UMTB Race Report

Here's my delayed report on UTMB.

I finished UTMB this morning in 39 and a half hours. I feel OK but not ecstatic about that.

[My splits are here]

The race is a zoo at the start. There were literally no starting corrals, which seems like a massive oversight for a race of 2,500 or 3,000 people. There were a couple signs for people hoping to finish under 35 and under 30 hours, but I think there was no enforcement nor even encouragement to pay attention to these, and not nearly enough room for these people. Family and friends were not kept out of the starting area in any manner. The only chute was after the start, which means runners pass through quite a scream tunnel the entire way through town, and up into the first mountains.

 

The zoo start

Zoo aid station

Maybe all the way through the first neighboring town of Les Houches up and over Prarion, and down into St. Gervais, the cheering crowd was nuts. Certain stretches felt like the Tour de France. How long could this go on? (The answer turned out to be a few hours. After the Chamonix valley, fan support is normal, i.e. very low.) At one point we ran through some large neon circles, probably with techno music blaring, and it actually felt pretty cool (despite my distaste for EDM).

Generally the zoo-yness of it was positive, since it incentivizes a good, but not too crazy pace, and since I can climb pretty well, it feels good to pass a bunch of people just by walking. Of course there's a lot of Conga line singletrack, so you have to pick and choose where you pass.

I quite enjoyed the first night. It's weird for me to a enjoy a nighttime spent running, since it's usually after a full day, but the 6pm start made the evening relatively easy. Unfortunately it made the next day a struggle.

At 6:30 Saturday morning, after three climbs (two in the dark), I rolled into Lac Combal at 69Km. All I remember was that it was very pretty leaving that aid station. After a short climb there was a long descent to Cormayeur, it was getting warm, and I knew I wasn't descending as fast as I would have liked.

 

Lac Combal

I got to Courmayeur (83Km) at 9:24 and didn't leave until 10:14. The line for the bathroom was annoyingly long, but I figured it would be better to poop there than in the woods on the climb out of town, so I waited. Honestly the sports facility is large and probably has bathrooms on other levels, and there are probably public WCs somewhere else in town, so this really felt like a complete waste of 20 minutes, even though according to my splits I gained 39 spots based solely on my time spent there.

 

It's gorgeous, I'm struggling

After Courmayeur is a long, hot, dusty, climb up to Refuge Bertoni. Apparently I did alright on the climb, but then spent a lot of time there before moving on to Refuge Bonatti. The trail started opening up with views across the valley to Mont Blanc, but I wasn't moving particularly fast. I was really wanting some electrolytes or something else to drink at this point, so I got a half pint of beer, which helped. The aid stations had water, low-carbonation Pepsi (because it was made from syrup and carbonated with Sodastreams, since the race wanted to cut down on plastic waste), and occasionally two flavors of Näak, which weren't really doing it for me. I carried some of my own Skratch drink mix, which helped but the fact that Euopeans don't put ice in their drinks was probably the root cause of my mild hydration issues.

 

 

 

 

Then we had a long climb up to Grand Col Ferret at 106Km and the highest (second highest?) point on the course. The climb was slow, of course, but it was gorgeous, and I had one of the few conversations with fellow runners that I had all weekend--a Swiss scientist who worked at CalTech/JPL and is part of the European team building a Mars rover. 

 

View from Grand Col

 

The route down to La Peule (109Km) was fine. I remember listening to the Fresh Air show remembering Phil Donahue. Then when I got there, I asked if there were snacks, because I didn't know if it was a real aid station or not. In American-accented English a woman asked me by name if I wanted a bag of potato chips, which I gladly accepted, since I hadn't seen any all day (the aid stations had crackers, but no potato chips.) 

 

From there to La Fouly (116Km) was downhill, but I wish it had felt easier. 

 

Up to Champex-Lac (130Km) at 9:19PM and the headlamps came back out for night two. Up, over, and down to Trient (146Km). Up, over, and down to Vallorcine (158Km 5:30AM). I had a couple short conversations with other American runners, and Jan Horan met me at these aid stations, so that was great--she has a lot of experience dealing with grumpy runners in the middle of the night. However, the descents were pretty miserable; my legs didn't have the speed or agility and my waist lights just don't really seem bright anough to allow for full speed hill descents on the rocky, rooty terrain. 

 

Rooty Final Climb

  

After Vallorcine, I was hoping the climbing was done, and I ran a decent portion of the route out of town up to the low pass that the higway goes over. But then you cross the road, and climb, and then, for some dumb reason, you descent through this boulderly, rooty area where ten of us got backed up in a traffic jam because the terrain was so slow-going. I had to ask a couple people whether there really was still one huge climb remaining, because it didn't seem possible--we were already in the Chamonix valley, we're looking at Mont Blanc, and we can basically see staight down to Chamonix.

 

Top of the Final Climb

But yes, the climb was very real, so it still took three hours to do the 850 meters of vert between Vallorcine and La Flegere (169Km), which is the top of the ski lift directly above Chamonix opposite of Mont Blanc. The very top. And then there's finally only 6Km left to go. I descended as best I could, but I didn't want to torch my quads, and the trail was still very rooty and rocky. Thinking I had another 100-miler in four days, I stayed conservative. Finally, with 3Km left to go, the trail became more of a gravel road, and there was really no excuse not to run. So I turned it on, and passed a half dozen people in the final descent. I got into Chamonix, and ran like the Terminator, hunting down 3 or 4 more people in the streets, with my water bottles and waist light flopping all around because I was going all out.

Final time--39:26:53, 754th place.

Overall, I'm glad I did it, but I really don't see myself ever running it again. If I spoke French, maybe, but there's next to no communication with other runners during the race. It's fun in an Olympic Spirit sense to be cheered on by Americans on course who are out there backpacking and will shout the occasional "USA!" but the fact that 60+% of my running was in the dark is just lame. It would  probably be more fun to come over and run the Tour de Mont Blan in 3-4 days, running during the day and staying in the huts and drinking wine at night. I was hoping to finish in under 36 hours, but it was hot, and I had another 100-miler scheduled for four days after, so I was holding it back on descents especially. In hindsight since the second race was cancelled I wish I had not done that, but it's not a big deal.

Anyway, I'm back in DC now, and I kind of feel like my race year is over. I'm signed up for Euchre Bar Massacre, but it would require extra travel that I'm not sure I'm up for. CIM only has $375 charity bibs available, and it's not like I'm chomping at the bit to do speed work right now. I've done four hundos this year, it might be time to relax. 

Or maybe in three days I'll be chomping at the bit and try and sign up for Hellgate or something stupid like that. We'll see.

 

Done