The World mountain and trail running championship (WMTRC) is in Canfranc, Spain at the end of September this year. I decided a while ago to turn down my OCC/CCC slot and concentrate on this instead. These events are separated by 3 weeks. Whilst perfectly possible, for a NZ based athlete that can present a big challenge and cost. Many countries have specified that their athletes are not allowed to run both in order to maximise performance, meaning we have seen many runners who would have competed at one of the UTMB events sit it out this year, and continue their training on a build towards the WMTRC.
Turns out this was a good decision this year, dodging the bullet of a very altered OCC course due to bad weather. The modified route missed many of the main trails and climbs of the iconic OCC course, including the last gnarly climb and descent from La Flégère. Instead, there was a lot more tarmac and a long mostly flat run in the valley to finish. This certainly favoured those with a fast road marathon time, with Jim Walmsley’s gazelle like leg speed taking the win by a narrow margin. Still awesome watching the lead runners in a great battle, even if there was lots of road, a train cutting through the front of the womens race, and lack of a proper aid station in Martigny. UTMB did well pivoting to navigate between the worst of the stormy weather and avoid the high points with lightning risk.
The full UTMB was a different story. The trails were soggy, navigated a pretty brutal stormy overnight, but only had one minor diversion to the planned route. I was working all weekend, but caught as much of the livestream around my shifts. Seeing Ruth pace the perfect race, survive the cold stormy conditions overnight and finish 1st looking strong after 21 hours of racing was incredible. Inspiring stuff for anyone, especially all the Kiwis watching.
The WMTRC “short course” consists of 44.5k with about 3700m of vert, on reportedly very technical trails. Amusingly, this exceeds the World athletics guideline format for the race (see table from world athletics website).
The short trail is thought to be more likely a 5-6 hr affair for the lead runners, and possibly 10 hrs for the long trail. It will be interesting how it all plays out. Hopefully there is no weather bomb and altered course for this one, as I am not sure where in the valley they would go!
I had a great training block in Norway during June/July, where there is no shortage of ridiculously steep and technical trails. If you follow me on Strava you can check out some of the stats of the Norwegian climbs & descents. Clocking up lots of time on feet with lots of vert, some race experience and, what’s more; regular sleeping patterns (a huge rarity for me), definitely raised my level a wee bit on this kind of terrain. This was an intentional choice to create a block specific to the WMTRC course, and Norway did not disappoint. The sting in the tail though was a complete lack of specific training for the Xterra trail run world champs which had long flat sections and was in 30+ degreesC heat (very different to Norway!). I did my best but made a few mistakes with hydration and struggled to keep pace on the road sections. Coming in 2nd behind another kiwi was pretty cool though, and great to claim the Xterra age group world champion title. My advice to anyone: the more specific you can get in the final build towards a race the better.
Back in New Zealand the plan was to keep the momentum of the steep rough Norwegian mountain work in my legs and build on that towards September. Wellington is pretty good for this. You can find a bit of everything, including some 30%+ climbs, super technical stuff, and no lack of hills in your daily training. I had never used poles before, though had been meaning to give it a go. A few sessions with poles as prep have felt good. Heavy strength work to help that explosive power on climbs. Trying to prioritise recovery, nutrition, sleep: - having a goal is a great motivation to try twice as hard to get this as good as possible amongst the shift-work and increasingly busy under-resourced health system I operate in.
No plan comes without a hitch. For me this has been twofold. A) dealing with a tendonopathy around my hip, and B) getting hit with two really nasty viruses in the last 4 weeks, one of which led to a secondary maxillary sinus infection, absolutely flooring me. Trying to do what I could, which was generally an hour a day of something, but primarily super easy efforts. When you would rather be smashing your legs in training up and down steep climbs, but are at home with a fever and barely feel like walking around the block is not ideal. So, a bit of a bumpy build towards Worlds. But I think at times like this you have to look back at the long term and bigger picture. It can be easy to worry about missing weeks of good training and then ‘panic-train’ to compensate. I am old and wise enough to know this does not work. Keep the consistency, and build specificity in the lead up is the way to go.
I will document the build towards the WMTRC and plan to show the event, the area, behind the scenes, etc.. on here over the next month. Follow along if interested. If you find value in this, there is also the option to add some funds in support(see below). Kiwis have to pay for the mandated kit/equipment, technical officials, planning, and all the travel and accommodation in order to compete for their country. There are other countries that provide full or partial support. Whilst I do this as a hobby and feel privileged to compete, the lack of funding for many sports in NZ like this is something I would love to see improved in the future for kiwi athletes representing their country.
