Salomon Ultra Pirineu, trying out a different race approach

After Lavaredo Ultra Trail in June I had a hard time to motivate myself for another ultra trail 3 months later. Lavaredo was a rather painful exercise with too many blisters involved and my body was in for a break. But I had signed up a long time ago for this race, so I did my training and I found myself in the startbox in Bagà Saturday October 5th at 4:50 in the morning. The startbox being the famous small square with the salomon signs and petzl lamp. It was surprisingly quiet with just some background music and runners talking. That quietness stopped 15 minutes before the start. If anybody still was sleeping at 5:15 in the village, for sure they were not anymore. The speaker went crazy and a big concert would have been proud of the music volume.

Start of ultra Pirineu Baga

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, gooo and off we were. Well, I started in the back and we were send through some very narrow streets, so there was not much running yet. I was patient as I was having a different approach this time. I would start slow, well knowing I would loose time in the first 13 km as it would go about 2000 m up with a lot of bottlenecks. My target time was 22h. Overall the course was 96 km long with about 6000 heightmeters.

It went as expected. Shortly after a small detour in Bagà, it started to go up, up and up. I just followed the runners in front of me, not wasting energy over taking, while saving my headlamp battery as there was enough light from the other headlamps. This lead to a rather comfortable pace with a lot of stops, never going in the red zone. Still I passed Reboot at 8 km after the first vertical km in 1h54' which meant more than 15 min in front of my plan, despite all the queuing.

What then followed towards Niu was the highlight of the race. It was getting light and we started to see the surroundings as we came free of trees. We could see clouds below us with mountain tops coming through them while the sun was rising. This was spectacular and without doubt one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen. With this view I arrived at Niu, now 20 min in front of my time plan. I was in position 826 of a little more than 1000 runners, so I was nicely executing my plan.

I Niu i filled my bottles, adding Tailwind and quickly ate some fruit. My poles I stuffed away in the special pocket I was running with, as I don't use those on the downhills. Downhill it went, but we quickly met some uphills so the poles came out again. When trying to put then back in the pocket the pocket came of my pack, so this pole bag experiment did not go well. Running the rest of the race with my poles in my hands was the result. Meanwhile this part of the course was beautiful. Lots of animals: cows, horses, donkeys, sheep were sharing the course with us. I was enjoying and comfortably running the kms away. reached the next depot at 30 km, Serrat, after 6:20, now almost 30 min ahead of schedule and climbed to position 802. Changing my shirt to a t-shirt as it was getting hot.

The next two sections were quite anonymous. I was starting to notice I had been running some hours but otherwise everything was under control , except from the one point on one of the easiest parts of the course were I  manage to crash. Ouch, that actually did hurt. Knee bleeding, elbow bleeding and hand bleeding. Put a bandana on my hand as that was looking messy, while the rest seemed to do ok and could surprisingly run without issues onwards. In reached Prat d'aguila after 10h04' and had moved up to position 787 despite the crash. 

Now a climb of about 500 meters followed.  It was steep and I was suffering. 100 meters under the top I had a break, another runner came up, asked if I was ok. 'yes, just a break before the last 100 m' was my answer. He smiled and explained that after this peak it would be easy for quite a while and finished with, ' so come on and let's go'. I started again, not able to follow him though , but made it to the top and the long downhill I could move faster again. To my surprise I reached Gosol still on the 22h target despite my crisis and now I was in position 778. Gosol is the biggest aidstation with the dropbag. I changed shirt as it would soon get dark again and had som decent food. While I was sitting there the little nagging voice started in my head: 'this was nice in daylight, but what is the point of running the remaining part in the dark. You can not see anything. Is that enjoyable?' Tough questions at this point of the race, so I quickly made my way out of the station, leaving the voice behind.

Felt a lot better, as now there was just about 30 km left but with some steep climbs. To the next aidstation I was moving fast as I really loved this part. Very runnable. Arrived at Estasen in position 715!. After Estasen a tough steep downhill in the dark and the 300 m climb I had feared. In the aidstation the nagging voice was there again, but I ignored it and moved out to the big climb. I was moving slow there but was not passed at all, so I was not the only one suffering in the climbs. I arrived at Vents in position 663, but was slightly behind  my 22 h schedule and now the 600 m steep climb waited.

This climb was tough as the first kms were more or less through a river. To complete the nice path some trees were thrown right over it. Jumping from stone to stone trying to keep ones feet dry and climbing across the trees made a good distraction as this covered almost half the climb. The rest I was moving slow but steadily and now I was overtaking people. How did this happen? Maybe this is the right strategy? Reached the top and the last depot in 19h58, right on the 22 h schedule and in position 642.  Now just 11 km and most downhill. This was tough as I have a hard time running fast on paths with stones in the dark, so my speed was slower than I hoped, but eventually I arrived in Bagà after 22:24 in position 653. As it was 4 am there was very few people around, but nonetheless I was extremely happy to have made it in a time not much slower than my target.

Overall Salomon Ultra Pirineu is a nice race in a beautiful area. It maybe missing a bit of the x factor of really big races like Lavaredo and Transgrancanaria, but definitely worth running it in a weekend. Actually that sunrise is worth it alone .

Lavaredo Ultra Trail 2019 - a race through beautiful mountains in the heat accompanied by too many blisters

It was Saturday afternoon and I was in what I called deathvalley in my racereport of 2014: the valley which keeps going up and up, never ending and extremely hot. This year it was even hotter, as temperatures in Cortina were above 30 degrees and in deathvalley it felt 10 degrees hotter (and probably it was). My feet were hurting: blisters I suspected; every stone I stepped on did hurt me enourmously. Deathvalley consists of stones: yes, many irritating stones. One of the most annoying things of deathvalley is that - despite this - it is incredibly beautiful with steep stony cliffs and many waterfalls. This was very useful especially this year as any source of water was used to cool down and drink from.

I knew at that point I was not going to reach my goal since I had been in trouble for quite some time and my speed had decreased to a rather poor level.  I also knew that if I made it out of the deathvalley I would finish the race. Actually DNF was never really an option this time. But lets go back to the beginning.

I had arrived in Cortina one day before the race. I love this town so much and I got so familiar with it after racing Lavaredo in 2013 and 2014 and after spending our family summer holidays there last year. Also this time it felt like coming home, except for the exceptional heat. At 17:00 it was still 32 degrees! My preparation had been good: I managed to lose a lot of weight, had trained enough and felt rather confident about the race. I needed only to catch some sleep after some hectic working weeks. But that was also arranged nicely as I had a nice hotel 500 meter from the start. The only thing I did in the last 30 hours before the start was sleeping, eating, drinking, and meeting most of the other Danish runners for lunch on Friday, the race day. Most importantly, I was having somewhat ambitious plans this year. In 2014 I ran just below 24 hours, so this year I wanted to finish in the daylight and 22 hours became my target. This should be quite possible, I thought....

At 22 o'clock on Friday I moved to the start area with a pack that was rather light, as the mandatory gear was reduced for the heat: no gloves, no long trusers, no long sleeves shirt, no hat. Unlike the very hot UTMB in 2015, in which an extra liter of water was added, this time the mandatory equipment was only reduced. Gotto love the Italians :-).  I wanted to start not too far in the back to avoid queues, so I spent something like an hour standing in a very packed box close to the startline. Not pleasant, and definitely not the right strategy, but more on that later.

The countdown was sharp at 22:00 and off we were. Very crowded for the first 500 meters, but then I could run quite ok. No queue at the first hill, where I nicely found my rythm. It was rather hot, but I was feeling ok and quite relaxed. I made it to the first top and a flat part started followed by a steep part down. There suddenly after passing one runner, I was all alone, which was very weird, as just before there were runners all around me. I could see only a light 100 meters ahead of me and 100 meters behind me: I enjoyed those few minutes before being surrounded again by runners.

I passed the first depot at Ospitale in 2:17, after 18 km. This was just slighlty below my schedule. I was doing well and cruised nicely up the next mountain. It was getting a bit chilly so I put a buff around my neck but otherwise I was still running in t-shirt in the middle of the night. The next depot at 33 km was again in 4:33 well below my schedule. So everything was going very well. During the next climb I was starting to feel tired. But I did not worry: this is something which typically happen to me when it starts getting morning. And I got a big smile on my face when I saw Misurina lake. It was light now and quite beautiful. The first third of the race was now done in a very good time.

But then things changed on the next climb to Auronzo, which I feared for its insane steep. I started to get stomach problems and every time I moved a bit too fast I was getting in the red zone: my heartrate would explode and I was forced to take a break. I struggled my way up and was focussing on getting into the depot at Auronzo, where I would be able to eat something, as clearly I was missing something. That section of less than 6 km took me more than 2 hours and I was overtaken by around 300 runners. But finally I was in Auronzo and I was able to eat; I stuffed myself with soup, bread and a lot of fruit. Leaving the depot I had hoped this refuel would do the job, but my stomach problems continued. Something needed to be done, so when I saw a bench I decided to have a short nap to restart the machine. The nap only lasted 15 minutes because it was still a bit chilly, but I felt resurrected. I started to enjoy again. When do you get to run through such fantastic landscapes?  Maybe I had started too fast in the race? Probably I was missing salt (I relied on Tailwind which I added to my water). The thought occured that I am always very focussed on times and maybe I should do it differently next time: starting slow, enjoying and seeing what that brings me. That is one of the key lessons I will bring back from Lavaredo this year.

I was passing the highest point of the race and then the downhill. Here suddenly some fast runners from the Ultradolomites course, one of the other races which had started at 6 o'clock in the morning, started to overtake me. But runners were spread so much that it did not really bother me. The thing which did bother me was that my feet and knees were starting to hurt. A lot. That put a bit of a limit to my speed even though it was downhill, which is normally one of my strengths. By now I was slower than in 2014 and when reaching the bottom of the valley I was a bit in trouble again. Well, I 'just' had to make it to the dropbag depot, over a small mountain, then through my second meeting of deathvalley and I would almost be home...

In the depot in a fresh t-shirt, I put sunscreen on, tried to eat well, but had problems eating most things they had. Likely there were these breads with tomatoes and olive oil covered in salt. They tasted not too well (very salty), but somehow my body liked those. And in these conditions i trust my body to know best: so I ate many. As we had just gone through a river, my feet were refreshed and I did not change my shoes, which would appear to be a clear mistake. A huge mistake.

The next target was to make it to deathvalley which was reached nicely through familiar terrain as we passed by the waterfalls in Val des Funes, where I had spend some days with my family the year before. Deathvalley lived up to its name and became quite a struggle from the beginning. Blisters, heat and a path just getting steeper and steeper. I was very happy to make it out of it eventually. I knew the rest of the way would be painfull and I was just walking, but I also knew I would finish the race. The next 12 km were going up and down with some very steep climbs, but I made it through and then it was just 10 km to Cortina. A large part of those 10 km were going down very very steeply. After more than 110 km on the legs simply I couldn't run here, so I just walked. But I was amazed by some of the other runners going down full speed even though it was completely dark already (we were running with headlamps again). What are these guys and girls made off?

But so happy to arrive in Cortina, I started to run in the walking street. Stil very large crowds were cheering the runners  banging on the boards when runners came in, even though it was past midnight. It felt like I won the race :-) Simply fantastic!

My time was 25:38, so more 3 h slower than my target, but still it felt really good. I finished even though I had a lot of blisters (4 on each foot to be exact - the biggest ones the size of eggs, "thanks" to the shoes) and I was and am damn proud of that. And I know I can do better: next race I will start in different shoes, start in the back and make my way through the field.

And for sure I will be back in Cortina as this race is sooo cool and beautiful. It is sometimes called the small sister of UTMB. Yes, UTMB is the best organised race I have participated in, but this small sister certainly is prettier and more charming!