Viktoria Brown ran simply shy of 350 km on a observe in Gloucester, England this weekend to assert gold for Hungary on the GOMU (International Group of Multi-Day Ultramarathoners) 48-hour World Championship and proceed what has been a stellar 12 months for the Canadian twin citizen.
Brown, of Whitby, Ont., looped the observe 874 occasions to cowl 349.648 km in 47 hours, 59 minutes and 43 seconds. She racked up 59 laps greater than Romania’s Mara Guler, who completed second with 326.314 km in 47:53:19. Rounding out the ladies’s podium was Marianne Mäkinen of Finland, who ran 320.877 km in 47:49:04.
Brown’s win on the weekend comes on the heels of her fourth-place end within the ladies’s discipline ultimately month’s Badwater 135. In March, Brown bested her personal 48-hour Canadian report and 72-hour world report on the GOMU six-day world championships in Policoro, Italy—she ran 364 km inside 48 hours and 471 km inside 72 hours, finishing the six-day occasion with 684 km and the ladies’s particular person gold medal.
She tells Canadian Operating she had set an A aim of of 380 km and a B aim of 370 km for the 48-hour championships in Goucester, “however I used to be struggling from very early on. We needed to fully rewrite the vitamin plan and the climate made the race very difficult too, so I let go of any goal distance tremendous early and simply centered on profitable each the person and crew championship as my solely objectives.”
Brown explains she needed to change her vitamin to largely solids, which she isn’t used to in 48-hour races. “Our idea is that though faucet water was completely potable, by some means most foreigners weren’t tolerating it in a race scenario. That’s what occurred to me in addition to a number of others,” she defined. “My solely alternative was to swap to solids. … We did what we needed to do and finally all of it labored out effective.”
She notes the climate posed an growing problem because the occasion rolled on. “The climate was surprisingly scorching the primary day, which I used to be effective with—I had simply come again from Badwater, in spite of everything. However the rain posed totally different challenges. Typically it was raining so exhausting that I made a decision I used to be higher off with a sleep break and ready it out after my raincoat acquired soaked by way of—which by no means occurred earlier than, not even in Vancouver the place I first broke the Canadian 48-hour report in fixed rain in 2020. Different occasions the rain was mild and one would query placing rain gear on, and by the point I made a decision to take action, [the rain] was over, so I might waste one other chunk of time taking all of it off.”
As Canada didn’t ship a crew to the 48-hour world championships, the choice to run for Hungary was simple, says Brown. “I actually like races the place they are going to let me carry each flags, like Badwater, however at championships I want to select,” she explains. “This race was beneath GOMU, so it has no penalties on which nation I can run for in IAU races. I run for Canada in IAU (Worldwide Affiliation of Ultrarunners)—I can’t preserve switching that.”
Becoming a member of Hungary on the ladies’s crew podium have been Finland in second-place and Germany in third.
Brown’s particular person and girls’s crew wins within the 48-hour race have been a part of a clear sweep for Hungary. The nation additionally received the boys’s crew competitors forward of Nice Britain and Switzerland. Hungary’s Szabolcs Beda ran 390.838 km in 47:54:51 to complete first among the many males. He was adopted by Poland’s Lukasz Sagan, who ran 376.911 in 47:57:11, and Britain’s Dan Lawson, who ran 370.592 km in 47:54:09.
“It was nice to look at 59 athletes from 17 international locations share the observe for 2 days and turn into brothers and sisters in arms,” says Trishul Cherns, Canadian ultrarunning pioneer and GOMU president. “All of them introduced out the very best in one another. The world actually can study from their instance.”
