Running 100km around Mont Blanc: 25 hours of dust and doubts
And really good views. I guess it's not meant to be easy?
The sun had just set on Champex-Lac and I was pulling my head torch on over my cap as I left the aid station, a little over halfway through the CCC. I had nearly 35 miles in my legs already and another 28 left to run. I was crying when I entered that aid station and I was still crying when I left, a handful of sweaty cheese clutched in my palm.
I was 12 hours into my attempt to run 100km through the Italian, Swiss and French Alps. The race takes you on a rollercoaster ride covering 6,000 metres of vertical gain as you skirt around the Mont Blanc massif - and I was finding it hard. Which, I suppose, shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise? Objectively, running a mountain ultra is a ‘hard’ thing to do.
Yet, for largely illogical reasons, I can’t shake off this aspiration that one day it’s going to feel easy. One day, I’ll be able to breeze through more than 60 miles of mountain trails. One day, I’ll finish one of these things without barely …