Written by Andrew Woodrow
I was stopped on a hairpin about half way up the Col du Tricot. Maybe a bit more, maybe less. It was 1am, I’d been racing for 18 hours and 100km. ‘That last hill on the profile,’ Elisabet had commented two days ago, ‘it’s harder than it looks. It’s not just a little hill. Make sure you keep something for it.’ A random Icelander with whom I had queued to collect the start number giving her two cents worth, based on her own previous experience. But I hadn’t kept anything for it. I was stopped, my last energy gel had been slurped up, and I thought I was running low on water.
If that wasn’t funny then, to quote Yossarian of Catch-22, there were a lot of things that weren’t even funnier. The coming descent to Les Houches for a start, a drop of 1,200 toe-destroying metres over 9km into the Chamonix Valley. Someone passed where I stood and I tucked in behind him to see if I could get pulled up the mountain. Or her, as it turned out. What was it about the Col du bleedin’ Tricot and fast running women?
Rewind 18 hours to the pre-dawn, getting ready for the start. The bus to Courmayeur, hanging around in the sports hall, the short walk to the start, dropping off the bags. Everything working as it should. I found a spot reasonably near the front as part of my tactic to have a good couple of kilometres through town prior to picking up the trail somewhere in the top 200 or so, to hopefully minimize queueing in the first narrow sections and more importantly, at the first couple of checkpoints until the field spread out. This would happen quite naturally over the first section and sooner or later I would find myself among those going more or less the same speed as me.
Getting ready for the off, Courmayeur
A few panicked minutes deleting old photos from my camera, which had no memory left, and a minute or two waving at the official photographer with the other 1500-odd starters. Then we were off, on a fast bull run through the streets of Courmayeur, abruptly pulled up short as we rose out of town and started up the first ascent. I stopped to remove my long sleeve top, was filmed by a crew and asked if I was hot already. Not yet, but I was going to race this one and soon would be.
A couple of notes at this point. By ‘going to race this one,’ I mean ‘going out to get as fast a time as I could.’ I’ve now run a few mountain trail races, varying in length and climbing; this was not the longest but, with an average gradient of 12% either up or down over the entire length, and largely on small trails, it was going to be one of the harder ones. My first couple of long distances trail races were as much to see if such a thing was possible as about racing, though by happy coincidence the results were pretty good too. But now I wanted to race. Now it’s a balance of wanting to race but also knowing there are 120km over rough paths with a gradient of 12% the entire way. You can’t simply sprint off towards the horizon, and it becomes a question of how fast you dare to go, or can go, at any particular stage.
The second note is on poles. Reading various reports and so on on the internet, these arouse a certain amount of discussion, with ‘purists’ arguing along the line that they offer an unfair advantage and are simply not cricket. On the other hand you have 80% at least of the runners in the UTMB series using them. On yet another hand, people say if you are going to use them, make sure you practice and train with them well in advance as they are useless unless you know what you are doing. 10 days before the race, I reckoned that over 24 hours or so I would probably get the hang of them, and ordered a pair online. The first time I unfolded them outside the comfort of my own living room was when I stopped to take off my top, 2km into the TDS. Looking at those around me, various methods were on display – the most common being like the Nordic walkers I see around the Danish countryside. The pole and opposite foot are moved together, with the pole landing level with the foot – not behind or in front of it. On steeper slopes some favoured planting both poles in front and hauling themselves forward, a bit like punting, but without the Pimm’s. It took about 10 seconds to be good enough at both techniques for the poles to become a real asset.
Anyway off up the first climb we went. This was a single track dirt road; apparently they had changed the course at the start, where it used to go straight onto a footpath, as the wider path meant the field could spread out and would hopefully reduce the ‘queuing problem’ of the first stages of the race. I was overtaking for the most part, though walked with a couple of Brits for a few minutes before going ahead. The dawn light on the Mont Blanc Massif was beautiful, with the sun generally behind us. I looked at my watch at the first checkpoint; 1 hour 1 minute for the first 6,5k, including 750 metres of ascent. Good going – I was moving along with the others, and now we were onto a single track footpath.
Soon after the path stopped zig-zagging and we were out onto the open ‘tops’ – great view to Month Blanc, to the north, and stunning open country and a gently rising path. Parts were runnable, parts were not. A chopper came past filming. Running the flat and the slight downhills in clear morning light, traversing the mountainside. This was great. Really great.
Over the first major peak at 2400m and a half hour descent to Lac Combal. Walkers coming the other way, stepping aside…they would have to wait ages for the path to clear! A nice flat approach along the valley bottom to the checkpoint, up over a ridge, along another valley floor, then up a steep switchback path towards Col Chavanne. The uphills were more conducive to taking photos as you can do it pretty well without stopping; another runner took one of me. Runners were visible on the path above, snaking up to the col across a scree slope. Nearing the col, helpers shouted encouragement to get you over the crest of the ridge – not that I needed it; this had been a great start. I was where I wanted to be, it was a bright sunny morning, the mountains were fantastic and I was on a high. The first 20k had taken just over 3 hours and I’d climbed about 1700m. Below me, a glacial valley curved gently to the right; a 10k sweep with a drop of 6 or 700m. People paused at the top to change clothes, drink some water and collect themselves; I tried to keep this to a minimum and headed off down the valley.
Top of descent, Col Chavanne. Straight down that valley curving off to the right.
This was a delight – except it pretty quickly became apparent that my shoes were just a little too small. I had suspected it last year but on the UTSW, with descents lasting a few hundred metres at most, it didn’t really kick in. Here we had descents of several hundred, or even over a thousand metres, several kilometres long. There’s no place to hide for your toes if your shoes are too small. But down I went all the same. Runners were now well spaced and there were a hundred or metres in between each. I was generally overtaking more than being overtook, and including the 400 m rise up to Col du Petit St Bernard, ran this 16k section at over 9km/h. At the bottom of the valley we went offroad and through a boggy field to another path; my feet got slightly wet, but not so much as the chap behind me, who cursed as he went up to his knees in mud. Going slowly and probing the bits that looked firm with my poles was a good move. At the bottom of the valley I found myself in a small group, but managed to lose them as the climb started. All of a sudden I skirted a lake, saw a short and impossibly steep hill in front, went up it and found a crowd cheering me on. It was the approach to the Col du Petit St Bernard, 36km into the race and the Italian / French border. Cresting the ridge, I ran through the crowd to great applause and on into the checkpoint. 36km, almost exactly 5 hours, and feeling good. A quick stop to fill up the water, grab some coke, fizzy water, biscuits and cheese, (the checkpoints were well stocked with a wide variety of sweet and salty things), and it was off down the next valley – 15km of descent, and a drop of 1350m.
The downhill presented the toe problem, but I still did this section at 8.5km/h. I lost a few places where it got steep as, toes or no toes, going downhill is not my strongest point. I’ve always overtaken on the uphills. The section started out down a single track dirt road, though soon enough we were back on a trail proper, heading down the valley to Seez. Nearing the bottom, as it got rockier, I heard a group behind me. The path here undulated between being steeply downhill and being almost level. I ran the almost level bits hard, and although the group closed the gap on the steep downhills, I kept ahead using this method until the path hit the valley floor. Various people were holding garden parties in Seez and applauded runners as they passed; a diversion around a not-very-scenic power plant and we were on shady paths near the river. I ran into Bourg St. Maurice at 51km in 6 hours 39 minutes, in 124th place (though I did not know this at the time). Before the race I thought this would be between 7 – 10 hours, to give me a fighting chance of getting round in under 24 hours. It was hot down here in the valley and I needed to replenish my water and have some food but after the long, reasonably fast decent I was feeling elated. This was going well. There were only 4 or 5 of us at the checkpoint, including another Brit, who seemed to be in a similar condition. We agreed it was worth spending a few minutes here to get ready for the next section.
‘The next section’ had fascinated me for months. From Bourg St. Maurice at 837m altitude, it climbed to Col Forclaz at 2300m over 8km. It then dipped slightly and rose up to the ‘Passeur de Pralognan,’ at 2546m, 3km further on. In total that’s 1,950m climbing over 11k. I tried to compare it to other climbs – the 2000m or so at the start of the Diagonale des Fous? But that had been over 30km. The biggest climb on the SwissAlpine? ‘Only’ 1500m, and over a longer distance. This part of the race profile looked even to me as something verging on an insane amount of climbing. I took a wild guess at 3 hours. Climbing out of BSM, I passed a Dane having an afternoon nap in the shade to gather his strength. A short while later, someone came back down the path, shaking his head. It was a singletrack switchback path up through scrub and small trees, opening up below the ‘Fort du Truc’ and becoming grassland from there up to the ‘Fort de la Platte’ and ever wilder onwards to Col Forclaz. These forts were apparently built in the 19th century when the various local dukedoms were squabbling, and had commanding views over the valley far below. It was crystal clear as I made the ascent in the afternoon sun, pausing for the occasional photo and to refill my water at Fort de la Platte. I was gaining on people, especially over the open grassland above the first fort. We dipped down after Col Forclaz into a wild, high, valley – populated only by Alpine cows, cowherds and their dogs.
Past small lakes and up the next valley, steep enough for the ‘punting’ technique to come into play. I reached the Passeur at ten to five in the afternoon, 3 hours to the minute after leaving BSM, or just over half way into the race with 62km done. Since BSM I’d also climbed from124th to 91st, though I did not know that at the time. Well over half of the climbing done, and in the middle of nowhere. Where, exactly, was one supposed to descend?
The descent from the Passeur du Pralognan was another moderately insane part of the course. My physical geography lessons are not so far behind that I could not recall that technically speaking, this is the headwall of a cirque. Cirque headwalls are characterized by being very steep and comprised largely of sharp, frost-shattered rock. The descent was, well, straight down that. There was a path of sorts, and a rope with plenty of give in it that you could grab if you had to, but it was a tricky one. I went down it rather slowly, and was caught by a few people who I’d no doubt passed on the way up. After a short while it leveled out a bit at the bottom of the cirque and along the valley, and I was once again able to keep up. We came out onto a dirt road that was more or less level and snaked off behind a hill – I started running, thinking the checkpoint at Cormet de Rosalund was not far off. The road snaked round another hill, and another. Various spectators were out to cheer, very nice, but where was the Cormet? Eventually over a slight rise I came to it, and headed for the truck with my drop bag in it. No need – my dropbag was waiting for me at the entrance to the tent. As runners check in at the Passeur, 4 km previously, the drop bags are retrieved from the truck and laid out for them. Such organization! I put on a new long sleeved shirt, changed my T-Shirt, sat down for the only time in the race, had some noodle soup, replenished my perpetuem, ate various calorific items, felt good, and headed out within about 10 minutes. A volunteer took my dropbag back to the truck and I was on my own again. This section was long, at 16km, with about 1200m of ascent and descent. A climb to begin with, a descent, a climb, a descent, a short, steep climb and finally a fairly gentle descent to Col Joly.
Often the 3rd quarter of a race is the toughest. You’ve got half way, very good, but there’s a long way to go and quite frankly you’ve been on your feet for a while. Leaving the checkpoint I walked even the fairly level bit, feeling a little heavy; hopefully this was due to having taken on board a decent amount of food at Cormet. The first climb started and things picked up; this part was across open moorland on an indistinct path. A few other runners were in sight as I crested the first ridge, and as usual they headed off faster than me down the hill.
The hill was not long and at the bottom of the valley I went ahead again, over some stepping stones and later re-crossing the stream on a narrow bridge. The path began to rise again, but only briefly, until we were flying along the edge of a narrow ravine – the ‘Passage du Curé’. These people were not going to get away again, I thought. The ravine was fantastic; completely wild and barren of any inhabitation, the path clinging to the cliff. Eventually the valley opened up and there was a further descent to a small hut on the other side of the river a kilometer or two away.
Chasing the Italian girl along the Passage du Curé
I kept the pace, overtaking an Italian girl (there were girls ahead of me??) and raced on down. A quick refill of the water from the stream-fed trough next to the checkpoint and the climb up to La Gite commenced; firstly along the narrow valley path and later up across open moorland on a dirt road. The climb bought me further places; just after cresting the ridge, in a rocky section of the path, the guy I was running with stopped to put on his headtorch. I did the same – ‘we will need them in a few minutes’ he said. Others passed us without stopping. The path got rockier and more convoluted. Darkness fell, (and so here the photos stop), and those around us stopped to fish around in their packs to find their torches. The guy I was with stopped to get an energy gel, and I was picking my way around the boulders on my own. Here was the start of the steep ascent, and at the top of that I was in fog. The path was well defined here and I ran it – the gentle downhill towards Col du Joly. In the fog I was overtaking others – even on the downhill. The fog got thicker and it became necessary at each reflective marker to stop and search out the next one, the run towards it and check every few metres that you were still on track. I was running, racing even. Past a group of volunteers putting out extra markers in the fog, past other runners. I could hear the checkpoint long before I could see it; good to know it was nearby though as I was out of water. There it was! I ran in in 81st position, the highest I would reach, 85km into the race, about 6000m climbed, 14 ½ hours…the 3rd quarter was done; the back of the race had been broken. 10k to the next checkpoint, 800 metres below. On down.
I stopped for a leak in the fog soon after, and was caught by Claudio. Claudio and I had been trading places since soon after Col Chavanne, (he features in the first photo of cows in this write up) though we had not spoken along the course. I had noticed that he had the same backpack as me, which was not uncommon, but until now he had been one of those people I’d just seen from time to time. He suggested we took the descent together, and off we went. It was partly runnable but we were being overtaken on the first 5 or 6 km, until we reached Notre Dame de la Gorge, on the valley floor and 4km or so from Les Contamines. A group caught up, or maybe we had caught them – anyway, along the wider, flatter trail I was able to pick up the pace once more. After a while I found myself at the front of the group; then there were only two of us. My rival fell behind and I was on my own, getting on for 10km/h through the dark. The legs were still working, the speed was still there. I slowed to a walk for a section and let the guy catch up and overtake, until I could see the lights of Les Contamines getting closer. I ran again, overtook him and continued into the checkpoint. There were only a couple of runners here too, going through the usual procedure; fill up with water, have some soup, drink some coke, and head off. I however had a call of nature to attend and asked where the gents was.
I wouldn’t normally put this in a race report but there is a lesson here for the organisers. Who decided to have French ‘squat style’ toilets 95km into a mountain race? I don’t like to whinge but squatting is simply impossible after several thousand metres of ascent and decent. I won’t go into technicalities but it involved somehow bracing myself against the wall and hoping my aim was OK…note to those hiring out normal toilets, there is a fortune to be made every year at the UTMB.
And so I found myself at the foot of the climb up Col du Tricot.
The final ‘hill’ was indeed a fairly small blip on the course profile, at least compared to the others earlier in the race. I hadn’t paid it much attention, but as I left Les Contamines and caught Claudio and another, we worked out that it was something like a 600m ascent, followed by a small dip, another 600m ascent, and then a similar-sized descent to Les Houches on the other side, and that this all happened over about 15km or so. The first bit was not too bad, up a road of sorts, and then onto a narrow path in the forest. It felt humid down here compared to the cooler, open tops, but our group of 4, as we had now become, set a reasonable pace and I was having no trouble keeping up. The small dip was small but steep, and I erred on the side of caution – 100km gone, in the dark, no point in falling over here and messing it all up. Crossing a stream at the bottom, past a Brit who was changing his headlamp batteries, and the Col du Tricot revealed itself. High above, a zig-zag line of sporadic torchlights climbed into the night. Looking really hard I could just make out where the hills came down to the col, at the top of the line of lights. 600m vertical over about 2.5km – this was as steep as it got on the TDS course. I had been drinking a lot of water and a tightening in the tube made me think it was nearly empty – better take it little by little for the rest of the climb. Claudio dropped behind but I was not going up fast either; rather a steady, pole-supported grind up the long, 25% gradient hill.
It was slow going. Every now and then I would stop on one of the switch back corners and glance up and down at the lights ahead and behind me. There was no doubt that I would make it to the top in due course, but the gain in height was incredibly slow. The lights ahead seemed never to decrease in number, and those below, never to increase. It was getting on for 1am, 18 hours into the race. At one point, stopped on a corner, I decided to wait for the next runner to overtake and tuck in behind. It was a French girl, going slow and breathing hard, but even so I struggled to keep up. I had to pull off the same trick just short of the top, when I waited for the next person to come past even as I was in sight of the volunteers at the col who were shouting encouragement. I finally crested the ridge at 1:32am, having covered the 7km from Les Contamines at an average speed of 3.3km/h. I found out later when checking my watch that the last kilometer had been covered in a stately 29 minutes – but even so, I had risen one place to 92nd since the bottom. Somehow, I was still climbing relatively well. And the water in my backpack was flowing freely again, so it looked like I had enough for the descent, and off I went.
The path down branched into several sub paths, and after a while I saw the trail markers off to my right. I crossed over and re-joined the main trail, and soon after was caught by Claudio. We continued down together, running some runnable bits, but this section was largely a case of picking one’s way over grassy tussocks, and was done at a slow walk. It was not so physically tiring as the previous climb but it was difficult going. We leveled out and crossed a rope bridge, apparently the rushing water below was straight out of the snout of a nearby glacier, but it was invisible in the dark; I guessed this was the halfway point of the descent. It wasn’t. After a short runnable section and a shorter climb to a checkpoint at Bellevue, the tricky bit started. ‘You’ll be in Les Houches in half an hour’ they said, ‘it’s only 5km, all downhill.’ And therein lay the problem. I could see the lights of Les Houches already, almost 800 metres below. I had mentally said goodbye to my toenails some time ago but they still hurt on the downhills, and this one was about as steep as it would get. After a while Claudio, always faster than me on the descents, headed off on the heels of a pair who overtook us. I carried on down the steep single track, now in the forest, on my own. Occasionally I was overtaken and even more occasionally ran short sections in the footsteps of those who had overtaken me. The path leveled out slightly and became a road; I ran alternate 100-footsteps and reached the checkpoint at Les Houches an hour after leaving Bellevue, and 2 hours after starting the descent from Col du Tricot. That was it – no more hills, just 8 gently rising kilometres to Chamonix.
Claudio was waiting there and said he wanted to continue together. I took my quickest pit stop of the race, re-filling my now empty water, grabbing an energy bar and we continued. I was told I was now 101st,; this was the only point in the race apart from Cormet de Rosalund that I knew my position. I had no particular ambition to be in the top 100 and, despite that in my pre-race thinking I had my eye on running as much as possible of this section, in reality after the somewhat strenuous Tricot climb and descent the best I would be able to pull off would be a fast walk. I estimated an hour and 20, Claudio reckoned an hour and 45. We ended up on an hour and 27 for the 8k, including the few minutes taken at the Les Houches checkpoint, so a fast walking pace it was. We followed the river upstream, sometimes climbing a little above its banks. With 2km to go we reached the suburbs of Chamonix and came onto the road; even here, before 5am, the occasional person in their pyjamas would shout ‘bravo!’ from a window. The last section along the deserted shopping street, then coming round the corner to the finish-arch at a slow run just incase anyone was watching. Somebody was – to my big surprise and delight, Christina and Rose Marie, the latter wrapped up in a blanket in her pram, were there at the line.
Rose Marie giggled and hid under her blanket. I got a big hug.
Claudio and I had ended up joint 106th, in 22 hours, 7 minutes and 24 seconds. We shook hands, congratulated each other, had a couple of photos and picked up our finisher’s gilets. In the marquee nearby, various of my fellow runners were sitting on plastic chairs, mostly looking in better shape than I was. The girl who had pulled me up Col du Tricot was thanked, the guy who had taken my picture on the descent from Col Chavanne, almost 100km previously, was greeted, and various others who I had traded places with over the course of the race were acknowledged. No doubt about it, this had been a fantastic run – and despite the last 15 or so km, I reckoned I could honestly say I had raced this one. But now the race was finished, I was finished, and all I could think of was going to bed.
Notes on the aftermath
You sort of expect to be feeling a bit shoddy after this kind of run, once things have settled down a bit, but usually that is about it. As it happened this time I had 2 medical problems – the first of which, a few hours after the finish, was difficulty in breathing. Short, shallow breaths, 26 or 28 per minute. A doctor was called to the hotel and shortly after I found myself in an ambulance on the way to the hospital at Sallanches. ‘Asthma-like symptoms’ were diagnosed, though as I have never had asthma it was recommended that I check up with my own doctor at home. After a period being ventilated with anti-asthma medication, and then being observed, I was allowed to go again – though as Christina and Rose Marie came to pick me up, this meant the little one missed her mini-race that morning. Another runner was there for the same reason; he had had to pull out as it had come on during the race itself.
For the record, the doctor at home doesn’t think it is asthma either, as it is very rare for it to suddenly show up in adults who have no history of it. It was probably a case of high stress on the lungs that brought it on, and I had been running pretty hard throughout. But I have to record my ‘Peak Flow’ every day for a month and report back after that, just to make sure.
The other problem was blood in the urine, again only after the finish. Reading up online, there are all sorts of scary possibilities with this one, but the French doctors recommended drinking plenty of water, and contacting a doctor if it did not return to normal within a day or two. My own doctor said that was sensible enough advice, and it did go back to normal within a day.