You call that a mountain? Come to Alaska and we’ll show you a mountain!
Allie Ostrander, Alaska’s most prolific teenage distance runner and six-time Mt. Marathon Junior champion, left the field in her dust at the 31st World Mountain Running Championship held in Snowdonia, North Wales on Saturday; Ostrander running away with the Junior Girls race by a margin of 39 seconds.
The World Mountain Running Championship course featured a total elevation increase and decline of 820 feet over a course of 2.92-miles. Ostrander broke the course record for women in the Mt. Marathon race in 2015 (finishing second) on a mountain race over 5-kilometers with an elevation of 3,022 feet from sea level.
Ostrander, a KCHS 2015 graduate and member of the Boise State cross country running program, covered the North Walers course in 9 minutes, 44 seconds, winning by a margin of 39 seconds over runner-up Michaela Stranska of the Czech Republic and a 47-seconds better than bronze medalist Elsa Racasan of France.
Ostrander’s performance pushed Team USA to the silver medal in the team standings. Kodiak’s Levi Thomet, racing for Team USA, placed second in the boys Junior race and lead the USA team to the silver medal.
