Miroslava “Miri” Jirková did not arrive beneath Everest with the mindset of a marathon specialist. The Czech climber said she had no previous marathon experience and only one clear ambition. “My only ambition was not to twist an ankle,” she joked in the interview material.
A few hours later, that low-pressure plan had turned into one of the strangest surprises of her mountain life. She crossed the line after 6 hours, 15 minutes, and 40 seconds, then learned she had finished second among international women and fourth among women overall in the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon.
A race where air is part of the challenge
The full Everest Marathon is not a city race with water cups and flat streets. The official event route covers 26.2 miles from Everest Base Camp to Namche Bazar, passing high Himalayan trails before dropping into the famous mountain village.
The start sits at about 17,600 ft. above sea level. As such, runners are not only fighting distance, but also thin air, rocky ground, and their own judgment.
Why she started at all
The idea did not begin as a grand sporting mission. Jirková said the spark came from porters she knew in Nepal, some of whom regularly performed strongly on a longer mountain route and inspired a group to try the marathon the following year.
At first, about 15 people seemed ready to join. Then the year passed, plans changed, and she was left standing alone from the original group. That might sound lonely, but for her, curiosity was enough.
She wanted to find out whether it was possible to keep running there, whether losing altitude would balance the fatigue, and what would happen around the late miles real runners often describe with respect. A simple question pushed her forward: what would her body do?
A climber’s mind helped
Jirková is used to serious mountains, but running beneath Everest asked for a different kind of focus. Climbing often means waiting, watching weather, and knowing that one poor decision near a serac, an unstable block of glacial ice, can change everything.
There are other mountain dangers, too, including avalanches and crevasses, which are deep cracks in ice. Compared with that, the marathon felt lighter to her in one important way: if a runner gets cold, hungry, or injured, someone may appear quickly on the trail to help.
That does not make the race easy. It makes it psychologically different. For the most part, she could relax in a way that is much harder when a mountain is deciding whether to let you pass.
Just her and the Himalayas
The trail itself was familiar because she had walked the area many times with trekkers. This time, though, she was not responsible for clients, plans, or anyone else’s pace. It became a rare kind of freedom.
“Just me and the Himalayas, the views, and my own breath,” she said. Then came the funny warning in her own head, the kind every trail runner understands: “Idiot, stop laughing and look under your feet, or you’ll take a serious fall.”
That small moment says a lot. Even in a landscape that feels almost unreal, every step still matters. Beauty is wonderful, but rocks do not care how inspired you feel.
The surprise at the finish
At the finish in Namche Bazar, Jirková was met by trekkers and porters who were waiting for her. They held up the finish tape, laughed with her, and turned the moment into something warmer than a normal race result.
Only afterward did someone ask whether she knew she had come second. She said she had not been thinking about time or place at all. That was when she understood why everyone around her seemed so happy.
The Association of International Marathons and Distance Races lists the 2026 women’s marathon winner as Lakpa Ngima Sherpa of Nepal, followed by Dilkala Kulung of Nepal, Annie Hughes of the United States, Jirková of the Czech Republic, and Elena Chigrinova of Russia.
Czech coverage described Jirková’s result as second among foreign women, behind Hughes.
What the race taught her
Jirková’s main lesson was not about pace, it was that life often opens doors that do not look like doors at first, especially when a person takes one step in the right direction without trying to control the whole story.
The medal and race shirt did not matter much to her. She said she gave them away, but the messages from people who felt inspired by her effort stayed with her. Sometimes the dream is not as far away as it looks.
Asked whether it matters more to know how far you can go or when to stop, she treated the answer as a deeper question than sport. Courage, for her, is not the absence of fear. It is doing the right thing while listening carefully to fear before it turns into panic.
The official race details and results have been published by the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon and the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races.
