The defending New Zealand women’s mountain running title-holder — who in April became the first three-time winner of Fiordland’s Routeburn Classic, finishing eight minutes shy of her record run 10 years earlier — first takes on the 20km La Montee du Nid d’Aigle, in France, next Saturday.
Featuring 1850 metres of vertical, it runs from the foot of Mont Blanc.
Then, on August 10, Douglas runs the very popular Sierra-Zinal Race in Switzerland, which has been dubbed the ‘New York marathon of mountain races’.
It’s a 31km run with 2200m of vertical, a lot of it in the first half, and it’s called the ‘race of five 4000ers’, as five 4000m-plus peaks are visible on the course, including the famous Matterhorn.
"It’s always been a real bucket list of mine to race," she says.
It’s a similar length to the Routeburn Classic, over the Routeburn Track, but according to Douglas, the Routeburn is "probably way more technical and it has about 1000m less climbing".
She admits it can be a struggle training in a Queenstown winter but says "not having a lot of low snow makes it a lot easier to get in uphill training".
Turning 40 next month, Douglas — who’s won four NZ mountain running titles and been to five world champs — says "it’s challenging to keep yourself uninjured and training consistently, the older you get, but I like to think I still have a few more years left".
The next NZ champs are this October, in Canterbury, and the next worlds are in Spain in September next year.
