Two EMAC members from Marshall Milton Keynes AC competed in the annual World Masters Mountain Running Championships held in the North-Western Italian town of Susa, not far from the mountainous Italian/French border, 50km west of Turin. Ursula Ghaleb was contesting her third whilst Brian Graves, a veteran of these events, taking part in his 18th.
On the day temperatures were around 32°C and the course although only just short of 7km, it included a very severe climb of 800m, consisting of mainly of loose scree/rocks, in the final 4.5km. Brian quoted, “In all my years of European Mountain Running this was the toughest course I had seen.” This fact was borne out by comments from many of the competitors post race that they had never had to walk so much in a mountain race.
The next edition of EMAC eNews will describe how the pair got on in the event.
Next year the Championship returns to the mountains of Slovakia at Dubnica nad Vahom near the border with the Czech Republic and will be held on the first weekend in September 2017. The last time it was held there was in 2000. That year the course was 7.4km with 494m of climb.
