I have the opportunity to travel to Thailand to photograph the 1st Thailand Ultra Marathon that will be happening on October 18 and 25th and was wondering if The Runners World would be interested in running a story on the race.
The race itself will be based in a village near Soppong in Northern Thailand and will take runners past 700 year old burial mounds, a major river cave system, and across various streams/rivers and through three remote hill tribe villages all on trails cut out of the jungle by the villagers to allow them to travel between villages. The course is a 50km loop has over 2500m of climbing per lap. The 100km race will be on the 18th of October and the 50km race will be on the 25th of October which will allow me to cover both races very effectively as well as give me time to visit the villages that the race will go through and document the villagers and their lives.
Here is the link to my indiegogo page to help me raise the funds for my project: http://igg.me/at/Mead-Norton-Thailand/x/7855173
A little background on myself:
I have been a professional photographer for the last 12 years and I won the 2005 Banff Mountain Photography Award for a travel image I took while traveling in Tibet. (You can read my blog post on the back story of the image here) I have had work published in a variety of magazines and Newspapers including NZ Herald, Dominion Post, Daily Post, M2, Let’s Travel, Outside (they are running one of my images in their September issue), AUS/NZ Trail Runner Magazine, Australian Mountain Bike, Spoke, NZ Mountain Bike to name a few.
I have also worked with a wide range of athletes on various projects including Sage Canaday (Elite Ultra Marathon runner from the USA) Jessica Douglas (2x 24hr Solo World Champion Mountain Biker from Australia), Oliver Shaw (Elite Xterra Triathlete from NZ), Michael Torker (Professional road cyclist from NZ but based in Europe), Lewis Hamilton (Pro Downhill Mountain biker NZ based) and quite a few others.
I am a keen endurance athlete myself and have participated in the last two Tarawera Ultra Marathons (photographed the 85km race two years ago from a runners viewpoint) and represented NZ at the Xterra World Championships in 2009 and done various other triathlons and Mountain Bike races both here in New Zealand as well as overseas. So I totally understand the mindset of the participants in a race like this and the things that motivate them and can use that knowledge to capture the race in an unique way.
You can see more examples of my work at www.meadnorton.com
