GU I D E
Do it
Moving mountains: one of the 326 ultrarunners passes though a canyon at Jebel Akhdar
OMAN BY UTMB
BEAST IN THE MIDDLE EAST Oman’s first mountain ultramarathon is a gruelling 137km race across hazardous ridges and untouched landscape. Lou Boyd bore witness to this tough new adventure
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t’s 5am, and from our vantage point on a cliff edge of Oman’s Jebel Akhdar – aka the ‘Green Mountain’ – we spot a line of small white lights bouncing across the rock face opposite: the leading pack in the Oman by UTMB have reached the 82km mark.
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The 137km race – the sultanate’s first-ever mountain ultramarathon – starts in the village of Birkat Al Mawz and takes athletes through more than 7,800m of elevation, past forests, abandoned villages, palm plantations, deep wadis and narrow gorges, and up extreme
Jason Schlarb on the ascent to the Alila hotel, set high on a cliff
THE RED BULLETIN