From Petra Bijsterveld…
On Friday I took part in the SwissPeaks 100. This is a 100 km race with 6230m of ascent and a quad bursting 7093m of descent, the discrepancy is due to the event being a point to point race from Finhaut, high up in the mountains of the Vallée du Trient, to Le Bouveret on the shores of Lake Geneva. Almost identical with regards to distance and elevation to the CCC (by UTMB) which I ran last September without too many difficulties, so surely this wouldn’t be much harder? And hopefully quieter with considerably fewer runners. Well, it was definitely quieter, which I really appreciated, but it was a lot harder as the terrain proved much more technical in many places than on the CCC. I had sort of been told this by a couple of people, but only half believed it or shrugged it off. Now I know! Interestingly I just read a post by Kim Collison, who won the SwissPeaks 360 this week, and he says exactly the same thing. Though he would have had more than adequate skills to deal with it. I don’t know what was worse: various rocky descents where you needed three points of contact at all times (or at least I did, and sometimes had to add my backside in as a fourth) and where often fixed chains or ropes were supplied, or what I came to call ‘narrow woodland path hell’ in my head, endless stretches of small paths over rocks and tree roots (much narrower paths than in the Chamonix valley) and after the torrential rain of the previous day these were often now muddy and slippery to boot. With a big drop off to the side more often than not. Nothing a true trail runner cannot cope with, but I found it very challenging, particularly as time went on and the legs were no longer really functioning.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather, on the Thursday there had been torrential and unceasing rain, and now (Sunday) it is wet and miserable again. But Friday and Saturday were sunny, warm but not unbearably so, and we had a clear and starry night. Not a drop of rain. One result of the previous rain was that the race route was diverted to avoid a particular col where I believe there had been a landslide. This added about 15 km (you could call it value for money). Kudos to the organisers for reflagging this entirely new section, I presume overnight, and reorganizing a check point elsewhere. It did cause some confusion, a few runners seemed aware of the diversion but I must have missed this bit of info somehow. In these well marked continental races the flags always take priority over your gpx so we just followed the flags. It did mean my projected timings were out, added to which I was moving more slowly than I had hoped, so my support was waiting much longer for me than expected. I had based my timings roughly on the CCC, well that proved to be a sizeable mistake for sure! And what a brilliant support I had: Andrew Merrick, recovered from having run the CCC last Friday, together with my Châtel based friend Nick Taylor made a fantastic team, despite never having met before, and looked after me so well. From Nick taking me down the mountain from Châtel at 5 am to catch the train(s) to the start at Finhaut, to both meeting me at the (over) halfway point at Morgins at 02:30 am, to Andrew meeting me at the remote checkpoint at Châlet de Blancsex (which required leaving the van at the road head and a long walk uphill) where I arrived around 9 am, to both being at the finish and looking after me. Whilst Nick supplied me with beer I asked Andrew if he could find out where I had come in my ‘Master 3 Femmes’ category (women over 60), as I knew there were 3 entrants in it, and the tracker was completely unclear as to the outcome. I had also read that prizes could only be claimed at the event and would not be posted out, so it seemed wise to at least check. Andrew did a thorough job and eventually tracked down the RD who came down very apologetically with my prize: a litre (!) bottle of beer, a t-shirt, and amazingly, a pair of Raidlight carbon running poles. These retail at €120, so well worth having, on top of the joy of being the category winner (as well as the oldest woman in the race!). The other two women in the category had sadly, for them, DNF’d, though both of them had been ahead of me. Well, slow and steady wins the race on this occasion. I should add that in overall terms I was right at the back, 255th out of 260 finishers and the last woman to finish. There were however 128 DNFs (32%). It had taken me 33 hours and 30 minutes, the winner Ian Dargaud did it in 15:18. The female winner was Pirjo Saukku, a member of the Finnish Salomon team, who ran an amazing 16 hours and came 4th overall, more than 3 hours ahead of the next woman. I was surprised to see this as I recognized her as the woman who I had set next to on the train, and also on a bench later as we were waiting for the race start. We had a halting conversation via Google Translate about the drop bag logistics, and she was so quiet and totally unassuming. I had no idea she was quite a star runner. Talk about stars, I saw Courtney Dauwalter who was running the 70k race (won, and came second overall) as she flew in and out of the last checkpoint. There were huge cheers from everyone as she grabbed some water and sped on to the finish.
I will write a blog post about this race in due course as there is just so much I would like to say and describe. It is a truly beautiful course and the landscape is stunning especially in the sunshine we were lucky to have. Amongst the highlights I would list: I found the area around the Lac de Salanfe the most beautiful and the climb away from it over de Col de Susanfe (see photo), the highest point on the course at 2494m, was awe-inspiring (as well as very tough!) The mountains here are bare and stark, there are no trees, even though it is relatively not that high. I was reminded of the Dolomites though I have never been there. I had various fleeting but nice chats with runners I kept meeting, great to meet people from so many countries and swap languages about. The volunteers at the checkpoints were all incredibly helpful and friendly, there was lots of food and drink on offer. Top experience food-wise were Nutella pancakes at about 5 am or so. I loved the night running, as I invariably do. The peace and quiet, the stars high above me, animals asleep or dozing. Suddenly spotting the first glimpse of orange light appearing above the mountains and a new day breaking, that always feels so special when you have been running all night. Then all the cow bells start up again gradually as everything comes to life again. The top highlight has to be getting to the finish: reaching the shore of Lake Geneva, boats bobbing about (there is a marina), children jumping into the water to swim, even before you enter the race event village you run past some lake side cafes where people sit outside enjoying the sunshine, everybody cheering me on even though I am running like snail and my form has totally gone, entering the event village, more cheers, and finally seeing the finishing arch and Nick and Andrew there. It felt so good!
Amongst the lows were the technical parts when they felt beyond my skill set. The marathon taking place at the same time as the late stages of the 100k (and other long races) so towards the end of my race I spent all my time looking behind me to let fast runners on fresh legs go past, this became very tedious to say the least. Also, thinking I had reached the Blancsex checkpoint early in the morning (where I would meet Andrew) after a fairly endless slog already, and being told this was a private house and the checkpoint was ‘in the next valley, behind that mountain just there’. I suffered a temporary sense of humour failure at that point. Another runner taking my poles accidentally (despite being labelled with my name and Dutch flag stickers!) at the Barme checkpoint, not a good moment either. In truth I briefly despaired about the rest of my race, but the volunteers found one spare pole to give which was at least something. Thankfully the first runner I came across on my next ascent had them, he was sitting next to the track having a rest, so I wrestled them off him! No, he had his own in his quiver but didn’t realize it, and had picked up mine in addition by mistake. I had met him earlier and knew he wasn’t feeling well, after the race I was delighted to see he finished too, 35 hours and the last runner to come in.
Would I do this race again? No, too hard for me, even though I managed to get it done. Am I glad I did it, Yes, delighted. Would I recommend SwissPeaks to other runners? Definitely! They offer distances from a half-marathon all the way to 660 (yes really) km.