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 .