After a successful first race of The Ingeli SkyMarathon, a 42km race covering 2 100m of vertical gain, both male winner Lucky Miya and Su Don-Wauchope – who came 5th in the ladies race, have secured entries in the 2014 SkyRunning World Championships to be held in Chamonix, France in June this year.

Up-and-coming South African trail speedster Miya won the race in 3:37:19 while Wauchope finished 5th overall in the ladies race in a time of 4:16:29.

“My race strategy was to start conservatively and then pick up the pace as I needed to, depending on the competition. I realised on the first climb that I was stronger than the other guys so I pushed hard and opened a gap. The course had a good mix of steep climbs and descents, and long runnable forest sections,” says Miya.

Don-Wauchope on the other hand said she was worried that she started out too fast. “But, I’ve been doing a lot of hill training, and felt very strong on the ups. I approached the long descent cautiously, and once I got into the forest I tried to relax and stride out. I had a great day and had legs all the way to the finish!”

The next race on the South African Skyrunner calendar is the  Matroosberg Skymarathon in October.

For more on South African Skyrunning go to SASA.