Six-time junior Mount Marathon champion Allie Ostrander of Soldotna, who finished runner-up in her senior-division debut last month and beat the long-standing women's race record, has been named to the U.S. Junior Mountain Running Team for the world championships.
And she's not the only Alaskan who got the nod -- Levi Thomet of Kodiak also was named to the team that will compete in the 31st World Mountain Running Championships, Sept. 19 in Snowdonia, North Wales.
Ostrander and Thomet are both recent high school graduates -- Ostrander from Kenai Central, Thomet from Kodiak High -- who dominated prep distance running. Both were three-time state cross-country champions and both own state track records for 1,600 and 3,200 meters.
Both runners were among the fastest prep distance runners in the nation this year and heavily recruited by colleges.
Ostrander, 18, who is headed to Boise State this month for her freshman year, told the Peninsula Clarion she will compete in Wales. Boise State's cross-country team is idle that weekend.
Thomet, 18, earlier this year said he planned to spend the upcoming school year studying and training in Germany as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored exchange program before entering the University of Oregon.
In North Wales, the junior women will run one lap, 4.7 kilometers, on a course that features 820 of vertical gain and descent. The junior men will run an 8.9-K course featuring 1,640 feet of vertical ascent and descent.
Ostrander, from the time she was 12 until she was 17, won six consecutive Mount Marathon junior races, which take runners halfway up the 3,022-foot peak in Seward and back down. In 2014, she won the mixed junior race outright, becoming the first girl to win the overall title and breaking her own girls race record.
Last month, Ostrander finished second in her Mount Marathon senior debut to Emelie Forsberg of Sweden, one of the world's most decorated mountain runners. Forsberg's time of 47 minutes, 48 seconds shattered Nancy Pease's 1990 standard of 50:20, and Ostrander topped Pease's mark by two seconds to give her the second-fastest time in race history.