On 12-13th May Melinda Marchal competed in the UTS100k, Ultra Trail Snowdonia, which is a big ultra event run by UTMB as one of their World Series events, drawing an international crowd with big names (Tom Evans, Nicky Spinks, Jean-Philippe Tschumi…).
It’s a mountain ultra in Snowdonia, running 25k, 50k, 100k and 100mi options.
Melinda ran the 100k, which is a 105k course with 6,500m of elevation (basically up and down 8 mountains, with lots of scrambling, climbing, and bog-wading).
Result: 12th place, 2nd in age category.
Apparently the race lived up to its tagline: Beautiful beyond belief, Brutal beyond reason.
Terrain was just brutal, and the weather caught out a lot of people as it was a surprisingly hot day.
She said she was very pleased to finish at a fairly good pace, and still with a smile on her face after 22hrs and 52mins!
If you want to see more silly long distance stuff and general running faffing, she’s on Instagram as @wmUltrarunner (Melinda Marchal, wife-mother-ultrarunner).