This weekend has seen huge activity on the ultra and trail running scene all over the world with some amazing results by our very own Aussie athletes (see the Commonwealth Post by Dan) and some comebacks by some of the worlds elite runners. We have also seen the cancellation of yet another remote outback run due to fires, which sends an ominous sign for the summer to come! So with all this news, where do we start ?
First we head over to the US where we have just seen the running of the inaugural UROC 100k race near Charlottesville, Virginia. This breaks new ground on the ultra running scene in the US where for the first time elite athletes were approached to attend and compete for some serious dollars. It has been coined at the unofficial world championships (without the EU runners!) with the likes of Roes, Wardian, Mackey, Sharman, Melzer in the mens and Petri and Crosby-Helms in the womens race.
The mens race traded places several times over the first 50km between Mackey (hit wall and dropped at mile 33), Wardian and Roes and then it came down to a a major error by versatile runner Mike Wardian who with the race virtually in the bag made a navigational error and ran 5km further than necessary and handed the victory to comeback kid Geoff Roes. Roes takes his first major victory in 2011 with a time of 8hrs 52 minutes after a somewhat disappointing year where he dropped at WS100 and UTMB with Mike Wardian and Matt Faherty making up second and third.
In the womens race Ragen Petrie gapped Devon Crosby-Helms to win in 10hrs 15 minutes with Anne Riddle Lundblad in third place. Meanwhile Nikki Kimball took 1st place and 6th overall at the tough Bear 100 miler in the mountains of Utah where there is over 8000m of climbing and altitude average of 7000ft. Nick Pedatella took out the mens race.
In other news we have seen the second cancellation in as many months of a multistage race due to fires. The Simpson Desert MultiMarathon at the half way stage was abandoned due to a large unconfined fire front likely to intercept the runners.
Overnight local boys Mick Donges and Brendan Davies will be representing Australia in the Commonwealth Trail Championships on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales. Run hard and smart guys.
Hey Marcus, thanks for the coverage. There was actually another local too, Jonathan Worswick, who ran as well. We did really well in a small but strong field. The Africans and leading English man did not run smartly and were dropped or had blown up by 40k. We picked up a teams bronze medal, individual performances exceeded epectations…me 4th, Mick 5th, Jono 17th. The girls also did really well with Oz rep debutant Kirsten Bull from Victoria taking 3rd. Kate Siebold, Verity Breen and Cindy Hasthorpe were the others in the Bronze medal winning team.
It was a good, fast ultra, just the way I like it!
Gday Brendan,
hope the recovery is going well? Fantastic result by all the Aussie’s on parade. Great to hear how your usual strong finish helped run the field down when all around you were blowing up ! We would love to hear more about your adventures and stick some pictures up on our site ?
Catch you soon at a Running Wild race or GNW100
cheers
Marcus
Yes great running by the Aussies. Well done Brendan 4th is fantastic. Jonathon Worswick? How does he do Trailwalker in 12 hours, run the Coastal Classic in 2:30 odd 2 weeks later and then run this thing in Wales 2 weeks after that? Just amazing!
Bummer for Iron Mike at UROC. Now that guy is a freak. He ran 6:42 for a 100k 2 weeks before the race.
Oh Marcus let me know when you are next doing your 100 stair reps, I assume you have my email since I put it in the box below when posting here
Will do Charlie, each rep is approx 1 minute so for a mid week lunchtime 50 reps is doable the 100 may have to be evening or weekend depending on who is up for it and fitting it into GNW100 training.