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SA trail team experience Champs

South Africa Trail Team 2011

South Africa Trail Team 2011

On 9 July, South Africa proudly participated for the first time in the Trail World Championships presented by the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU). As one of the privileged team, I speak for all of us in thanking Athletics South Africa (ASA) for an utterly wonderful opportunity and experience.
It was a last minute decision to send a team from SA, due to ongoing controversy over whether trail running should be independent of ASA. If that were the case, no trail athletes in SA would ever compete for their country. The champions of our cause finally got the green light, a month before the event, held in the beautiful Connemara region of northern Galway in Ireland.

The team was rustled together based on recent performance results. The men’s team comprised Iain Don-Wauchope, William Robinson, and Bruce Arnett; the women’s team comprised Su Don-Wauchope, Jeannie Bomford, and Katya Soggot. With just four weeks in which to prepare for a tough 71km course encompassing 2800m of climb, over 30km of tar or hardpack gravel, and open grassland sections which were predominantly bog, we faced an almighty challenge.

Some of us had never run close to an ultra-marathon distance, and none of us were close to being suitably fit and trained to tackle it at our best, competing against contestants extensively experienced at this level. Well aware of our position, ASA’s main agenda was commendably to put SA on the World Trail Championships map, and gain insight and experience to help with preparing for next time.

Up against elite ultra-marathon runners – a total of 131 athletes from the athletics federations of Argentina, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain and the USA – we gave it our best shot!

Bruce was highest placed at 36th, finishing in 7h49m. William was 68th place in 8h48m. Su came 77th in 9h02m (13th out of 25 women finishers) and I (Katya) came 104th in 10h42m (explanation later!). Titans of SA trail running Iain and Jeannie were battling with flu/colds (humans, not machines after all) and wisely bailed during the race, before doing themselves harm. Iain was in second place at the 28km aid station, but pulled out at the 40km mark. 20 contestants did not finish. My excuse for my shoddy time is that at 35k I had a knee blowout. Dilapidated but determined to soldier on, I hobbled the remaining 40k (including an extra 5km because I got lost – as usual), enjoying the grandeur of the scenery and occasion.

France creamed the championships, winning both male and female individual and team (combined times of three individuals) categories. First man through was Erik Clavery in 6h39; first woman was Maud Gobert in 7h41. Italy and Canada provided the strongest competition.

South Africa has two years to prepare for the next event, to be held in 2013 in Italy with a promised 6000m total climb. Connemara has given momentum to talk about formalising a strategy for how trail running is to be represented on a national level moving forward. There is also a suggestion of having an SA ultra-trail champs, and discussion on how to integrate trail running into ASA, without compromising it.

ASA gave us tremendous support in getting us to the championships, with great kit and the kind guardianship of our team manager, Pieter de Jager, ASA Technical Manager, throughout a memorably fun trip. Thanks again for making it happen!

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