Fochville’s ultra marathon running star, Cornel Metcalfe, tackled yet another 100-mile race, (approximately 160km) last weekend.

Metcalfe completed the RMB Ultra Trail Drakensberg 100Miler. Due to the foot and mouth epidemic in South Africa, the route of this gruelling race was changed from the usual start in Lesotho. This year, the runners started at Silverstreams Trading Store near Bushman’s Nek. Runners proceeded along the entire length of the Giants Cup Trail before making a full ascent of Sani Pass. Once on top of Sani Pass, the runners run another 60km within Lesotho, tagging the highest point in Southern Africa, Thabana Nletyana, before returning to South Africa and finishing at the Sani Premier Resort.

The total elevation gain of this new route is 6 500m compared to the 5 200m of previous years.

Despite the hard conditions, Metcalfe finished as the fourth woman in a time of 43:46:00. The cutoff time was 45 hours.

A total of 51 runners, nine of them women, started the race. Of these runners, only 31, four of whom were women, crossed the finish line.

“This was definitely a tougher race than previous, with most runners who withdrew suffering severe altitude sickness,” says Metcalfe’s husband, Mark.

He added that this was one of the races they identified as a training run for Cornel, in preparation for her UTMB race in August, as she will encounter very similar conditions in France.

Anyone who wants to support Metcalfe’s participation in this international run, for which she was specially chosen, can visit her Back-a-Buddy page here.