She is a prudential young woman who gives some thought to the impact of social media on body and mind; she feels affronted when being called an “influencer”, even though deep down she recognizes that she might be just that: She has almost 20,000 followers on Instagram, and while the number might be expandable, it also speaks for itself.

But be that as it may, it probably is not really that important anyway.

Above all, Kim “Kimi” Schreiber is a runner who discovered trail running as her discipline in 2017 in Franconian Switzerland. “Running on trails means running surrounded by amazing nature and being able to see something more than just the road,” says Schreiber. “But I love running in general; it doesn’t always have to be up and down mountains. I don’t really differentiate, just the same as I run half marathons as well as full marathons.” (2:49 hours in 2019 in Hamburg 2019, NB)

While she only started out properly five years ago, for the past two years Kimi Schreiber has been amongst the world’s best with regards to distances between 40 and 70 kilometers. She came eleventh at Orsières-Champex-Chamonix (OCC) 2022 but who even remembers who the winner was?! “It is a pity that these routes don’t have the relevance they actually deserve. Nobody ever inquires about the OCC while everyone knows the top ten at the UTMB, and the triathlon long-distance events are taking the limelight – the further, the more important: These are values that are ingrained into our society. In the same vein, trail running is associated with “ultra” performances, which may change eventually; 50 fast kilometers can be as cool as 170.” By the way, the OCC winner was Sheila Avilés Castaño (Spain); like Schreiber, she is an Adidas Terrex athlete.

Schreiber plans to deal with longer distances eventually, maybe in a few years: “I still have a lot of room for improvement,” she says with an eye towards the next edition of the race in Chamonix.

However, before that comes to pass, there are the World Championships to consider, and Schreiber would love to compete in Innsbruck-Stubai. Last year, the Peninsula Traverse, which formed part of the Ultra-Trail Cape Town in South Africa, was more important to her than the WC in Thailand, which the German Athletics Association hadn’t contacted or nominated her for anyway.

The World Mountain and Trail Running Championships 2023 Innsbruck-Stubai will happen in June, a time when the trails are busy the world over. Schreiber is reserved in a friendly way when explaining that she neither has all that many points of contact concerning the WC nor does she think that she really needs title races in order to be enthusiastic about running.

“To me, the event is not really tangible yet; I’m not sure what being part of the Parade of Nations would make me feel like. However, at the same time I don’t want to play down the World Championships, rather on the contrary: I want to be nominated and compete.”

Schreiber isn’t “only” a runner, she’s also a writer: While back in the day it was journals she kept, she now writes for magazines and agencies. “I like the writer in me a lot, and the written word is important to me,” says the sports publicist with a degree in communication studies.

And because thoughts put to paper have relevance, Schreiber’s Instagram posts are rather text-heavy. “Social media is a blessing and a curse at the same time. While I don’t want to be an influencer and even less so force my opinions on anyone, I advertise my partners’ products out of conviction – which in the end makes me an influencer in some way I guess. Saying that, I try to be as authentic as possible and to spread the chemistry that determines my real life in the virtual world too.”