© Alexis Berg

Lining up for the 42km BUFF Epic Trail skyrace in July, 24-year-old Swede, Johanna Åström, was a total newcomer. Despite having no skyrunning experience, she pulled off an incredible second-place finish, which she topped a month later by crushing the course record at Tromsø skyrace – arguably the most technical skyrace of the 2019 Migu Run Skyrunner World Series Calendar.

Johanna, who is also part of the Swedish Ski Mountaineering team and has won winter races such as the Romsdal Rando, climbed her way up to 3rd place in the Skyrunner World Series rankings and was in contention for the Series title in Limone last weekend until a hip injury she picked up whilst roller skiing forced her to pull out. In this interview, Johanna chats about her background, her newfound love of skyrunning and what her typical race season training looked like.

© Migu Run Skyrunner World Series/ David Gonthier

When it comes to versatility of racing, you’d be hard to find someone who can switch it up as successfully as Russian skyrunning and ultra trail athlete Katya Mityaeva, who has triumphed in both short but brutal vertical kilometer™ races and long, extremely mountainous ultras. She just came 4th at this year’s 170km UTMB and, although you’ll mostly find her on a mountain trail (sometimes with her successful skyrunning husband, Dimitri Mityaeva), she’s also got a mean road marathon time of 2:36!

I caught up with the successful skyrunner via email to talk skyrunning, training and UTMB.

© Philipp Reiter

For American skyrunner Megan Kimmel, the mountains aren’t just home (she lives in Colorado) but a training ground and escape. Super-comfortable covering big climbs at altitude, Megan holds the course record for the Pikes Peak marathon (14,115ft of ascent!) and recently won the Broken Arrow Skyrace. A big name within skyrunning, the 39-year-old is currently ranked 3rd overall in the Migu Run Skyrunner World Series (the official circuit for skyrunning) with a win at China’s Yading skyrace, a second at Japan’s Mount Awa Skyrace and third at Transvulcania.

In between a seriously hectic schedule of transatlantic flights, travel and racing, Megan squeezed in time to answer my questions on her running background, mental strategies, training and season so far.

As the Skyrunning World Championships are well underway in Scotland right now, one woman in particular, Lauri van Houten, will be busy working hard behind the scenes, the place she likes best. As the VP and co-founder of the International Skyrunning Federation (ISF), Lauri has been instrumental in growing the sport of skyrunning over the past 25 years ago.

In this Q&A, Lauri chats about everything skyrunning and explains how it all began with mountaineer and skyrunning founder, Marino Giacometti’s Monte Rosa summit, in 1989.

Photo Credit: Damiano Levati for Red Bull

A new addition to the 2017 race calendar, the Vertical Kilometer™ World Circuit hopes to capitalise on the growing popularity of uphill, vertical racing with the introduction of a competitive series.

A spin-off of the popular Skyrunner World Series, the VK World Circuit includes 16 vertical kilometre races around Europe (plus one in the US), raced as a series. The idea: gain points for your position in each race and compete for the overall series win. A mix of new courses and classic race routes, the race length actually varies from 1km to a max of 5km.

For us mere mortals, however, it’s not about racing but the simple (!) goal of reaching the summit to enjoy a nauseous mix of elation and total exhaustion.