Oh Meu Deus

Oh my god, literally "my God" in Portuguese, is exactly what you find yourself whispering when you turn around on a crest of the Serra da Estrela and the landscape knocks the wind right out of you ⛰️. The race name is no coincidence: it captures, on its own, the promise of the event, that suspended moment when the Portuguese mountain takes your breath away entirely, and not just because it climbs hard 😉. Oh Meu Deus by UTMB is a trail held every year in early May in the center of Portugal with Seia as host town, just steps from the largest park in the country. Linked to UTMB World Series since 2025, it asserts itself as one of the circuit's most distinctive European stops, backed by a territory still relatively unmapped by the crowds of the international trail

The adventure began in 2011, when local organizers had the idea to transform the Serra da Estrela's pastoral trails into a playground for runners 🙂. Over the editions, the distances lengthen, the perimeter expands, and the race ends up covering most of the natural park in its long version. The major turning point came in 2025, when the event joined the UTMB World Series family and changed dimension: from a well-oiled regional competition, it becomes an international-caliber rendezvous, while stubbornly preserving the local DNA that is its strength 🧬. The course now encompasses the Serra do Açor, the Serra de Lousã, the Schiste villages and several Historic villages. All those lands turn each edition into a true cultural and physical crossing.

The route of the queen race, the "100M", climbs beyond the 167 km for 8 900 mD+, which firmly places it in the "high-level endurance test" category 😅. The event starts and finishes in Seia, a town tucked against the mountain slopes since the XII century. Between the two, the course winds through winding trails inherited from transhumance (the same paths used by shepherds to move their flocks from valley to plateau), passes through dense forests where silence thickens, runs along carved rivers, climbs onto ridges open to all four winds 💨. The shale villages crossed during the race (Talasnal, Casal Novo, Pena, Fajão, Candal, among others) are dark-stone hamlets built into the cliff, perched in the mountains with a vernacular architectural logic that would embarrass many urban planning competitions 🏘️. The course is anything but easy: it demands technique, patience on the ravine-scarred monotones, and a real ability to manage effort over time.

Aside from the "100M", the Oh Meu Deus by UTMB offers three other formats: a "100K" of 94 km and 5 300 mD+, a "50K" of 52 km and 2 900 mD+, and a "20K" of 22 km and 1 000 mD+. 📊 The qualification system runs on the UTMB World Series model, with Running Stones to accumulate depending on the chosen format (from 1 stone for the "20K" to 4 for the "100M"). The race thus sits within the circuit's global ecosystem, earning it participants coming from many European countries, but also from North America and Asia, in search of running stones in a setting that truly diverges from the usual alpine ultra-trail trails 💎.

The event also carries a special emotional dimension that sets it apart in the ultra-trail landscape 🤩. The central region of Portugal has been hard hit by forest fires in recent years, and the organizers have made that a core part of the race narrative: every runner who crosses these slopes is framed as an actor in the symbolic rebuilding of the territory, a light in a landscape that is healing ❤️‍🩹. The tone is sincere, matching how the people of Seia, Arganil, Lousã, Pampilhosa da Serra or Góis welcome the participants: with genuine warmth, the warmth of people for whom the event is not a pretext for collector T-shirts but a real collective pride. Charity bibs are also offered, allowing runners to run for local associations linked to the reconstruction of the region.

Once the legs are rested and the salt has dried on the arms, Seia and its immediate surroundings deserve to be lingered over 🍞. The town hosts a Bread Museum, the only one of its kind in Portugal, which, for someone who just racked up 167 km on the ridge lines, takes on a slightly existential resonance. The cheeses of Serra da Estrela, soft and boldly flavored, are a national institution as much as an unbeatable gastronomic argument 🧀. The legend of Viriato, the Lusitanian shepherd turned warrior who stood up to the Romans from these very mountains, looms over the whole region. And somewhere, a trail ultra-runner who survives for 8 900 mD+ in May pays him a fitting tribute 😋.