The North Face Ultra Trail
Touring Mont Blanc on Foot
Debbie Smith – Team Accelerate / 21.11.2006
So a year later saw us battling with 2500 others to cross the start line. Not the place to start worrying about how much or little training we had done. How do you train for 158km with a wee bit of up and down? Everyone had their advice and theories. In the end I think neither of us did that much specific training – just did what we enjoy most and ran as much as possible. Although I do long adventure races I had never run continuously for more than 48 miles before. Karen’s longest race was 25 miles.
As we ran down the main street of Chamonix the trick was to avoid being stabbed by walking poles. The streets were lined with people – the atmosphere was excellent and carried you along. We started at 7.00pm at night so for the first half all the villages were out partying as the runners passed through. They had huge cow bells and ‘high- fived’ everyone as they passed. It was amazing and made you feel part of something special.
So we ran on into the night with head torches out. It was a lovely starry night with the mountains glowing red as the sun set. As I descended into Italy the sun was rising behind the mountains, glowing yellow this time. The sunrise re-energised you and kept the sprits up.
Surprisingly my legs were feeling fine and my feet were thankfully blister free. However my stomach was not so happy. From about 8 hours in I was struggling to keep any food down and was loosing energy rapidly. At points I just felt like giving up and if I was at a checkpoint at the time would have quite happily crawled into the retirement bus back to Chamonix.
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