Two weeks after having to skip the Zegama Marathon at the last moment due to a broken leg, Maite Maiora ran her way to third place at the 2015 IAU Trail World Championships. In the following interview, Maite talks about her injury, how she was able to race on Saturday, how she ended up in third, and where else she’ll be racing in the coming months.
Read our results article for the full story on the women’s and men’s races.
[Click here if you can’t see the video above.]
Maite Maiora Post-2015 IAU Trail World Championships Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Bryon Powell of iRunFar here with Maite Maiora after her third-place finish at the 2015 IAU Trail World Championships. Congratulations!
Maite Maiora: Thank you very much.
iRunFar: I think the question on everyone’s mind is, you ran this on a broken leg, yes?
Maiora: Yes, it is true. I have a broken bone. My tibia is broken and I have bony edema. It’s been five weeks since I did discover it, so it’s quite healed but it’s not 100% healed. So I ran today with my broken bone.
iRunFar: You had planned to run Zegama. You were in Zegama and ready to go and you couldn’t. What stopped you there?
Maiora: In Zegama, I was still not able to run. I was still running with pain. With pain, you can’t run and cannot even compete, so I decided to not start Zegama for that reason. Today, there was still some pain, the broken bone is still there, but I could run without the pain. So that’s why I started today.
iRunFar: You ran strong all day. You sort of… you didn’t go out with the leaders, but you were right up front. What was your strategy on the day?
Maiora: The strategy was to start easy in order to see how my knee worked, so I was taking care of it in the first parts of the race. The truth is I didn’t suffer about my knee at all. I suffered with my quads, the external part of my quads. So I was trying to take care of my legs the whole day.
iRunFar: Is that because you haven’t been able to train as much.
Maiora: It’s because I was not able to train.
iRunFar: You still ran strong. At what point during today’s race did you feel like it was a good day?
Maiora: I’d been running in fourth the whole day. At 40-ish kilometers, I heard that the third runner was not feeling so well. The podium was right away. So I say, “Okay, I will go for it, and I will push for it.” That’s where I felt it was going to be a great day.
iRunFar: When you were in third, did you ever have any thoughts for maybe another push for second or first?
Maiora: It was not a strategy of getting to the second or first place. You always have the hope of finding the second of first place, but I was trying to take care of my knee especially on downhills. I even fell down again on downhills, so I tried to keep to hold the third place. Given the situation, it was a huge gift to be here running in third place.
iRunFar: After your great run here today and your run at Transvulcania last year, do you think that maybe 80k might be a really good distance for you?
Maiora: I don’t know. I don’t have a clear [picture of] if 80k is my distance, but I’m sure I’m not going to run over 100k. No, no, not yet.
iRunFar: What do you have coming up on your schedule in the next few months?
Maiora: I’m going to Romania in a couple of weeks and to Chamonix to the Vertical K European Championships, to Zermatt, to the Dodo Trail in Mauritius.
iRunFar: Maybe it was good you had a few weeks off training to rest for your season.
Maiora: Yeah, probably the sadness of not being able to run Zegama and not running for five weeks afforded me the joy of being able to go to South Africa. It opened a couple of doors. I will be able to go down there, and that’s really a joyful situation.
iRunFar: Congratulations. Good luck on your season.
Maiora: Thank you.
iRunFar: Mauri, thank you for the translation.
