The Dolomites are doing two things today.
By morning, the 50K field is already moving through the limestone massifs above Cortina d'Ampezzo, tracing a course through the mountain landscape that the region has offered trail runners for the past two decades. The 50K is a race in its own right — a serious alpine ultramarathon by any measure that doesn't happen to share a calendar with its bigger sibling — and the field that lined up this morning includes some of the sharpest mountain runners in Europe.
By 23:00, the 120K takes over.
The La Sportiva Lavaredo Ultra Trail by UTMB is structured across five days and five distances — 10K on June 24, 20K on June 25, 50K and the 120K tonight, 80K tomorrow. The night start for the 120K is not an aesthetic choice. It is a logistics and safety decision that turns into something extraordinary: runners leaving Cortina in darkness, crossing the high country through the small hours, and arriving at the Tre Cime di Lavaredo — the iconic three-summit dolomite cluster that defines the landscape here — at sunrise on June 27.
If you have only seen photographs of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, you have not seen them the way a 120K runner sees them at 5:30 in the morning after ten hours on trail.
The 50K Field
The 50K covers enough altitude and terrain to be a serious destination race anywhere else on the planet. Here it occupies day three of a five-day programme.
The men's 50K start list includes Nadir Maguet, the Aosta Valley specialist who has built a reputation across vertical and short-mountain disciplines but whose range extends to distances well beyond his headline events. Alex Oberbacher and Simone Eydallin bring depth that reflects how strong the Italian domestic mountain-running pool has become — both have podium results on courses far more demanding than this one, and neither will treat a 50K in the Dolomites as easy miles.
The women's field features Patricia Pineda from Spain, who has been quietly accumulating UTMB World Series results without the mainstream trail-running coverage her performances deserve.
Results will be available on the live tracking platform (lavaredo.livetrail.net) from mid-afternoon.
The 120K Route
The route description that appears in the official race guide is worth reading slowly, because it names terrain that trail runners travel across the world to stand on.
From Cortina, the 120K field moves northeast toward the Cristallo massif — a complex of ridges and walls that forms the northern backdrop of the resort town. The route then turns east and crosses into the Auronzo di Cadore area, where the Rifugio Auronzo sits at 2,333 metres beneath the Tre Cime. The passage through here, when the sun is still below the eastern horizon and the towers of the Cime are beginning to catch the first grey light, is the image that runners carry home.
From the Tre Cime, the route moves south and west through the Tofane group and down through the Sorapis area before returning to Cortina along the Croda da Lago sector, passing the Rifugio Croda da Lago and the Lago Federa — a mountain lake at roughly 2,000 metres that appears without warning on the descent and stops runners even in the late stages of a long night.
Total distance: 120 kilometres. Total elevation gain: 5,800 metres. The cutoff time extends into the daylight hours of June 27, meaning the back-of-pack runners and those who stop at checkpoints to watch the sunrise will be on trail for 24 hours or more.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramThe Night Start Logistics
The 23:00 start from Cortina is the practical start of the race but not the start of the day for most participants. Athletes who ran the 50K today will not be starting the 120K tonight — the events are separate, with separate entry — but the town will hold both fields simultaneously through the evening hours, which creates the particular atmosphere that Lavaredo weekends are known for: pasta restaurants full at 20:00, headlamps being adjusted in hotel lobbies, a quiet intensity in the people who are several hours away from something that will take the rest of the night.
The via Roma in central Cortina is the 120K start finish. From there, the field moves north on roads before the course transitions to mountain trail above town.
UTMB World Series Context
Lavaredo carries UTMB World Series points that feed into qualification for UTMB itself — the flagship 100-mile race in Chamonix every August. Points earned from a strong result here matter in the context of the larger qualification ecosystem. For athletes angling for UTMB starting spots, Lavaredo's combination of Alpine technical terrain and significant distance produces a result that UTMB's qualification system weights appropriately.
The 2026 World Series is deep into its European phase now, with multiple events already completed and the Chamonix weekend still two months away. A strong Lavaredo result — finish the 120K under the cutoff, place well in your category — shifts the equation.
Looking at June 27
The 80K race starts tomorrow morning. The 120K runners who went out tonight will still be on course when the 80K field leaves Cortina. There will be a window in the late morning and early afternoon of June 27 when both groups are on trail simultaneously in the high country above the resort. This is the Lavaredo experience at full volume.
For a practical guide to running and hiking the Dolomites terrain the Lavaredo circuit covers, see our Cortina d'Ampezzo trail running destination guide.