Madeira Island Ultra Trail, Portugal

The Madeira Island Ultra Trail (MIUT) is a challenging trail covering about 115km across the Portuguese island of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a one-day race, but I ran it in multiple stages over several days as my first experience in long distance trail running. I had already done a lot of long hikes, but wanted to explore the world of trail running and push my boundaries. Together with a friend who is an experienced ultra runner, we decided to tackle the MIUT route in 4 stages over 4 days (with some extra kilometers to and from our accommodation). This resulted in an average of close to 40km and 2000 meters of elevation gain per day. Together with the other days we spent in Madeira before and after the MIUT, this resulted in a total of 220km and 11000 meters of elevation gain over 7 days. This was by far more than my previous max of 80 km in one week! Although to be honest, when the trail become too steep or too technical, we did walk many parts in order not to blow up and stay within our aerobic zones.

As my first experience with trail running on this distance and elevation gain, I learned a lot from my friend about pacing, nutrition and gear. As we constantly tried to stay on the same intenstity level, there was almost never a really easy moment which you do have while hiking on flat or downhill terrain. The constant focus on the foot placement and the higher intensity also made we had less time to enjoy the scenery compared to hiking, but as we were able to cover a lot more distance each day, we could see a lot more of the island overall. A big benefit of trail running over hiking was that some of the easier and monotonous sections were covered much more quickly, before they became boring. As I pushed my limits and was able to cover so many trails on the island, the trail running experience was very rewarding overall.