Jeanette Wang

Trail Tales | Blumberg stays on course in his Grand Slam bid

Hong Kong trailrunner Andre Blumberg completes the Vermont 100 at the weekend to reach the halfway mark of the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning - but he's says it's not getting easier

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"Still feeling okay at this stage, but not for much longer," says Blumberg. All photos: Patchanida Pongsubkarun

Jeanette Wang

Published: 12:29pm, 25 Jul 2013Updated: 5:30pm, 25 Jul 2013

Practice makes perfect, but not quite if you’re running a 100-mile race. Just ask Andre Blumberg, who completed the Vermont 100 at the weekend, his second 100-miler in three weeks.

“They don’t get easier,” says Blumberg, 43, a Hong Kong-based German IT director who has chalked up an impressive resume of trail ultramarathons in the past couple of years.

The Vermont 100 – set in West Windsor in Vermont, the New England state famous for its maple syrup and Ben & Jerry’s – is one of the original 100-mile runs in the US and part of the four-race Grand Slam of Ultrarunning.

This year marked the 25th anniversary of the event, which was created as a fundraiser for Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, an organisation that provides sports and recreational opportunities to the disabled or handicapped.

What makes the event really unique is that horses race alongside participants on a similar course. The loop starts and finishes at Silver Hill Meadow, and consists of 70 per cent dirt of jeep roads, with the rest on woods trails (and a couple of miles on pavement). There are few stretches that are flat; runners find themselves either going up or down most of the time, for a total elevation gain (and equal descent) of about 4,500 metres.

Horses race alongside runners at the Vermont 100. All photos: Patchanida Pongsubkarun