2023 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships – Insights and inspiration Race Director Blog

By Shane Ohly

The ÖBB Nightjet pulls out of Innsbruck and as the long train journey home begins I finally have a few moments to reflect on an amazing week at the 2023 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships (WMTRC) hosted by Innsbruck and the Stubai region in Austria.

Every year, I like to travel to Europe and take part in some of the iconic Alpine trail races. Some are grand and showy affairs, and others are understated and hard, much like some of the classic Lakeland fell races at home in the Lake District. Without any doubt, I always return with renewed enthusiasm and fresh ideas that I’d like to incorporate into my own events.

Of course, there were some incredible athlete performances at the World Champs, and much has already been written and shared all over the media, but I was there for a different reason… a deep dive into the organisation of a major sporting event with presentations, tours and insight into the event operations courtesy of the World Athletics Observer Programme.

The grand vision is joint World Championships through the close collaboration of the Mountain Running (World Mountain Running Association), Trail Running (International Trail Running Association) and Ultra Running (International Association of Ultrarunners), with the official World Athletics sanction providing the overarching credibility and glue.

With so many ‘world this…, championship that…’ in off-road running, the authenticity of a formally recognised World Championships was clearly a big draw, with 68 countries and 1,290 athletes taking part. This collaboration has very obviously been a big success and several countries are vying with each other for the hosting rights for the 2027 edition (the 2025 edition has been awarded to Canfranc-Canfranc).

The 2023 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships were preceeded the weekend before by the Innsbruck Alpine Trailrun Festival (IATF). The IATF is a weekend of trail running, very similar in format to our Salomon Skyline Scotland event with multiple races over the weekend. The IATF has a heritage stretching back 20 years and is about 30% bigger in terms of overall participants and certainly has a strong sense of a well-established and well-organised event.

Essentially, I was a mystery shopper at IATF taking part in the K65 – Panorama Ultra Trail. My experience starts with the initial impressions of the event website, the entry confirmation, final details email, registration, the nerves of starting, waymarking, aid stations, the overwhelming sense of satisfaction when you finish a long hard race, and then of course the post-race media and photos. These experiences are condensed into some structured observations for the team to review back at Ourea Events HQ. Bottom line – it's an excellent event that I’d recommend, and I’ll share a paragraph about my personal race experience…

 …The first 20km felt great. A very short pavement section through the historic centre of Innsbruck before climbing up through the steep alpine forest. Typically, I start too fast. This is despite my best efforts having never really adjusted from the runner I once was, to the runner I am now. On this day, however, I was pleased with my conservative pacing and was enjoying passing others with a steady-away climb. The middle 20km started to hurt, but I more-or-less maintained my pace... and racing is meant to feel hard, no? The final 25km deteriorated into a suffer-fest. Various injury niggles from the last few years stiffen up, the temperatures rocketed, my left knee ached, and I paid the price for the lack of any structured training. Particularly those harder sessions. Eventually, I struggled to run up even the slightest of hills and movement forward was a new jog-grind-shuffle style. With about 10km to go the 65k route joined some of the other races and many runners converged together as we headed back into Innsbruck. The leading ladies passed me here. My personal benchmark when running at my best, is to be there-or-there-abouts with the winning female so this was always going to happen (and to be 100% clear I have absolutely no issue being beaten by any women). Anyway. I finished. Much to my surprise, 13th overall. My reward? A painful and restless night because of cramps in my legs and feet. I was too sore to get off the sofa the following day… but I had a brilliant time.