than happy together with her efficiency. “I didn’t let any adverse ideas take over,” she recounts, “and I used to be in a position to make use of my endurance to remain close to the entrance, simply shedding out within the last dash to the third-place French runner.” She completed simply 5 seconds behind bronze medalist Jeanne Lehair, and 39 seconds behind the winner, Olympic triathlete Léonie Periault.
L’Hirondel is now waiting for her subsequent races: Transvulcania in Could and the Mont Blanc 90k in June.
Thomas Cardin: “Cross Nation Develops My Psychological Toughness”
Thomas Cardin, popping out of an distinctive 2024 season through which he received nearly each path race that he participated in, together with Les Templiers and Sainté-Lyon, additionally makes use of the cross-country season to cut back his coaching load over the winter. Cardin began operating round 10 years in the past and went straight into path operating. “I nonetheless have so much to study concerning the sport,” he tells us, “and cross nation permits me to work on my velocity and uncover a self-discipline many different runners skilled as youngsters.”
In contrast to many path runners residing within the Alps, Cardin doesn’t change to snowboarding through the colder months. With the mountain summits out of bounds on account of snow, cross nation has turn out to be an essential a part of his yearly coaching plan. He believes that it positively impacts the remainder of the season, explaining that “the cardiovascular advantages from the cross-country coaching stick with you for the entire season.”
Talking about how he balances his preparation for cross nation with path operating, he explains that he prioritizes high quality and polyvalence over amount, sticking to a mixture of velocity classes and hill work all year long: “Within the winter throughout cross-country coaching, I do two velocity classes on the flat, and one on the hills. In the course of the path season, I inverse the classes, with one on the flat and two on the hills.”
Cardin participated within the first three races of the league, coming in first within the Isère division, fourth within the Alps area, and eighth within the inter-regionals. He says that the extraordinarily excessive density of high athletes within the races permits him to work on each his bodily kind and his psychological energy, realizing that there’ll all the time be somebody forward of him. “Nonetheless profitable you’re on the paths,” he says, “you’re hardly ever going to win in cross nation, so it’s a terrific psychological train.”
Thomas Cardin positioned eighth on the inter-regional stage within the 2025 French Cross Nation Championships. Photograph: Ben Exbrayat
He ended his cross-country season abruptly after his inter-regionals, explaining, “I used to be fed up with coaching on the roads. The climate was getting higher, so I needed to get again on the paths round my home and get caught into the approaching competitors season.” For the reason that inter-regionals, Cardin has already run and received the Path du Ventoux 46k. Subsequent up for him in 2025, amongst others, are the Marathon du Mont Blanc and Les Templiers.
Maryline Nakache: “Cross Nation Helps Enhance My Coaching Load”
Maryline Nakache additionally had a terrific 2024 season, taking second place within the Diagonale des Fous and sixteenth at UTMB. She takes a special strategy to the cross-country season to Cardin and L’Hirondel, utilizing the races as velocity coaching classes on the finish of high-mileage weeks. She even ran a 29k path the day earlier than the inter-regional race. Nakache doesn’t benefit from the extremely aggressive ambiance on the races, telling me, “There’s an excessive amount of pushing and elbowing” for her liking. Nonetheless, like L’Hirondel, the membership facet is a supply of motivation, and her group clinched first place within the season opener in Opio on the south coast.
Maryline Nakache (backside) together with her group on the rostrum on the 2025 French Cross Nation Championships finals. Photograph courtesy of Maryline Nakache.
Nakache’s coaching ways appear to have paid off. Lower than two weeks after her last cross-country race, she lined up initially of the Transgrancanaria, the place she took fourth place. She’s now deep into coaching for the Marathon des Sables, a race she’s beforehand received, which takes place at the start of April.
Why Are Path Runners So Profitable in Cross Nation?
L’Hirondel and Cardin evoked a sure satisfaction concerning path runners’ success exterior their typical territory. Each have typically felt annoyed by the seemingly widespread false impression that path operating is simply “glorified climbing” and that athletes spend most of their time strolling via the mountains. They really feel assured that the flood of podiums from path runners collaborating in cross nation, all the best way as much as the inter-regional stage, with two girls within the high 5 of the nationwide cross nation championships, will assist make this portrayal a factor of the previous.
No matter the way you view path operating, Schide and L’Hirondel are quick runners by any definition. Each athletes ran private bests within the 10k on the finish of final 12 months: 34:10 for Schide and 34:42 for L’Hirondel — made extra spectacular contemplating that this occasion is a fraction of their specialty distances. Nonetheless, on paper, in comparison with French cross-country champion Léonie Periault’s 31:45 finest for 10k, and even the sixth-place finisher within the finals, Olympic marathon runner Méline Rollin’s 32:38 (each set in January 2025), you’d be forgiven for not anticipating Schide and L’Hirondel to place so nicely on such a flat, quick course. It exhibits that cross nation is much extra complicated than it’d seem, with a variety of things affecting efficiency.
On the lads’s facet, Cardin judges that the competitors is denser in cross nation than in different disciplines of operating, and though we noticed some wonderful leads to the sooner levels of the season, he doesn’t imagine {that a} path runner might ever take the title within the French championships. “Our our bodies are primed for operating within the mountains over very lengthy distances,” he says, “and now we have further muscle weight that limits our velocity over shorter races.” That being stated, Cardin says that the outcomes of path runners on this 12 months’s cross-country season display their shocking capability for velocity and their versatility.
Scientific research regarding path operating are scarce, however I did discover one paper from 2023 (1) evaluating the operating metrics of elite male highway runners versus path runners. It was discovered that whereas path runners had related energy to highway runners, their energy output was increased. Maybe this might be a bonus in cross-country races, which characteristic variations in velocity over troublesome terrain. Though cross-country hills are a lot shorter than these present in most path races, they nonetheless current a bodily and psychological problem.
Working coach Nicolas Martin, talking on the Le Path Qu’on Aime podcast (2), says that cross-country coaching and racing are wonderful instruments for enhancing your V̇O₂ max via low quantity, high quality classes. On the subject of the races, it’s not the relative time or velocity that’s essential however the capacity to combat in your place on the end line. Path runners are used to operating by perceived effort somewhat than tempo, maybe giving them an edge over monitor and highway athletes in terms of racing cross nation.
The 2025 French cross-country season was most likely probably the most profitable but for path runners. It’s a uncommon and engaging alternative for followers of the game to see stars pitted in opposition to runners of different disciplines and an opportunity for the athletes themselves to see the place they stand compared. For Cardin, L’Hirondel, and Nakache, it actually appears to be paying off.
Now, with all eyes again on the paths, it’s time to see what this new season will convey.
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References
“Elite Street vs. Path Runners: Evaluating Economic system, Biomechanics, Energy, and Energy” by Frederic Sabater Pastor 1, Thibault Besson, Marilyne Berthet, Giorgio Varesco, Djahid Kennouche, Pierre-Eddy Dandrieux, Jeremy Rossi, and Guillaume Y Millet
“Le Path Qu’on Aime” podcast, episode 14
