Reposted via: Mira Rai initiative organises cleanup of Champadevi hiking trail. Mira Rai Initiative (MRI) organised a clean-up and awareness campaign along the Champa Devi Trail on Saturday. MRI mobilised 65 volunteers who hiked the trail and picked up the litter and debris that had been left behind. The volunteers also placed 30 dokos (organic […]

Nepali runners reach podium at Oman by UTMB Congratulations to Bhim Bahadur Gurung and Sunmaya Budha for their first places in the 50 km race at Oman by UTMB. Mira Rai came in third. Nepali athlete Bhim Bahadur Gurung ranked first in the 50-kilometre ultra race in the desert landscape of Oman on Friday, November […]

“The path of Nepalese trail runner Mira Rai’s life must be about as statistically improbable as winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, or something equally obscure,” says Meghan Hicks in her review of the 42 minute film on iRunFar.com. She has a point and doesn’t it just make for an uplifting story? Lloyd Belcher and Mira […]

Mira comes from a remote village, fairly typical of rural villages across Nepal. As night comes, there’s maybe a little bit of solar light, some candle or oil lamp light and light from the fire in the kitchen area. Dim and limited would describe it. Mira took one of these solar lights home with her […]

Happy news. It has long been known that Nepal has some fantastic trail runners that are world class, but they lack opportunities to compete. Travelling out of Nepal to race is simply expensive. Enter our hero Matt Moroz and China Mountain Trails. Matt first came to Nepal for the Mustang Trail Race. There he met […]

She ran the last 12km hard, she says, but for the rest, just “enjoying”, the “wow, beautiful place”, and revelling in this “great chance I have.” That mixture of a little bit of hard running and a lot of appreciation gave rise to a spectacular victory last Friday in the 80km Mont Blanc Ultra in […]

UPDATE: Follow Mira’s next race online on Facebook as it happens this Friday 26th June.  An update from Lloyd Belcher who earlier this year took on the project of making a short film about Mira Rai, a trail runner with an extraordinary story. A description of the project can be found on the small crowdfunding website we […]

Good job Mira Rai and Samir Tamang for together writing another page in the drama-filled story of Nepali trail runners. Here they are leaving from Nepal for the Buffalo Stampede Skyrunning race in Australia. As one indignant (but fairly correct) commenter on Facebook put it, arriving one day before the competition showed “very bad managements”. […]

UPDATE >>>> https://trailrunningnepal.org/oceania-skyrunning-championships/ What a mess. At the time of writing it is one hour until the end of Delhi’s office hours, and an hour left for an email to come saying an Australian visa has been granted for three Nepali athletes – Mira, Purna and Samir. Hope has faded – 16:21… Everybody here knows how […]

For this varied audience just a note about what Skyrunning is. The name is gives a big clue, and as another has put it, “Skyrunning is the brave and burly cousin of trail running.” There are rules about what makes a Skyrunning course, but essentially it means running on trails at high altitudes with a […]

A race directors nightmare, waking up to the sound of winter rain in the morning in the days running up to the race date. The forecast gave 60% chance of rain, and the forecast was right – a couple of days of wet weather in an otherwise guaranteed settled period of crisp, clear winter sun. […]

Super happy here in Nepal to see another great performance by Nepali Trail Runners Mira Rai and Santosh Tamang. Mira is pretty special among Nepali runners in that she is the one driving her training. She’s not part of an army or police team or a running club, but gets out on the trails on […]

Thanks to Asia Trail Magazine and Matt Moroz for allowing us to republish this article from the Mustang Trail Race. You can download in PDF format by clicking the image below, or simply read the text version below. Asia Trail is a magazine focusing on trail running in Asia, surprisingly enough! A great read and […]

Here’s an absolutely fabulous moment. Here comes Mira Rai from a tiny village in Bhojpur barreling into a tiny village in Italy. She completed the 56.9km distance in 6h36’30”, five minutes ahead of second women Silvia Rampazzo, and finishing in 11th position overall, some 50 minutes behind the leading man. The course had 3700m of height […]