From Andrew Merrick…
Definitely the least prepared I have been for an overseas Ultra….. My Ultra friend, Laura, and I met up in the baggage reclaim area at Geneva airport in the middle of Thursday afternoon, the day before the X-Alpine was due to start. It was the earliest either of us could get there, but at least our flights from Bristol and Manchester were well co-ordinated….
A supermarket stop on the way to Megeve allowed us to stock up on our remaining nutrition requirements, before having dinner with Em, (and her dog Jackson) who had kindly volunteered to support us en route. Laura had already sorted her food etc into a series of bags so Em knew exactly what was required where. I followed the same approach, so after a bit of faffing Em was fully organised, with a bag full of our required items (and the essential laminated course map and “route card”) whilst Laura sorted dinner, despite the non-functioning hob!
We were up early the next morning for our first breakfast before going back to bed and re-surfacing at 11 for breakfast number 2, plus lunch (helped by the renewed calor gas canister) before setting off at 3 for an approximate two hour drive to Le Chable, a village just below Verbier, for registration, and in Laura’s case, her first video. She had been approached by a company who were making a video about the race for a competition… The race was due to start at 10pm so we had reserved a table at a nearby hotel for an evening meal before heading up in the cable car to Verbier itself. As I sat trying to get through the rosti I had ordered, it was definitely the worst I have felt before an Ultra.. I managed about half of it before we headed back to the car for a 30 min rest before setting off – fortunately this was the only rain we saw and it had pretty much stopped by the time we were in the cable car. It was a 10 min ride up the hill armed with our drop bags and end of race bags as well as our race kit, and we followed the crowds (about 400 runners started our distance) to the start, and I sorted both sets of drop bags whilst Laura attended to her media obligations.
We concluded that a 9pm start would have worked better for some shots of the sunset as we set off. As it was, headtorches were required straight away as we headed out on a gradual uphill route with a reasonable amount of support on a lively Friday night in Verbier…. It was pretty much uphill all the way to our first check point (1200m of ascent and about 8 miles), largely on reasonably wide tracks. Having done a few ultras together, we have become reasonably efficient at CPs, Laura finding the loo and giving Em an update (at least she had remembered to sort Swiss roaming….) whilst I refilled our bottles….. At this point we were about 30 mins inside the cut-off, both feeling we wouldn’t want to have gone much faster in the early stages.
In contrast the second leg (our longest) was almost all downhill to the low point on our course, which we both found quite hard and would have loved the relief of some uphill…. UTMB legs are more usually a bit more up and down….
From there we had a further 10 miles of uphill, calling in at Champex almost half way up, in total 2200m of climb…. We were happy to stick with the plan of finding a sustainable uphill pace, and managed the full distance to the high point of the course (2900m) without stopping, other than to put waterproofs on for warmth as we neared the top. We coped well mentally with the final out and back element of this part of the route, and were soon on the long largely downhill section before joining the UTMB trail for a gentle climb into La Fouly. On the way down, Laura had managed to slip down a small hole on the trail (a lot of it was pretty uneven and required full concentration), badly damaging her leg in the process, so we took it easy for a while to give her some recovery time, with me leading us carefully down the next section… until not to be out-done I went for a slide. We saw Em for the first time at La Fouly, around midday on Saturday. Whilst Laura had been very disciplined about eating; I had, as usual, eaten less than I should, not helped by the warm temperatures, so I drank about half a bottle of smoothie and had a couple of fruit sachets whilst Em went in search of antiseptic. Neither of us enjoyed it being poured into our respective cuts, although Laura’s leggings retained the antiseptic (and associated pain) rather longer than my bare arm!
Suitably refreshed we set-off on the next warm climb up to the eponymous Grand Saint Bernard (CP6) – another 1400m of ascent. I had got to the stopped-enjoying-it stage by this point and shared with Laura as we headed up that I wasn’t planning to go beyond the drop-bag point (CP7) at Bourg Saint Pierre… about 55 miles in to our 90 mile journey. Knowing me pretty well, Laura’s response was both very helpful and predictable: let’s stick with the plan when we get there – eat, change and have our planned 20 min lie down and take it from there. It was not a plan I could argue with….. so once we finally arrived at CP7 after a lengthy slight downhill, we executed the plan. This included some expedition porridge which Laura had thoughtfully brought with her, washed down with coffee and water, followed by a wash and change of top (I decided to leave my feet well alone), and a teeth clean (highly recommended!). During our allotted 20 mins of lying down in the middle of the CP with a towel for a pillow, I went through a fairly major mental re-set, having realised a little earlier that my biggest challenge was that I had lost my “why”. During those 20 mins, I re-created a “why” of wanting to get to the end with Laura and, if it was to be my last ultra, I certainly didn’t want to dnf….
This gave me enough motivation for the next (1100m) steady climb to our next CP, which we eventually reached at which point we were ca. 1 1/2 hours inside the cut-off despite our only long stop at Bourg Saint Pierre. Our experience is that the CPs become slightly more generous as you go through the race, so a steady start is a wise approach. However, my trusty route card told us that we had almost 12 miles of slight downhill to the next CP and little spare time. So for the first time in the race we had to push (we had agreed that this was a training race for both of us); we were so surprised to reach Cabane Brunet (CP9) so quickly that we had to check with the support crew that we were definitely there. Em was also surprised by the phone call which woke her up (at about 2:30am) and wasn’t at her best when she battled the challenging drive up the hill to where we were having some very dodgy black coffee. A few days post race, I checked my spreadsheet to find that I had cocked up, and it was only about 5 miles rather than the 12 I had managed to put on the route card – oops!
The next (600m) climb was the steepest we encountered – we could see the occasional light high up in the distance as we climbed what had become the standard twisty single file track. I am sure the moon was looking larger by the time we had finally made it to the top of the next col, also not far off 2900m. This was followed by a messy, slippery descent before bottoming out at one of very many water course crossings, this one finally being the rope bridge that we had been “warned” about. Slightly disappointingly, it was a very well constructed, albeit quite lengthy metal structure, which Laura decided that she needed to run across “to keep warm”. I marched and swayed in her wake, looking expectantly for the next CP, as we got back to terra firma, only to realise that we had another, in this case, very contrived climb to a small marquee, up a ridge which kept us away from the main path which was to be used for our descent. It would be fair to say neither of us enjoyed this particular section and we didn’t hang around at the heater in the marquee before heading back down on a more sensible bit of path, for the long, long descent to CP 11 at Lourtier where we would see Emma again. Once we had sorted ourselves out, we got back into a decent rhythm and overtook a few people on the way down before hitting some messy switchbacks to be taken with care, before emerging onto the road in the valley. From here it was still a good couple of miles to the CP, which we decided to take in march mode, given we knew we had one final tough climb to go. Em was in a much better place when we finally got to the CP and we spent a little time with her (more smoothie and a porridge pot in my case) leaving about 8am for the final 1200m climb to the penultimate CP, from where we knew it was pretty much downhill all the way to the finish.
We adopted our standard approach of finding a pace we could sustain, stopping briefly to don our sahara caps once we emerged from the trees. Finally we emerged into a flatter area, and we were able to look up to assess where the top of our climb would be. Happily we had overestimated and we were much closer to the top than we had expected so we were in giddy mode as we had a final celebratory wee and drink, before setting off on the final rooty, switch backy, dusty descent into Verbier. The dust was exacerbated by the fact that we found ourselves in the middle of a shorter distance race with the leaders and many others charging past us as we rather more cautiously picked our way down on tired legs. We finally emerged onto a wider track, where Laura’s film crew were waiting, which necessitated a further running effort…. and then Laura decided we should try to get to the finish before noon, so we found ourselves running flat out for the line through the streets of Verbier, finishing just under 38 hours after we had started.
Emma and Jackson were there waiting for us, and neither she or Laura were surprised that, once I had collected the various drop bags, I went in search of a beer…. After Em headed off, we found our way to the showers in the local sports centre followed by a lie down in the Salle de Repos for an indeterminate amount of time, both of us agreeing we had had enough of the sun by then.
Our final mission (or so I thought) was to trudge back up the hill to the cable car station carrying our multiple bags, both of us managing to bang our heads as we “leapt” in. After some faffing we eventually found the car in the car park near the bottom station, which allowed Laura to charge her phone and confirm the location of her final media engagement…. Our remaining highlight was the drive up the multiple hairpin bends back up to Verbier for Laura’s post race interview (she had wisely decided she needed a shower and lie down first), with my co-driver encouraging me to take them a little more quickly. It was after the 4th one, I realised that the boot of our Peugeot small MPV was fully open……. Fortunately all 7 bags were still accounted for! The interview gave me almost enough time to find a supermarket to acquire more water, and we then had a fairly uneventful drive back to Megeve.
A very scenic and challenging route (140km, 9200m of ascent), spoilt only by the referenced slightly contrived climb, with a lot of uneven single track travel, and a bit of mixed CP experience. Very accessible from Chamonix, and definitely a good warm up race being 6+ weeks or so before UTMB week.