Cordillera Mountain Ultra opens registration
Another highly anticipated event has opened the registration facilities for its next edition on 5 March 2017: the Cordillera Mountain Ultra! Considered by many as one of the absolute highlights of this year's Asia Trail Master series, CMU is a compact 50 km race in the Philippines featuring the ascent and descent of Mt Ugo via several alternative trails that are not often used. Importantly, the event is organised in support of local communities in the Cordillera mountain region north of regional centre Baguio.
The event date has been moved forward from June to March, which used to be the time of the Cordillera Mountain Marathon, the predecessor of CMU. However, given the big success this year, organiser JP Alipio decided to otherwise stick with the same event formula and keep the 50 km distance as main race distance. We can again expect exciting true racing for the victory between some of the Philippines' and Asia's best runners. Local heroes Marcelino Sano Oy and Gretchen Felipe were the winners at CMU last June, and only a good month later both runners proved that that was not a coincidence as they took first (Gretchen) and second (Marcelino) in Malaysia's Magnificent Merapoh 60!
Start and finish of the race is the small town Dalupirip in Benguet. Dominating the profile is of course Mount Ugo, which runners will climb to an altitude of 2150m above sea level. Afterwards, there is a long descent followed by a few kilometres of flat to return to Dalupirip. Total elevation gain is 2640 hm. A lot of the trails are in beautiful pine forest. The organisers like to see as many happy finishers as possible, so the 13 hour cut off time should be feasible for the big majority of participants.
If you are a beginner or just a less ambitious runner, there is also a 21 k option available. If you wish to warm up the legs already on Saturday, you can go for the Vertical Kilometre, too.. Families are welcome: there is even a kid's race on the programme as well.
You can now go to the Registration page of the Cordillera Conservation Trust website to sign up. While you are at it, please also take a look at the delicious local coffee for sale in the CCT online shop . For more info on the environmental tasks of the CCT, you can read more here.
