Written by Robert Whitmarsh - www.runninginprogress.wordpress.com

Why the TDS?

It started last year where I entered the CCC (Courmayeur, Champex, Chamonix) which is 101 km with 6100 meter total accent.  I arrived in Chamonix the day before the race and probably didn't give myself enough rest.  The race started Friday morning 9 am and by 8.30 pm and half way in Switzerland I was throwing up, three times to be precise and couldn't keep any food down so this is where I recorded my first DNF and last...I hope.

I spent the whole of September a bit fed up and then Uncle Mark (will call him just Mark from this point on) asked me if I was going enter the ballot again as he was entering the UTMB.  It didn't take long to decide and by this point I had to find a two point qualifying race to get back in the ballot for the CCC before 19th December.  I was going to do the white rose ultra beginning of November then realised it was a 60 mile ultra on a Sunday....a Sunday, who the hell does an ultra on a Sunday, I couldn't afford to take Monday off work.  The search was on for another two pointer, I entered the Endurance Life Dorset Coast Ultra (45 miles) which was pretty good. I left it too late to book accommodation the night before so had to borrow my dads car, drive down from London 4 am, get to race around 7 am, do race, finished by 6 pm and drive back home with two beautiful points, unfortunately points did not mean any prizes this time.  (I wouldn't advised driving back from an ultra in winter, I stopped at nearly every service station on the way back, it was a long journey)
19th December came along and entered into the CCC ballot, I would find out if I was successful or not by January.....I was rejected from the CCC but they gave me the option of entering the TDS (so nice) which I heard was harder.  I thought I had to try and finish A race in Chamonix.
The reason I DNF'd the CCC was due to lack of training and generally just being rubbish on the day.  Training this year would be different and would try doing a lot more trail races but nothing over Marathon distance.
Training
Beginning of March I entered into Mill Hill Marathon which was a 5 loop trail course and thought I would push it and surprisingly came 3rd (3:57:55) with a pretty cool interactive medal.  Towards the end of March I was up the Lake district going up scafell Pike with Alan Hall, Ryhs Pippard and Jill Convey from the running club.  Two weeks before April a friend from the running club, Derry Lozano-Hoyland persuaded  me to enter the south downs way 50 (50 miles) as some places had become available and after hearing some good reviews I thought I'd give it ago.  It turned out to be a really good event where Derry and I ran together and in a pretty good time for me (8:41:36) with some really good local knowledge and then getting dusted on the final 200 meters by Derry (The finish was on Eastbourne Athletics Track).  June was approaching and the next event would be Scafell Pike Marathon in the Lake District on 6th June where I had to get up and back down the mountain before 3 pm to get the train back to London as I was going on holiday the next morning and flying from Gatwick, getting lost on this one was not an option.  Luckily the weather was great and hot and everything was successful (5:38:41).  End of June I entered the North Downs Run 30 km and again no troubles here, I recce'd half of the course previously and finished when it just started to rain (2:26:58). Beginning of July on the Saturday I ran with Alan Hall, Paris Ataliotis and Harold Wyber from Bangor train station to Snowdon Summit and back down to Llanberis as a training run then the day after ran in the Stoke-on-Trent Marathon which is pretty hilly and a hot day (3:36:40), it was also the first marathon since 2004 (I think) before that it was ran every year from 1981 (I think) I wanted to do this one as it was my home town and felt it needed to be done and with not much marathon speed training, I felt I did alright considering the course.  The last two weekends of July were spent in Wales following the Paddy Buckley route which is the welsh version of the Bob Graham and if you don't know Bob Graham, google it.  The first weekend was organised by Donna McCourt (Another serpentine member) with a group of us camping and doing two legs of the route over two days and the second weekend was with Mark but we wild camped (carrying all camping equipment for weekend) and did some night running/navigation which I think helped a lot for the TDS.  My last two training runs was 30 miles of the Surrey Tops 50 mile run organised by Alan Hall and pacing for Jill Convey on her  North Downs Way 100 mile,  I was to do 20 miles from 7.30pm to about 1 am then ran another 20 miles with Ludo Maillard through the night towards the finish line of the race but didn't cross it at around 5 am which really helped.  It was all down hill to D-Day from this point...28th August.
The Race - Registration

I decided to go out earlier this year and arrive in Chamonix on the Saturday and stay til Friday.  Franchezka and her mum arrived with me and stayed for one night then left me where they went to support the Italian economy and tourism trade for a week...nice!!! (don't worry though I'm not one to hold a grudge and supporting can be just as hard, waiting around for hours just see the person for a few minutes or an hour at the most....i'm expecting much more next time FRANCHEZKA...Sacramento).  I left it too late to book in Chamonix and had to move to a hotel in Les Houches down the road which was 15 minutes by train. Sunday and Monday I spent recceing the last part of the race from Bellevue to Les Houches, I was going to run back into Chamonix from Les Houches but changed my mind, I got the train back into Chamonix and met up with Darren and Clare at a cafe and good to see familiar faces, Clare was doing the TDS too so asked her a few questions about kit. The hotel room had its own Kitchen so I stocked up on food from the local supermarket, pasta, fruit, drinks but no alcohol, cheese and the obligatory french bread.

Tuesday arrived which  meant registration day, you need to take the rucksack you will be carrying for the race with all mandatory equipment, without this you can not register and can not race. I wanted to try and get a lighter more compact mid layer top at the  Expo so went in earlier plus I was getting more excited.  The expo was barely getting set up and people were already in there looking at the stuff, it was like a car boot sale with your early morning veterans getting the good deals, this seemed to work as I picked up a Raidlight top at a pretty good price compared what I been looking at previously in UK which was an Innov8 or North Face top.  I walked around to the sports center to register, I was an hour and half early but I was second in the queue, I think the guy in front was German and probably put his rucksack on the ground at the entrance the night before, a few more people arrived then the organisers told us we were too keen and had to move us outside where I saw Darren and Clare, 1 pm came and they let us back in to go through the registration process which is pretty faultless and very smooth, especially if your at the front.
Registration process goes as followed

*  Line up to give your name and receive a randomly printed list of items they want to check from the mandatory kit list.
*  Line up to get a plastic bin where you put all the stuff they need to see into.
*  Line up in another queue to show you have the stuff they want to see from the list you were given and if all checks out they sign, you sign it and everyone is happy.  Then cram everything back into your bag which you spend the night before lovely folding up so it goes in nice.
*  Line up in another queue giving your signed paper and swapping it for your bib number.
*  Line up in another queue where they put a tag on your bag so you can be tracked throughout the race and annoy people on facebook with updates.  They also put a bracelet thing around your wrist which gets annoying and is some kind of Chinese finger trap, the more you pull it the tighter it gets but you can't loosen it, the only way to get it off is by cutting it, I'm not sure what you need this for really.
*  Line up in another queue to get your tshirt (I'm not keen on getting a t-shirt before the race, I saw loads of people breaking the golden rule of wearing the event t-shirt on the actual race), drop bag for finish and drop bag for mid way point.
*  Then your released As I said I was near the front so didn't really do any queuing which meant the whole process took about 15 minutes, when we walked outside the queue was pretty long and I felt pretty smug.  I walked around with Clare and Darren for a bit then decided to get back to the hotel so I could rest for the next day....race day.
 Race Day
The race started at 6 am which meant I would need to get up around 2 am to go through my morning routine.  The bus picked us up from Les Houches at 4 am,  the journey to the start in Courmayeur, Italy took about 40 minutes.   Courmayeur is a small town and the same start as the CCC which is on a Friday.  Everyone was milling around, saw one guy finishing his last cigarette at least I think it was his last before he finished, some women was shouting out for Jean-Pierre, I was hoping Jean-Pierre would be wearing a black and white stripped shirt, red scarf and a necklace of onions but no, he was just a normal french person.

Morning View 6 am came and the race started, it was stop and go going through the town then it spread out a bit, I was trying not to get caught up and go too fast at the start.  We started our first climb (2500 meters) up a gravel road track which had a lot of switch backs and half way up I looked back and realised I was near the back and thought, I didn't want to be this far back so hiked up a little faster.  We got to the first aid station which was a mess, 1600 people trying to get some food or water, I grabbed some bread with honey and moved on but we soon hit a single track and I joined an international conga line and their baguettes (when I say baguettes, I mean walking sticks) and although this may sound fun, it was not, I was frustrated as I couldn't really get past and had to be patient choosing appropriate places to overtake, it seemed most the people weren't too bothered about finishing at all and taking it easy, talking to people on their phones.  I think inadvertently I was paced, maybe if I been closer to mid pack I could have been tired a lot quicker throughout the race but I don't know.

Lac Combal Aid Station I got to Lac Combal checkpoint by about 9 am where we dropped down to 1970 meters by this point, got some soup and moved on.  It was a shorter climb back up just above 2500 meters and by this point things had started to open up and more space to run and move around.
Col Chavannes checkpoint

Looking down the valley from Col Chavannes Getting to the top Col Chavannes was great, there was a great view of the valley below and what we had to run back down and this is where I could gain some positions and time so I let go and ran down to 1900 meters then another climb back up to 2188 meters.  The course is littered with cows and horses who refuse to budge of the path it's their land and they're the boss, they just stare at you.  Anyway it was up and down all day and night.

The guy in front was really annoying me and pretty unsteady on his feet considering he had baguettes I ran down the steepest decent of the course 2188 meters to 815 meters which had a few smaller up hills in 3 hours, the whole terrain was favorable to a fell runner I think and noticed the Europeans didn't like running over rocks that much.  If it wasn't for the bloody high mountains you think you would have been in Borrowdale in the Lake District.  I ran into Bourg Saint Maurice with time to spare before the cut off and a good job too because I had a drink and nearly blacked out, I started to get tunnel vision, some crazy looking guy was talking to me about race the stones or some uk race and I just ran off to lie down.  Darren had finished helping Clare and she gone so Darren came over to me to see how things were going.  I told him I nearly black out and gave me some water, the rest did me good, got some food and got back up again.

Everyone has that urge to do some mid race shopping...right!?!? The next climb was the big one back out the valley and it was a monster, 815 meters back up to  about 2600 meters uninterrupted and it was a monster, it's a mountain with three blind summits one after the other. I left Bourg Saint Maurice around 4.30 pm and got to the actual top check point Passeur Praglognan by around 8.30 - 9 pm.

Finally the top was insight, just up and down As it was getting dark, it seemed a good time for the head torch, the new raid light top which worked a treat (I never used my water proof jacket) and my light weight wind proof jacket.  The next decent was a technical one with ropes on the side of the mountain to hold, some places to help but you could get down by sliding down on your bum and it didn't last too long, after it was just a case of watching where you went but with a defined path it was pretty easy going. From the very top to the half way point is was 4 km and felt longer especially as the aid station was not visible until 100 meters away.  It was great to reach half way to get my drop bag and TEA!!!! yes lovely cup of tea, yeh for tea.  I had soup and pasta and anything else with salt and some pepsi, why not.  I spent about an hour here, changed into long trousers and put some clean shorts to change back into for the next morning in my bag.  I reloaded my bag with snicker bars and some SIS go bars and carried on.  The next 8 km had some really muddy bits and fell over a few times, at one point I was following a German guy and he couldn't work out how to run over some mud so let me go first, I think he was hoping I would fall so he knew where to go but I soon ran off.  Some more up and down sections and by 1.30 am I was starting to feel sleepy and just wanted to close my eyes and stop,  I did stop a few times to eat but only for a minute at the most, most of the time I was running and sleeping/closing my eyes and nearly tripping over so this continued until around 5 am where at this point I could see the next aid station Col Joly, we had to run through a farmer milking his cows, again they would not move, stubborn b***ards.  Another aid station and more tea please vicar, well no vicars but plenty of tea and they had milk at this aid station, fancy.  Got out around 6 am and I changed and perked up and felt rejuvenated, I guess it's how Superman feels when he flies out to the Sun to heal, not that I'm saying I'm Superman.  Anyway I wanted to get to the next aid station in Les Contamines to change back into my shorts and t-shirt ready for the sun and the final assault into Chamonix.  It was a 10 km 820 meters decent, had plenty of energy and my legs were not in pain so I ran as fast I could blasting past people getting changed half way down, I'm thinking just get down and change at Les Contamines.  Got into the aid station, changed a final cup of tea.  I started the last big accent to Col de Tricot where I knew it was all down hill from that point as I had already recce'd it a couple of days before.  I was blasting past more people who were probably fatigued or just didn't know how to use their sticks properly, I've never trained with them so I can't comment too much, one guy ask me where my 'batons' were and he was surprised I said I hadn't got any and that he wouldn't attempt the race without them.
I'm an ultra runner...get me out of here! no ant and dec though

Arriving into Les Houches From Bellevue to Les Houches I f**king ran down that mountain and into the town center and where Darren was waiting and told me it was 8 km back into Chamonix.  I had a quick drink but not tea this time just Pepsi and I was off, I still played it cautiously on the 8 km and fast hiked some of the smaller up hills then Darren was once again there at the end of the trail and tried to get me going along the final road sections bt I decided to walk it before the high street where people started to cheer and clap, it was getting a little awkward as I got further into the town and more people so I sped up to get over the finish and I did, I got my gilet/body warmer and that was that.  I finished in 30 hours and 10 minutes.
Finish straight in Chamonix - Darren in background photobombing

My legs felt fine straight after, I got a blister on my left foot due to a stone.  I think I need to work on my speed going up mountains so I'm faster, my nutrition is nearly there but still could do a few things to make it better.  I'm happy with my performance on the day and just wanted to finish really.  Before the race people asked me what time you expect, I just told them the average finish time and the cut-off time and anytime between that would be good but still annoyed I was 2 1/2 hours off the average finish time.  I do like to feel my legs aching after an event as it shows you did something but I was running for the train a couple hours after and the next day getting a flight to Rome where I met my support team and just did a lot of walking because obviously they felt I hadn't done enough.