Racing for New Zealand at Trail Running World Champs

Hi everyone,

Hopefully this note gets to you now the page has closed.

I want to just express my sincere gratitude to you all for supporting me and helping me get to Portugal for the Trail World Champs. The race was an amazing experience, from the opening ceremony with the team until the finish of the race itself, it was my absolute pleasure to wear the NZ Silver Fern and represent you all in this amazing sport.

My day in the race went pretty well overall. I had hoped to run 4 hours 30 mins based on what I knew I was capable of and what I saw of the course, and I was close to that. 4 hours 32 minutes.

I was midpack, 118 out of about 250 entered men, and I had hoped I was going to be top 100, and on another day I think it was achievable, but I had a few issues with getting near the front early on and it was also hard mentally to push for those extra positions in the heat when you're tired.

I was 2nd NZ Man in, and 3rd NZ overall, behind Sam McCutcheon and Ruth Croft (Who was 2nd Woman in the world!).

The rest of the team, Paul Timothy, Will Bell, Tim Rabone, Chris Dunell, Nancy Jiang and Mel Aitken all finished strong not far behind, which is fantastic and while they found it a tough day out like I did - we were all stoked with the experience.

Thank you all once again for helping me achieve a once in a lifetime opportunity - I may try make another world champs team next year, but it's going to be a tough ask to replicate the first one.

Kind regards

Andrew Thompson