Merillas and Alonso win Acantilados del Norte on La Palma's cliff path
Manuel Merillas won the Skyrunner World Series race in 2:31:54, 13 seconds off the record, and Sara Alonso set a women's course record of 3:00:43.
Photograph: Manuel Merillas at Sierre-Zinal in 2022, by Johann Conus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe third round of the Skyrunner World Series went along the north coast of La Palma on Saturday. Acantilados del Norte follows the GR 130, the old coastal path, for about 29 km from Santo Domingo de Garafía toward Barlovento, with more than 2,000 m of climbing on volcanic rock above the sea.
Manuel Merillas of Spain won in 2:31:54, 13 seconds off the course record. The race went out fast and by 12 km it was Merillas against France's Frédéric Tranchand on the technical ground, with less than half a minute between them into the closing kilometres. Merillas made his move on the last descent. Tranchand was second in 2:33:12 and Alain Santamaría third in 2:36:09. Merillas said the win paid for five months of hard training. He had raced here in 2021 and suffered badly.
Sara Alonso went to the front early in the women's race and nobody saw her again. She finished in 3:00:43, a course record, 43 seconds short of the three hours she had been chasing; she said a steep climb near the end took the last of it. Patricia Pineda was second in 3:06:12 and Marta Martínez third in 3:07:30. Spanish runners took most of the top ten in both races.
The series moved on to the Calamorro Skyrace in Andalucía on April 11.
A footpath cut into sea cliffs, a record that fell and one that held by 13 seconds. Skyrunning at its most literal.
Sources: Skyrunner World Series; Carreras de Montaña; iRunFar.
