Eoin Flynn, professional mountain runner discussing winter training and trail running in the Canary Islands.
Eoin Flynn, Professional Mountain Runner, Gran Canaria sat down with TravelMedia to discuss visiting Gran Canaria for trail running. The Canary Islands bring together the ideal conditions for trail running: a climate with mild temperatures all year, circuits for all levels and trails, both dirt and paved that cross landscapes as extreme as the sport itself – forests, flat scrubby areas, volcanic crests.
Hear more from Eoin about why Gran Canaria is the ideal destination for mountain runners.
More:
https://www.hellocanaryislands.com/trail-running/
https://www.transgrancanaria.net/en/
https://transvulcania.es/en/events-item/ultramarathon/
Voice Transcript
– You’ve got a lovely mixture for training here. For example, if you’re down in the South of the Island around Playa de Ingles, Maspalomas, you’ve got flat roads. So if you’re preparing for road races you can go there and you can go pretty much all year round. If you’re looking to prepare a trail race you can go up to the high mountains which are as high as 2000 metres high. You’ve got a great mixture of technical tracks. You’ve got easy trails as well, landscapes that range from Mars-like lunar landscapes to beautiful pine forest. So it is a great mixture, something for everybody really. Lots of people are coming here especially at the moment. It’s become very popular over the last couple of years. I think maybe the first athletes to really discover the islands were the professional cyclists. A lot of them are based over in Tenerife. A lot of them use Grand Canaria and Tenerife as their pre-season training comps before the big tours, like the tour de France. And at the moment, the islands have become very popular for trail running. And trail running, it’s nearly become a bit of a national sport for the Canarians themselves. And they actually had two members of the Spanish team that were double world champions in the trail running world championships. Two Canarians were part of that team. So there’s lots of good races like the Transgrancanaria, the Transvulcania, which is world renowned. So it’s a great spot for trail running.