The Canarian athlete praises the conditions the island offers for training and enjoying his sport
At the age of 24, Yoel de Paz has already become a benchmark in trail running thanks to his great performances in legendary trail races, beating top national and international runners. In Lanzarote we saw him compete in Famara Total and Héroes, crossing the finishing line first in both competitions. The island has also served as a training location for his demanding season, as he considers Lanzarote to be “a paradise” for the practice of sport.
Yoel, born on the island of La Palma, can claim to be a prophet in his own land after winning Transvulcania in the marathon category in 2022 and achieving third place in this year’s edition. The runner says that winning Transvulcania led to an incredible change in his mentality and gave him the confidence to compete outside Spain.
“Lanzarote is a paradise for holidays and high-performance sport”
For Yoel, trail running gives him a “sense of freedom, enjoyment and a way to escape” and his main motivation is to “improve himself” in every training session and competition. In June this year he came second in the Mozart 100 by UTMB, a 39.2 km race with nearly 2,000 metres of positive altitude gain in the mountains of Austria.
As for Lanzarote, the trail runner says that “it‘s a paradise for high performance sport” and even considers “doing short pre-seasons here because I have everything I need to train optimally and also to enjoy the island”. A highlight is the contrast he finds during his training sessions: “you can be on the beach and in a few kilometres you’re at the top of a mountain, and then you come back down on the other side, managing to complete a training session with quite a lot of accumulated elevation gain.“
His smile, his humility and his perseverance have earned him a place among the best trail runners in Spain and he has everything in place to continue triumphing in this sport. We‘re sure we’ll be seeing more triumphs from Yoel de Paz and we hope that Lanzarote will continue to be present in his life as a place to train and enjoy his sport.
