Japanese runner Mitsuo Moriya has completed some of the world's most gruelling trails. Now he plans to run two ultra marathons, back to back, in one of Australia's toughest outback events, the West Macs Monster trail running festival next weekend.
Mr Moriya will run the entire 231km Larapinta Trail through Central Australia's spectacular West MacDonnell Ranges, the race known as the Sonder Monster, then head straight back to the starting line to tackle the 65km Standley Monster.
Mr Moriya said he started running 10 years ago when his first son was born and he felt he'd gained too much weight while studying ophthalmology.
"I wanted to become a cool father," he said.
Since then, he's run a 360km ultra event in Switzerland, seven marathons across seven continents and the 217km Badwater Ultramarathon in California's Death Valley.
He loves discovering new trails and was excited about the prospect of running through the Australian outback.
Most of his preparation, however, has been watching videos about the race and the landscape on Youtube.
"Humidity is low on this trail so I'll need to bring enough water," Mr Mitsuo said.
"The sun is strong, so I'll be careful of sunburn too."
West Macs international reputation grows
This is the first year the event includes international runners, although overseas runners had signed up when COVID led to the event's cancellation in 2020.
"We had five in our second year, which was the COVID year," event director Marc Woods said.
"They were Japanese, Malaysian, English, New Zealand and European."
This year two Japanese competitors will line up.
Running the double
Mr Moriya is the first two attempt to run two Monster events back-to-back.
"Since I will have flown all the way from Japan, I wanted to enjoy the race for as long as possible," he said.
Mr Woods said it would be an astonishing feat but Mr Moriya's track record was impressive.
"He's done epic runs around the world," he said.
"He's got this back catalogue of massive achievements, which blew our minds, and they're not slow."
Tough Sonder climb just for starters
This year more than 320 runners have signed up to the three-day festival, which involves five races of different lengths on the Larapinta Trail.
The Sonder Monster begins with an 8km climb to a 740-metre high point at the top of Mount Sonder.
The fastest time for the full 231km race is held by Shane Johnston, who finished in an extraordinary 40h 55m 18s in 2019.
