He Designs Shoes During the Week and Dominates Pro Ultramarathons on Weekends
Vincent Bouillard couldn’t stop running. The 32-year-old Frenchman had just finished the 100.2-mile Western States Endurance Run in a record time of 13 hours, 46 minutes and 15 seconds, when he turned around and began to jog the course in reverse, extending his hand to high-five hundreds of fans who had lined the track at Placer High School in Auburn, Calif., the iconic site of the race’s finish line for more than five decades.
Bouillard ran another quarter-mile up the red track before he eventually stopped, not because he was tired, but because he had one more objective before his historic day was over: to share a burrito with his crew. He eventually took off his shoes and hobbled over to his team to chow down and watch the other runners come in, just as he did in 2025, when he had pulled out of the race early because of stomach issues.
We finished the unfinished business from last year,” Bouillard said of his 2026 victory.
An Unlikely Ultrarunning Hero
Bouillard is the unlikeliest of stars in his sport: Intensely quiet with a relatively brief track record in competitive athletics. He’s a product engineer at running shoe brand Hoka, who only earned a sponsorship contract from the company after stunning the ultrarunning world by winning Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) in 2024.
If anyone thought that result was a fluke, he put it to rest this year at Western States, shattering Jim Walmsley’s course record by more than 23 minutes to become only the seventh runner to win the race and UTMB. His 2026 performance at Western States was lauded as one of the best in the sport’s history. As he entered the final mile, the crowd quieted to listen to audio of the race’s live feed through speakers near the track. Corrine Malcom, one of the event’s announcers, gave the fans context on what they were witnessing.
“Not a one-hit wonder,” Malcolm bellowed into the speakers. “Vincent is the real deal. No fanfare, no pacer. Just hard work and getting it done.”
Even as he enters his prime, Bouillard still might bristle at the idea that he’s one of trail running’s new stars. The victories and course records were difficult to imagine even a decade ago, when he was just beginning to dabble in ultramarathon racing. Back then, he was focused on his internship at Hoka, where he was an energetic and sharp student looking to use his material engineering background to make a difference at the young company.
First and foremost, Bouillard had long considered himself a devoted fan of ultrarunning, and after he was hired at Hoka full-time in his twenties he threw himself into developing new foams and integrating other materials into shoes for runners.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of just enjoying the sport,” Bouillard told Outside. “My work is about product innovation—footwear product innovation. It ties to my passion for running because running shoes are fairly important in order to succeed at the sport.”
A Lifelong Love of the Mountains
Bouillard grew up in Annecy, France, which is sometimes described as the “Venice of the Alps,” and is located in the shadow of Mont Blanc. He spent most days of his formative years in the mountains alongside his parents and was influenced heavily by a grandmother who was always hiking or riding her bike. “If she would have had a Strava profile, she would’ve been a local legend,” he said with a chuckle.
His family never strived to accomplish any feats in the mountains, just to spend time with one another. Bouillard ran cross-country and track as a student, but he was never hyper-competitive. He remembers his throat burning in the cold air from races, which he collected all the bibs from but never trophies.
“I was never, ever the fastest, nor ever wanted to win competitions,” he recalled. At the end of each track season, Bouillard would get the itch to go to the mountains and run longer distances than the organized sport required of him. When he wasn’t doing that, he was logging hundreds of miles on his bike or skiing in the winter.
“Trail running has always been there even before it was called trail running for me,” he said. “It was at the intersection of so many passions.”
Bouillard never lost his childhood sensibilities, even after he reached the pinnacle of the sport. His family and friends did not follow trail running like he did, but they began to come out to his races to cheer because he loved it. One memory that has kept him grounded: just days after he won UTMB, he grabbed lunch with his grandfather. His victory “was the topic of conversation for maybe a minute,” he said, “but then it was like, ‘Okay, we switch on to something else that’s in the news.’”
At Western States, Bouillard had a motley crew of supporters—family, friends and colleagues from Hoka, all of whom watched him beat one of the deepest fields in the race’s history. The top-four finishers all shattered the previous course record, albeit in abnormally cool temperatures.
“I’m not one to consider myself very skilled or very fast or very good,” Bouillard said. “But I’ve always loved training.”
Racing With His Head and Legs
It was clear that Bouillard’s obsessive training in the months before had paid off in a steady, disciplined showing that didn’t see him take the lead until the final ten miles of the race. He kept in contact with the race’s leaders through the windy high country early and the warm canyons in the middle, entering the Foresthill aid station at mile 62 in third place.
His crew, consisting of Hoka colleagues who otherwise worked with Bouillard to develop shoe projects instead of winning prestigious races, had stressed efficiency entering the day. The team came up with a mantra—Every Second Counts—and clocked Bouillard’s stoppage time for the entire run at about seven minutes total, crew member Jared Smith wrote in an email.
“Vincent was calm and focused all day long. He knew what he needed coming into the aid stations so our focus was to get him in [and] out with what he needed as quickly as possible,” Smith told Outside.
Bouillard had watched several of the sport’s titans drop out of the race early, including Killian Jornet and Jim Walmsley. Bouillard had confronted his own demons on the course. “Western States was the race that intrigued me the most and scared me the most,” he said. He failed to finish in 2025 after enduring serious health issues with his gut and digestive system.
He had first come to Western States in 2021 to help crew Walmsley’s third title at the event. Bouillard felt the terrain and the heat for the first time, and suffered a gaffe—he was supposed to run with Walmsley for a short stretch late in the race but got lost on the trail, which he’s still teased about to this day.
“I think it helped me realize to what extent, yes, there is one runner that crosses the finish line, but it takes a true team effort,” he said. “Even after that day and experiencing what I did, I was like, ‘I’m never doing this race. There’s no way. It’s way too hard.’”
But Bouillard could usually talk himself into new challenges. When he was still in college, he traveled to the Arctic Circle in Northern Sweden to compete in the first-ever Tromso Skyrace, directed by trail running stars Emilie Forsberg and Jornet; they had designed a 45-kilometer (27 miles) route with 4,500-meters (14,763 feet) of elevation gain on highly-technical terrain.
Bouillard said it was the first time he signed up for “something that was way too cray and too long” for what he was ready for. Still, he managed to place 17th in just over ten hours.
During the coronavirus pandemic, even though the sport had shuttered many competitions, Bouillard remained religious about training, spending hours every day on his bike or running. In the years after, there were glimpses of his ability and training. In 2023, he won both the Gorge Waterfalls 100K in Oregon and the Kodiak Ultra Marathons 100-miler in California.
Juggling Engineering and Professional Running
Bouillard’s win at UTMB in 2024 took everyone by surprise, including his coworkers at Hoka. “It was an incredible day that I’ll remember forever,” he said. Many of his fans along the course were those he worked alongside at the office, his manager being one of them. In the months after, they watched as Bouillard juggled his engineering project load with his new athlete contract from the brand.
While most athletes might quit their day job to focus solely on running, Bouillard was determined to keep working as an engineer, even if it meant cutting back on his hours so he could train more.
“It’s incredible,” Smith said. “For as long as I’ve known Vincent—almost nine years now—it just makes sense as it’s who he is…thoughtful, focused and someone who simply works hard.”
These days, Bouillard’s title at Hoka is “footwear innovation engineer,” and he helps develop the concepts around running shoes designed for elite athletes. “It’s a broader research role than just focusing on one single component or category,” he said.
Bouillard isn’t just learning to balance work and running, he’s also a new father to a baby girl, whom he greeted along with his wife, Kamilah, near the finish line at Western States. Every second mattered in this race, so much so that Bouillard had told his team before he set off that a primary goal was to finish before his daughter’s bed time. He made it just in time. When he finished in Auburn, it was just before 7 P.M. local time and she was still awake.
The sun was just starting to set. After he finished his burrito, Bouillard and his family left to get some sleep, even though another victory at another major race had yet to fully sink in.
“It’s big dream moments that are coming together,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
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