Chugiak teen caps mountain running season with a bronze medal and an inspirational award

Back in July when the junior race at Mount Marathon was canceled because of poor air quality, defending boys champion Mikey Connelly of Chugiak was crushed.

He’d been targeting the race — and the long-standing junior record set in 1973 — since the previous August.

“It was like I built a house and someone lit it on fire," he said at the time.

Connelly’s blue mood turned to bronze earlier this month when he captured a medal at the Youth World Skyrunning Championships in Italy.

The 17-year-old collected the bronze medal in the vertical kilometer race for the 16- and 17-year-old runners. He finished behind runners from Andorra and Spain to become the third Alaskan to earn a medal at the championships, held annually for mountain runners 23 and younger. In 2015, Allie Ostrander of Kenai won a gold medal and Levi Thomet of Kodiak claimed a silver medal.

Connelly was one of two Americans to medal at this year’s world championships held on the Gran Sasso ridgelines near L’Aquila, Italy. California’s Sofia Sanchez won gold in the 21-kilometer skyrace and silver in the vertical kilometer.

Connelly completed the vertical kilometer — a 3.5-kilometer course with a kilometer of elevation gain — in 42 minutes, 22 seconds, a time that placed him 27th overall in a field of 111 men. Runners were divided into three age groups, and Connelly was in the youngest one.

Winner Oriol Olm of Andorra clocked 40:00 and second-place Aitor Ugarte of Spain finished in 41:25. Palmer’s Gavin Block finished 19th in the age group with a time of 48:25.

Connelly added a 12th-place finish in the other race at the world championships, a 16.7-kilometer skyrace. His time of 2:19:24 put him about 24 minutes behind winner Ohmi Ryunosuke of Japan.

The bronze medal affirms Connelly’s status as one of Alaska’s, and the nation’s, top young mountain runners. Last summer, he finished fifth in the vertical kilometer at the world championships and won the Mount Marathon junior race. This summer, he set a course record for the 4-mile Turnagain Arm Trail Run and broke his own age-group record while finishing a strong fourth-place overall at Bird Ridge.

Connelly placed eighth in the final men’s standings of the Alaska Mountain Runners’ Grand Prix, and at the group’s end-of-season awards banquet he became the youngest winner of the inspirational award, which dates back to 1996.

Alaska Mountain Runners inspirational award

1996 — Tim Neale

1997 — Tom Corbin

1998 — Barney Griffith

1999 — Pam Richter

2000 — Heinrich Gruber

2001 — Ellyn Brown

2002 — Alan “Corky” Corthell

2003 — Craig Harpel

2004 — Cedar Bourgeois

2005 — Joe Mortiboy

2006 — Norm Johnson

2007 — Braun & Lance Kopsack

2008 — Trond Flagstad

2009 — Greg Brown

2010 — Fred Moore

2011 — Elaine Nelson

2012 — Mary Hensel & Millie Spezialy

2013 — Eric Strabel

2014 — Matt Kenney

2015 — Brad Precosky

2016 — Christy Marvin

2017 — Evan Steinhauser

2018 — Matias Saari

2019 — Michael Connelly