CCC - Part 2 Trient - Chamonix

I run inside the feeding station marquee in Trient with a great sense of relief. I remember leaving Champex and thinking that there were 2 major obstacles before finishing the race: Bovine and the first climb; Catogne and the second climb over to Vallorcines. Since the Tete aux Vents had been cut from the route for weather reasons (and boy was it cold and miserable on top), there were no real difficulties after Vallorcines, just a little stroll up to Col des Montées before the final descent into Chamonix and the finish. I have completed the first obstacle and now there is only one to go before meeting Laurence again in Vallorcines.

I look around the feeding station and regret that Laurence was talked out of coming here. It's a big shelter like La Fouly and Champex with all the food and drink that you need. I try and eat some food and energy bars but my stomach has gone on strike. All food tastes retched now and I can't digest anything without feeling sick. I just down a few cokes and then I help myself to a cup of tea. The warmth from the tea is a huge comfort but my hand still shakes with the cold and exhaustion as I try to bring the cup to my lips. I can't control my shaking any longer either. My body is slowly starting to fall apart and I'm no longer in control of my movements. I do a quick check of my equipment: I swapped my Salomon shorts for Skins in Champex and I'm regretting the change. The Skins are too tight to pull up around the waist and the rubbing with the rucksack means that they fall down slowly and constantly, forcing me to yank them up every half hour or so. The rucksack is fine but I didn't need the front compartment which is more of a hindrance than a help when putting on or taking the rucksack off. The shoes and boosters are fine and apart from a slight niggle in my calf at the beginning of the race, my legs are fine, just tired. My North Face jacket is great and keeping me relatively dry. The sweat from my body is absorbed by the gore running top but there's no perfect solution for this. Laurence's gloves are a godsend, far better than the skimpy rubbish I used for the first part of the race. They are soaking wet however, but they still keep my hands warm even on the tops. Globally I'm doing alright despite the constant drizzle and moisture that pervades everywhere.

I look at the large screen that is in the marquee. They are showing the time since the start of the race at just over 11 hours and it's just after 9:00pm now. I'm in about 400th position in the race which I consider to be a fairly poor performance compared to my usual placing in a competition. It just shows the standard of the competitors in this race and the specific training necessary to be a good trail runner. Back to reality; Vallorcines is another 10km away and I still have another 750m to climb before reaching Catogne which is almost 5 km distant. I text Laurence and tell her that I need another 2 and a half hours from here to Vallorcines. It's time to go and reluctantly I leave civilisation again and head out into the dark.

The trail from Trient starts steadily enough leaving the village and then bending left back into the mountains. It's pitch black now and I've got the headlamp on to light up the way. It's easy to spot the other competitors as the lights are flickering up ahead in the distance and behind me when I turn around to see if anyone is catching me. I overtake a couple of runners as the walk slowly upwards now the path heads steeply up the hillside again. There aren't many people around me and the density of the race has diminished significantly compared to the first stages up until La Fouly. I stop every now and then to take a breather. This is new to me too. I can't continue walking uphill constantly without resting and I remind myself that Laurence is waiting and push on. I'm caught by a small group of runners including the couple I descended Bovine with. I manage to tack on behind another female runner and am just happy to follow in her footsteps. She asks if I want to go past and I tell her that I don't have the energy to overtake and I'm happy where I am. The snowline appears again and we must be at 1800m with another 250m to go to the top.

I've posted a video here of the countryside at night with the headlamp, just so that you can experience it for yourselves (admittedly this is coming down from Bovine and not up to Catogne but it's dark so what's the difference?):

With my female walking companion, we head upwards and the path flattens out, winding its way slowly around the hillside. She asks me if it's far to the top and I reply that I don't think so since my Garmin is showing an altitude of 2000m. The path winds on and the top still doesn't appear. Just when I wonder whether this will ever end, a couple of marshals are there with some flags and an open fire to signal the top at Catogne. They register my bib and I ignore the temptation to warm myself around the fire and begin to run again.

My legs ache as I run. My thighs are sore and I can't lift my legs properly. I keep going though and the woman I followed up is running down faster than me. The downhill is hard work as the visibility is close to zero; it's muddy and slippy down the track; it's too steep to be able to let yourself go without trying to hold back. I concentrate on where I'm putting my feet and moving forward at a regular pace. It's really hurting now though and I'm looking forward to getting to Vallorcines. I figure that once I get there and see Laurence then the race is in the bag. I will do what I came to do. I don't have any doubts that I'll finish the race at this stage - I'm determined to finish and although I may not do the time that I wanted to do (under 17 hours), I'll manage to get to the end which is what matters most. The track after heading right for some time takes a left turn and we head into the trees. I catch up with another couple of runners and I chase them down in the dark. We lose one of them and the other runner and I follow each other using 2 beams of light from the headlamps to improve visibility. The path seems to go down forever, in fact it descends for over 750m in altitude, and finally we see the lights of Vallorcine in the valley below.


The village lights spur us on and we jog out of the trees down to the village and the feeding station on the outskirts. I look for Laurence outside as I come down but there's no sign of her (in fact, she's been waiting inside for over two hours as she got too cold waiting for me outside). I enter the tent and am delighted to see her and she instantly proposes to go and fetch me a cup of tea. I sit down and she looks after me, asking if everything is alrght and refilling my water pouch for me. We talk briefly about the last section and the small climb to Col de Montées (+200m D+) before the downhill section to Argentières and Chamonix. She takes a photo of me and tells me that I look tired. I know I'm tired and just want to get moving and to get this over with now. I give an estimate of the time it will take me at around 2 hours. It's now just before midnight and I tell her that I'll be down somewhere between 2:00 and 2:30 am. A last kiss and I leave.

I'm happy to be out and on the last stretch. What's more, the going is straight forward as the path rises very gradually alongside playing fields and then the road. This sort of path would normally be no problem to jog along at a comfortable 10km/h but I'm well past the sort of physical condition necessary to manage this. Cars pass giving hoots of encouragement from their horns, probably as they come home from bars on their way to bed. Col des Montées is 4km from Vallorcines and I figure that this will take an hour and I manage to reach there in 55 minutes. My timing is spot on now and it won't be long before I'm back in Chamonix and then tucked up in bed as I need to recover too. I start jogging again down the hill and catch up with another group as we jog down roads and paths towards Argentières. It only takes between 10 - 15 minutes to get to Argentières and I'm delighted: the end is in sight. I reckon that there's only about 10km to go of downhill so even in the state I'm in the 2:00am time is more or less feasible. I don't even bother stopping in the feeding station but run in one side and then straight out of the other to attack the final section; the home straight.

The road takes us out of the west side of the village when I was exepecting to head down the road to the north. I'm not too bothered as I figure that this path must run parallel to the road through the trees. It doesn't. Worse still, it goes uphill. What the hell ? I walk immediately, disgusted and disappointed that it's not going to be as easy as I thought. The uphill continues for some time and I begin to get very pissed off. My ETA is out of the window and then I hear a sound from my pocket. It's my phone and Laurence is calling me. She wants to know how long before I'll arrive so I tell her another hour yet. I don't even know exactly how far it is but as I expect to run approximately 90km after the course modifications and I'm currently at 82km, this appears a prudent estimation at 8km/h. I put the phone back in my pocket and run down a little downill section. All of a sudden I'm on the ground in a heap and my hip and thigh are sore. I've fallen in the dark and am coated with mud: just what I needed. I curse myself for being so careless so close to the end and check that nothing is broken. Nothing is so I carry on a little while and then decide to change the batteries in my headlamp so that I can get more visibility. This takes me a good 20 minutes as I unpack my sack, fumble in the dark with the batteries all the while using my second headlamp to light up what I'm doing. The reserve headlamp is not much brighter than the first; so the batteries have to be replaced. About 30 runners go past while I'm carrying out this operation but I'm past caring and just want to stop. I complete the manoeuvre and continue on.

Running is over for me now. Even on the downhill, my legs are too sore and painful to run. The jarring with each stride shoots up daggers of pain in each thigh and I can't take it. Tough, I'm just going to have to walk to the end. I think about Laurence and my predicted finish time which is now out of the window. The route continues to wind westward through forests and areas that I don't recognise with equal measures of uphill and downhill, since I walk both I'm not too bothered. This is not true. I'm still pissed off with the organisers for making the end so difficult when it didn't need to be - stupid I know but I was beyond rational thought at this point in the race. I looked at the Garmin - 2:40am and I had just passed our hotel: Hotel L'Arveyron. I could have stopped there and gone to bed but I had to complete this race first. I knew where I was now and I thought that I'd be lucky to get under 17 hours at this pace.

I finally reach the outskirts of Chamonix after what seems like an eternity. Another younger runner catches me at this point and tells me to run in with him to the finish. I start running, ignoring the searing pain that this provokes in order to reach the line in some style. We run together the last kilometre and he pulls away from me towards the end finishing some 30 seconds ahead. I check later and find that he left Argentière 40 minutes after me to catch me by the finish. This is the time I lost with my fall, my headlamp, and my inability to run. The relief as I go over the finishing line is tremendous. Laurence is there waiting for me and she directs me to the tent acting as the last feeding station and I drink a final cup of tea. It's over.

16 hours and 58 minutes to run 92.5 km on the Garmin and over 5 000 metres of uphill. They are all just numbers and it's easy to dismiss this when reading accounts like this before actually taking part - I know I did ! The terrain and the ascents are what I under-estimated and their impact on my level of exhaustion and leg muscles. I really don't know if I could have managed the 2 summits that were cut from the course - I'll never know but the weather conditions were extreme as other athletes confirmed with previous race experience. It took me 3 days following the race to recover fully in my legs and another 3 weeks before I was ready to take on some serious training again. I left a lot of motivation behind me on the CCC, but I gained in experience and I'll be back to do the UTMB in the future.