Manuel Merillas was proclaimed this Sunday in Covaleda (Soria) champion of Spain of trail on a 36 km route coinciding with the Urbión Challenge (club to which he belongs) in which he broke his own test record with an unofficial time of 3h40: 24. Five minutes later (3:45:50) he crossed the finish line Zaid Ait Malek, born 37 years ago in Imilchil, in the Moroccan Atlas, at an altitude close to 3,000 meters, who traveled in 2006 from Tangier to Spain on the underside of a truck and, after some years “without papers”, received the Spanish nationality in October 2018.
The two earned a spot on the Spanish national team for the 2022 World Cup. The third place went to Juan Javier Jiménez (South East At.), with an unofficial time of 3h53.55. One day after the popular Urbión Challenge, and along the same route, 314 runners participated in the Spanish championship over a distance of 36 km and 2,500 meters of positive elevation gain. Two thirds of the race ran through places located at an altitude of more than 1,900 meters.
The race, which began at 8.30 am, started and ended in the Plaza Mayor de Covaleda, after cross one of the largest Scots pine forests in Europe, the 7 lagoons, including the legendary Laguna Negra de Urbión; crown three peaks that exceed 2,000 m in altitude (Mojón Alto, Zurraquín and Urbión); pass by the source of the River Duero and through the shady areas of Hayedo. The first two classified, both in women and men, got the ticket for the World Championship of Mountain races and Trail Running which was to be held in November of this year but which has been postponed to February 2022. Zaid Ait Malek, fourth the previous year, and Manuel Merillas from Leon, who holds the record of the event with 3:41, were alone in the lead before complete the tenth kilometer, on the descent to the Laguna Helada.
Aware of the great ability of Zaid in the descents, Merillas attacked On the slope that led to the top of Urbión (2,228 meters) but failed to take down his rival and, quite the contrary, he could not keep up with one of the best downloaders in the world. But he caught it when the steepest part of the descent came to an end. Morillas then left his rival behind and, after the hard climb of one kilometer, he was able to touch the cowbells first as he passed through the Hayedo. With an advantage of more than three minutes, the Valseco left the race sentenced to six km from the finish line.