Ultra Trail Australia: the wrap
At the age of 41, Brendan Davies says plenty of people no doubt thought he had entered his “twilight” years as an elite runner. On the weekend just gone, the popular Blue Mountains resident enjoyed proving his theory that age can be an advantage when you also put in the hard work on the trails. After a five-year gap, Davies claimed his second Ultra-Trail Australia 100km title with a time of 9 hours 18 minutes 10 seconds. “I’m doing it for the…
O’Hart and Nicholl win Margaret River Ultra
Perth’s Josh O’Hart and Deb Nicholl of Brisbane have won the inaugural Margaret River Ultra Marathon, finishing the 80km event in impressive times; Hart with a sub-eight hour effort (07:58:14) and Nicholl in eight hours, 39 minutes. More than 700 runners stepped onto Hamelin Bay beach for the start facing a race all the way to Wilyabrup in south-west Western Australia. The point to point course was tackled by individuals and relay teams of up to five runners who divided the distance into five different…
Aussie Emmerson 5th at UTMB
After more than 28 hours of tough running in conditions which forced hundreds of runners to quit because of extreme cold, Hoka One One athlete and Trail Run Mag representative, Kellie Emmerson, ran herself into 5th place at UTMB, one of the world’s most competitive 100-mile ultramarathons. The event takes athletes around the mountains range surrounding Mont Blanc in France, covering 167km with 10,000 metres of climbing – effectively 4 marathons in thin air while running up and down a 3,500-storey building….
Margaret River Ultra Marathon announced
A new ultra event event in Western Australia has been announced by Rapid Ascent, purveyors of the highly successful Surf Coast Century ultra in Victoria and the Trail Running Series in the same state. The new Margaret River Ultra Marathon will take runners on an 80km journey through a diverse range of landscapes, starting at Hamelin Bay in the south and finishing at the Cheeky Monkey Brewery and Cidery at Wilyabrup in the north. The event is slated for 5th…
The Hardrock Diaries: kissing the stone
Via his Trail Run Mag blog, many of you followed Kiwi Grant Guises’ second journey to ‘kiss the rock’ at the Hardrock Endurance 100 Mile Run in Colorado, US. We know he finishes and puckered up after 100 gruelling miles, but how did the journey go down? Here’s his post-event take… (IMAGES: Clark Fox) My final week or so pre Hardrock was ticking along smoothly. I migrated south from Leadville to the San Juan’s and quickly started to meet up with old…
Swell times at Surf Coast Trail High
Exciting conditions greeted a record crowd of more than 700 runners at this year’s Saucony Surf Coast Trail Marathon, a monster swell creating challenging coastal conditions including giant waves turning parts of the course into an adventure coasteer as much as a trail run. While some of the world’s best big wave surfers reportedly hopped their lear jets from locations across the globe to take on mountainous waves reaching over six metres at Bells Beach, marathon and half marathon runners…
Excuse me: Ultra Trail Ambition goes south
Dear Diary, this year I had a miserable run at Ultra-Trail Australia. Some days you have a great race, some days you don’t. 2017’s UTA was a poor one. I guess it happens? So what went wrong and what can I learn from it? Endurance sports are, at least at the amateur level, perhaps the most incredibly arbitrary of all sports. Dictionary.com defines arbitrary as “subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one’s discretion.” I can…
Ultra Trail Australia: a birthday to remember
It was a birthday celebration to remember not only for the Ultra Trail Australia event enjoying its tenth outing, but also for the women’s winner, Lucy Bartholomew, who took out the women’s title on her 21st birthday. It was a satisfying victory for Lucy, who began her trail running career at the tender age of 16 running the Surf Coast Century amid a swirl of age/ultra participation debate and was often banned by some event organisers from competing in ultras…
Run Larapinta – a desert journey
“I had no idea what I was in for – the flowing single track of the night run; then the vast expanses of flat terrain that we traversed before reaching rugged ranges over which we clambered under a searing sun; then the depths of gorges so vast that they humbled my weary body.” For Hanny Allston, elite ultra trail runner, the landscapes of Larapinta were unlike anything back home in Tasmania. She had pushed her body across the Larapinta Trail…
