Kiwi trailblazer on top of world
Growing up on the West Coast and ‘‘competitive’’ family tramps have helped Ruth Croft become one of the world’s best trail runners.
The 29-year-old – coached by New Zealand’s six-time world mountain running champion Jonathan Wyatt – won the inaugural Golden Trail Series women’s title last weekend in South Africa.
‘‘It was a great way to end the season,’’ said Croft, who had one win, a second placing, a third and a fourth in her four events on the sixrace circuit.
Croft has spent most of the last decade based overseas and is not as well known – yet – in New Zealand as she should be for an athlete running marathon distances – 42.2km – on mountain paths between 2200m and 4300m high.
She abandoned track and crosscountry running after an athletics scholarship at the University of Portland. She now prefers to race up precipitous peaks, through verdant valleys, hop boulders and dodge water obstacles in some of the world’s most spectacular alpine and coastal locations.
‘‘After the US, I had had four years with a lot of injuries and stress fractures. I got pretty burnt out in the collegiate system.’’
Croft – who now runs for the strong Scott Running Team – moved to Taiwan and took six months off running, but said it was hard to give up ‘‘something I’d done every day from the age of 14’’.
The former steeplechaser and New Zealand age-group crosscountry representative began training around Taipei.
She won the 50km North Face Challenge in Taiwan in 2013 before tackling the Mt Fuji Ascent in Japan and progressing on to events in Europe.
Her early success enabled her to get a marketing job with her sponsor Garmin and tailor her working hours to fit her training schedule.
Croft says she ‘‘just likes trail [running]’’ – from the alpine environments she runs in to the close-knit trail running community.
‘‘All the races are different, some are very technical.
‘‘It’s very different to the whole track atmosphere.’’
It takes her back to her childhood days on the West Coast, where she grew up in the shadow of the Paparoa Ranges at Stillwater, near Greymouth, before heading to Christchurch to attend Rangi Ruru Girls’ School.
That background has equipped her well for the challenges of multiterrain trail running.
‘‘Growing up on the West Coast makes you pretty tough, with the conditions we had to run in, as kids.
‘‘My family was really competitive. We always went tramping at places like Welcome Flat and the Abel Tasman [National Park]. On the last day, it would always be a race to the end of the track.’’
Croft says the final event of the Golden Trail Series – the Otter Trail along the Indian Ocean coast in southwest South Africa – ‘‘reminded me a lot of the Heaphy Track’’.
The Kiwi champion held the series lead over the final few rounds after starting with a third place at Aizkori Zegama in Spain (42.2 km/ 2736m) and then winning the Mt Blanc Marathon (42km/2780m) in the French skiing region of Chamonix – a race known as ‘‘the roller coaster’’.
Croft finished fourth at Sierre Zinal in Switzerald (31km/2203m) to take the series lead. That allowed her to skip the next two races, the Pikes Peak Marathon in Colorado at 4302m and the ‘‘Scottish Vertigo’’ the Ring of Steall (2382m) race in the Scottish Highlands. Athletes only needed to run three of the five races – and place in the top 10 overall – to qualify for the series final.
The Kiwi frontrunner went into the Otter Trail decider with a threepoint lead over Sweden’s Ida Nilsson. ‘‘I knew all I had to do was to stay in front of Ida to get the win.’’
Nilsson, who won the first race in Spain and was second behind Croft at Mt Blanc, had a bad day in South Africa. Croft finished second behind Briton Holly Page to take the coveted series trophy.
Trail running has been around for a long time – and some of these races have long been fixtures on the calendar.
But Croft said they were brought together in a series for the first time this year with each race live streamed to audiences around the world.
‘‘Each year, they will change the venue of the final race and provide incentives to get in the top 10.’’
The leading runners will be allowed to take a support person to the finals and will receive €5000 (NZ$8700) each.
Croft, who returned to live in Wanaka in late 2017 after eight years overseas, is now a fulltime trail runner. She supports herself through sponsorship and prize money, although she hopes to work in Central Otago this summer to get some balance from her training.
She has a boyfriend in Switzerland and bases herself in Freiburg for the European season, which runs from May to October.
Wyatt, who is based in Italy, has supervised Croft’s training programme for the past four years. The pair communicate remotely but catch up at the Sierre Zinal race in Switzerland where Wyatt is honoured as the course record holder.
Croft set a new race record in the 51km Macpac Motatapu race near Queenstown in March, breaking the old mark by 25 minutes. She hopes to line up in the Kepler Challenge near Te Anau in December.
The sky could be the limit for the ultra-distance athlete, who spends her racing life up at higher altitude.
Croft plans to stick to the shorter distances ‘‘while I still have the speed’’, but could move towards the ‘‘longer stuff’’ as time goes on.
‘‘The woman who won the women’s world ultra-marathon 100 mile run was in her 40s,’’ she noted.
‘‘All the races are different, some are very technical. It’s very different to the whole track atmosphere.’’ Ruth Croft