World Masters Mountain Running Championships - Meduno, Italy

Emerging into the sun at the summit of the climb

I'd procrastinated about entering this due to my propensity for illness and injury, usually triggered by me committing to a major event or indeed any overseas event. I had entered a few years ago when it was in Ireland but personal circumstances meant I could not go. However, 3 or 4 months ago, figuring that although I could be fitter next year, I will also be another year older and inherently slower, I made up my mind that it had to be done. As this was my first year in the new 5 year age group (M60), it was likely to be my best chance of being a counter in the GB M60 team (3 to count). So I got an entry for the event, accredited by British Masters Athletics, and a month or so ago, I organised the flights to Venice and booked accommodation (which immediately resulted in my first cold for months the next day!).

San Daniele del Friuli old town

This year's event was in Meduno in the province of Udine in the foothills of the Alps quite close to the Austrian border. Meduno is a small village and could not hope to accommodate the influx of runners from around the world. Therefore, participants were spread far and wide throughout the province. I had found a hotel in the medieval hilltop town of San Daniele del Friuli about 25km from Meduno. I arrived there on the Wednesday with my race (the classic 14km up/down) being on the Sunday. Nowadays there are three races in the championship; an uphill race (5km, 800m ascent), the long distance race (34km, up/down 1850m) and the classic up/down race (14km but last minute changed to 15km, up/down 740m). Originally the event alternated between an uphill championship race only for one year and the classic up/down race the next year, each event being hosted by a different country each year. But now the popularity of this type of running and the fact that more runners are entering from the oldest age groups means they have both events plus the long-distance event every year.

I had originally toyed with the idea of doing the uphill race only as I am mince at running downhill fast on technical terrain. However, I am glad I didn't as much of the descent in the up/down race was very runnable (for me) and, on speaking to another member of the GB team who did the uphill race, it was absolute carnage due to the extremely muddy conditions in torrential rain and the fact that the organisers allowed poles to be used in this race, which is fine if you know how to use poles but chaos if you don't, which was apparently the case, with people slipping down the hill and landing on top of each other and getting poked and hit by wildly flailing poles.

I decided to do a full course recce on the Thursday, walking the uphills to save energy and jogging the flat and downhill bits. The purpose was mainly to decide which shoes to wear for the race but also to get an idea how to pace it. The Thursday was torrential rain and thunderstorms; not the best conditions to be going up a mountain but needs must.

Typical ascent path

The recce was a great decision as I was able to see that the first 3.5km of the ascent was mainly a single track (i.e. one person wide) slippy, muddy, rocky, tree rooty nightmare. For those who know the WHW, think of the worst parts of the loch-side but tilted up onto a slope of 20 to 30%! Talking of which, about half way up the ascent, passing through a mountain hamlet, I met one of the organisers who was marking out the course and spoke to him for a few minutes. Turns out he did the WHW race in 2017 as a qualifier for the Western States 100 miler in California that year. A seriously fast guy but very definitely at the younger end of the masters spectrum (M35 in this case). The ascent topped out at about the 5km to 6km mark (i.e. 740m of climbing over about 5km as the first 500m of the race was on the mainly downhill main street of the village). The entire ascent was in dense forest and reached an altitude of about 1000m above sea level. The forest at least gave some protection from the wind, rain and thunder. A water station was positioned in a summer pasture farmstead at the summit which, unfortunately, the course dropped down into and then climbed back out of up a steep grassy bank. Just when you thought you were finished with climbing for a while!

The climb out from the summit water station

Thereafter it was 7km of gravel and rock farm track steeply downwards with a few short level bits and a further 1km ascent near the bottom just to turn the screw. Then the second part of the nightmare began. The course veered off the farm track onto another single file single track signposted "Dangerous Descent!!!". And indeed it was. Steep, mud on rock, single track, twisting and turning, jumps off rocks and a few random rock steps thrown in for the final 3k. I would just have to take my time on this bit, knowing that I would be losing places left right and centre in the race. Finishing without breaking an ankle was now my objective. I now knew that I would be wearing the Inov8 Mudtalon trail shoes in the race that I had worn for the recce. They wouldn't be great on the gravel and rock farm track but would hopefully keep me on my feet in the mud (they didn't).

The Classic 14km race day (Sunday) was the finest weather of the week with not a cloud in the sky and temperatures rising to 26C. However, this would make no difference to the underfoot conditions as it had rained to a greater or lesser extent every day since I arrived and the course was deep in the forest, shaded from the sun. Add to that, the multiple races that had run over parts of the course on Friday and Saturday, it was guaranteed to be even muddier than on the recce. Before leaving the hotel to drive to the course, I did a final check of the event web site for the briefing notes to see where I had to be and when. The headline presented to me was good news and bad news. The good news, there had been so much carnage in the final descent of the long-distance race on the Saturday that the organisers had decided to by-pass the final 2km of the treacherous descent on today's Classic race. The bad news, this added another km onto the course so it was now a 15km race. The start had also been pushed back a further half hour, I guess to allow the course markers to be moved and marshals briefed. I uploaded the new gpx route onto my Garmin and tried to work out what the changes involved. It seemed that we were now descending for 2 or 3km on a tarmac mountain road with multiple hairpin bends (it turned out we were only on this road for the final 1.5 to 2km and were mainly in a field and forest to the side of the road) and approaching the finish from the opposite direction to that originally intended on the main street.

Race day - the Classic ascends the mountain in the middle of the picture

Needless to say, I was feeling rotten on the Sunday morning for some reason (I can tell you now that as I am writing this, I am loaded with the cold, coughing and snottering, so that was what was developing on the Sunday; my health jinx continues) and struggled to muster a warm-up. The classic race was split into 3 waves setting off at half hour intervals. First off at 9am were M35 to M50, followed by the F35 to F75 at 0930 and finally the M55 to M75 wave at 10am. We all had to sign in to the call area and have our kit checked a half hour before each race (e.g. all gels had to have your race number written on them so that any litter found on the course could be attributed to a specific runner and that runner disqualified, checking compliance of national vest/t-shirts, front and rear numbers/age categories displayed properly, etc. this is the real deal as far as championships are concerned with medalist and random doping control at the end). We were held there until 15 minutes before the start and then led down to the start pen where there was enough space to jog about and do some strides and drills. The announcer provided us with some more welcome gems about the course change whilst we waited i.e. exactly 500m before the finish line, there was a flight of 42 steps to run down and to be very careful! In my warm-up I had only recced, the last 250m of the revised finish unfortunately so did not see those steps.

A few minutes before the start, the field of 207 M55 to M75+ runners advanced to the line and a few seconds before 1000, the starter set us off (if he had waited any longer, he would not have been heard for the church bells that rang on the hour!). As expected, it was a cavalry charge for the first 550m along the main street, being pushed, clipped and concentrating like crazy not to be tripped. Then we veered off the main street to the right onto the steep trail, initially two abreast and after a further 50m or so it funneled down to single file. And that was the race decided as it was more or less impossible to pass for the next 5km, not that I was feeling up to passing anyone. It was a constant slog up. On the steeper bits, the person in front of my little pack would walk and we would all walk. When he started running again, we all started running again. Meanwhile packs in front were doing the same but presumably at a faster pace as they had disappeared. I was light headed and dizzy and kept stumbling and cursing myself and couldn't understand it.

Climbing the steps through the mountain hamlet

After we passed through the mountain hamlet, running up a set of stone stairs between buildings to join the dirt trail again, it got even steeper. I became acutely aware of what was a several thousand foot drop off to the left of the single file trail, albeit covered in dense vegetation which would stop anyone falling far, as I was about to prove. I continued to stagger and slip on the muddy path and then all of a sudden, my left foot slipped off the edge and I followed it. Over I went, tangled up in the undergrowth. An Italian or French runner (blue vest, wasn't sure which) grabbed me and pulled me back up onto the path and I carried on only one place further down in my little pack but with a few scrapes and cuts. Par for the course. Somewhere around 4.5k, the single track path joined a farm track and continued to climb through a series of hairpin bends. At this point, I started moving through the pack and cleared them all but apart from the odd straggler, there was nobody else in sight. At the summit, we emerged from the forest to be faced with an official photographer and the drinks station in the farmstead. I caught one more Italian runner at the drinks station and then passed him a few hundred metres into the descent where I was initially moving quite well at sub 3:50/km (not that I was looking at my watch during the race). The descent was relentless and I had a few near ankle twisters on rolling rocks obscured by the dappled sunlight through the trees. Occasionally I thought I was catching someone only to find it was a back marker in the ladies' race which had started a half hour earlier. Then it was that 1km climb I mentioned previously and my quads had had enough. I lost a lot of speed here. When we started descending again, I was much slower and was caught by a couple, including another GB runner who moved me down from 4th GB to 5th GB. Then about 4km from the finish, we veered off onto the "Dangerous Descent" path. I was running quite fast for me on this sort of steep, treacherous, muddy, rocky single track terrain but an Italian and then Spanish runner came flying passed and disappeared. After 1km of this we crossed a tarmac mountain road into a field and followed a narrow footpath down through the field and then another wooded area before eventually emerging onto the road again. At this point we were descending on the tarmac road for about 1.5 to 2km. For those familiar with the Bracklinn Falls road in Callander, it was like that but with 180 degree hairpin bends every so often. Punishing on the feet in trail shoes. I wasn't being caught or overtaken on this bit at least. Then, with 500m to go as promised by the announcer, we turned sharp left through a hole in the wall onto a flight of irregular steps that zig zagged down through the village. More caution and caught and passed by at least one; I can't remember now, my eyes were too focused on where my feet were going. We emerged onto the mountain road again with 250m to go, still descending for about 50m, left turn onto the main street for about 150m and then left turn up the school steps and the finishing straight. At least I didn't have to get involved in a sprint finish with anyone!

Finished!

I finished in 1:28:08, 23rd M60 and 5th GB, so not a team counter. This was 12 minutes behind the winning M60 from Italy. A small amount of that difference would be due to me being stuck in the traffic jam on the climb and not firing on all cylinders; the majority of the difference due to them being exceptional athletes! The Italians occupied 5 of the top 6 M60 places and swept up the team prize (3 to count). GB were second team with 2nd, 8th and 18th positions in the M60 category and Spain 3rd with 7th, 12th and 19th positions.

A free pasta party was underway in the finish area and a DJ was really going for it with some classics mixed with typical Europop. The biggest party animals were the Argentinian and Uruguayan women's teams who seemed to still be in competition with each other on the dance floor!

Across all age groups and genders, there were 605 starters in the Classic race which included participants from 27 countries. As expected the Alpine nations were well represented (Italy, Austria, Germany, France and Switzerland). However, there was a strong Latin American representation with a big team from Mexico and teams from Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Columbia. The GB team was quite big (18 participants) but surprisingly there were 66 Irish runners competing and winning medals in many of the age category team competitions. Central Europe was strongly represented by Czech Republic (who will host next years championship), Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and one athlete (in the Classic at least) from Ukraine. There were also small contingents from USA, Australia and South Africa. The oldest runner was Elizabeth Springer (which means runner in some of the Germanic languages!) who is 81 years old and finished in 2:45, 3rd place in the F75 category!!!! There were 15 over 75's in the classic race. The first M75, aged 77, finished only three and a half minutes behind me, an Italian by the name of Pierino Barbonetti!! Billy Buchanan, you are but a boy, there is time for you yet!

I would say that this year's courses were definitely mountain races rather than trail races, satisfying the official requirements of a mountain race championship for significant elevation gain over a short distance but were not great racing courses due to the ascents being too narrow to pass. Fine for those with a fast 400m time to get to the front at the start but not great for the rest of us. However, all in all, I needed a holiday and a quiet week wandering around an Italian mountain village eating pasta, ham and ice cream has probably done me good (apart from picking up a cold!). Once more details of the courses are published, I might consider next year's event in the Czech Republic. It is in June. 

Just one (more) cornetto

Alan