By Elsa Trujillo
The 2016 long weekend of ultra running in the Andorran Pyrenees is over, with racers from all over the world travelling to the small village of Ordino to run. It was a broad field with runners from places as far away as Uruguay, the Caribbean and French Polynesia, and with the oldest and youngest competitors aged 78 and 19 respectively.
Frenchman Nahuel Passerat came first of the 331 participants of the Ronda dels Cims, a 170km mountain ultra run with a total ascent of 13,500m. Italian Lisa Borzani was the first lady to cross the finish line.
2014 champion and local runner Xavier Teixidó claimed his second win of Mític, with 112km and a total 9,700m ascent. The first lady out of the 417 runners was Frenchwoman Jocelyne Pauli.
With 5,000m ascent and a total of 50 miles of mountain running, Celestrail completed the trio of ultra events of this mountain festival. In their respective categories, winners of the 443 participants were Frenchman Mikael Pasero and Andorran Aida Fornieles.
The final event of this series of mountain trail runs, and the most popular, was the Marató dels Cims, a 42km run with a total ascent of 3,000m which this year registered 621 participants. This past Saturday, the joint male winners were Spaniards Albert Pujol and Pol Rodríguez, and the fastest lady was Zuriñe Frutos, also from Spain.
This weekend event also included a family friendly 10k solidarity walk/run called the Solidaritrail.
