Welcome to the world of mountain running

The Obudu Ranch International – the most lucrative mountain running race in the world - takes place on Saturday 29 November. spikesmag.com chats to the two current World Mountain Running Grand Prix series winners – New Zealanders Jonathan Wyatt and Anna Frost – to found out more about this strand of the sport.

Now to most of us the thought of climbing up a small hill or raising the incline a couple of notches on the treadmill presents a major challenge.

But for a very special community of athletes they like nothing more than running 3000m uphill for up to one-and-a-half hours… for pleasure.

Mountain runners may be track and field’s poorer cousin but with a vibrant European-based circuit this tranche of the sport (which has been largely untouched by the East Africans) can provide some rich athletic competition not to mention some breathtaking views.

The sport’s leading male exponent for the past decade has been New Zealander Jonathan Wyatt, a two-time Olympian, who appeared for his country on the track in the 5000m at the 1996 Atlanta Games and eight years later in the marathon.

But since friends introduced him to mountain running a little over a decade ago he has dominated the sport, as a six-time world champion and seven-time winner of the season long Grand Prix Series.

“As a kid I lived at the top of a hill in Wellington and that meant on all of my training runs I’d have to run up and down a hill," says Wyatt. "We have a tradition for road relays in New Zealand and I always seemed to run the hilly legs. I don’t know whether you really enjoy it [mountain running]. You get a satisfaction out of it, for sure. You get a certain sadistic pleasure, I guess.”

Wyatt’s younger team-mate is Wales-based Anna Frost, a former triathlete who first tasted mountain running four years ago.

She spent much of childhood in Dunedin – a city which boasts the world’s steepest street – and she, too, has a natural affinity with the mountains.

“Running on bush tracks and open moors is fantastic, it is so much nicer than running 25 times around a track,” she explains. “The sense of achievement comes when you reach the top and you get such a fantastic reward with the stunning views.”

Most races are purely uphill from distances ranging from 8km to 16km and the Kiwi duo describe themselves as ‘uphill specialists'. However, a number of races each year are uphill-downhill races with Wyatt estimating some of the more accomplished athletes reach speeds of up to 25kph on the treacherous downhill sections.

However, as the 35-year-old Italian-based athlete explains, “To race hard downhill puts a lot of strain on your muscles and the recovery time is therefore much longer. I can typically run an uphill race every weekend but running in an up and down race takes three weeks to recover.”

Pain is also a constant companion on the long and arduous road to the top of the mountain and the dangers of pushing too hard are self-evident.

At the 2005 World Mountain Running Trophy – the most prestigious prize in the sport – staged in her native New Zealand, Frost was keen to impress but she started to struggle on the second lap and collapsed.

“I hadn’t followed a particularly good diet and I didn’t have enough blood glucose and spent the rest of the night in hospital,” says Frost, 27. “I was unconscious, it was awful.”
 
Thankfully, though, such experiences are rare and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Wyatt enthuses about the tight-knit brotherhood within the mountain running community and he also points to another advantage - the amount of calories burned during a race can allow him to indulge in his passion for eating and drinking.
 
“You don’t tend to eat a big meal after a race you just tend to snack on potato chips, popcorn and bananas, a good Tirolean steak, Pom Frites. I might also indulge in a Coca-Cola and then have a couple of beers. I enjoy an odd tipple. You feel you’ve justified it, so you let yourself go.”

But why does New Zealand, a nation of just four million people, currently dominate the world of mountain running?

“We’ve grown up in hilly areas and it always been part of the training but another thing in New Zealand is it [mountain running] does tend to be more mainstream while in other countries it is seen a bit of a funky thing to do,” explains Wyatt.

“It’s had its ups and downs but it has always been part of the sport and that’s kept the enthusiasm there for some of the top runners to have a go at it.”

*Wyatt will be in action chasing a prize fund of $50,000 at the Obudu International Running Race in Nigeria on Saturday 29 November.