Written by David Lipman In just it’s second year, the Montreux trail festival is QUICKLY gaining the momentum of a flying European descending from Rochers-de-Naye (1600m descent over 10km to the finish line that all races in the festival have in common). Billed as the Vaud Alps experience tour, it does not disappoint! Race directors Diego Pazos (Swiss Ultra Trail Runner of the year 2015) and Cédric Agassis and their team have put in a lot of work to create…
Australia’s first 200 mile race, the Altra Nerang 200 (320 kms), is set to take place at the end of September. It forms part of the Nerang Trail endurance festival which takes place from 27-30 September, 2018. Set in the Nerang National Park, just behind the Gold Coast, the festival effectively brings trails to suburbia. The event is headquartered out of the Nerang cycling velodrome and is conducted on a 25 km loop (trail) course. The venue is just 45 minutes from the Gold Coast (Coolangatta) airport…
There’s nothing like running the rim of an extinct volcano! Yes, the Crater Rim Ultra delivers on its label promise, with trail runners taking a point to point journey around the crater that makes up the impressive Christchurch Port Hills in New Zealand, encircling Lyttelton Harbour. 2018 sees event double as the Athletics New Zealand Trailing Running Championships, so there’s extra kudos on the line. From a low-key beginning back in 2001 when 31 runners finished, the event has grown…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
