19 Sept 2021

UTMB CCC, Courmayeur (Italy) - Champex (Switzerland) - Chamonix (France) - (99km, 6200m D+)

And then, suddenly, it was the morning of the 27th of August and the race I had been looking forward to virtually ever since I started running anything longer than a half marathon was about to start. I had picked up a slot for the CCC a couple of months earlier in a first-come-first-served reassignment round, after getting unlucky in the lottery and online contests several times over the course of 2 years. Technically, the 100km Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix race which is part of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc race series came a couple of years ahead of schedule for me, but after two races just a bit short of 80km and 5000m climbing I felt fairly confident that the addition of a half-marathon and a Zugspitz ascent would not completely derail any race, mental or fueling strategy I had cooked up so far. Furthermore, except for the initial climb up the Tête de la Tronche, I already knew all of the course from a 4 day Trail du Mont Blanc speed-hike in 2020, and particularly the first 20km from a week of pre-race acclimatization hiking around Courmayeur.

The start was scheduled for 9am, with the corral opening up at 8.30am. I was quite surprised to find myself in the first wave among the international elite such as Stian Angermund, and arriving fairly early I could even have placed myself in the first row for some media coverage, but took a more modest approach fitting my bib number in the high three hundreds and sat down somewhere in the middle of the corral. My “support crew” (brother + girlfriend) which I was to meet again only in Chamonix showed up shortly before the start, and after the national anthems of Switzerland, Italy and France (all soon to be crossed) we were off for the most euphoric start of my short racing career (https://youtu.be/q0t6iB7lls4?t=586). We were funneled through thickly crowded streets and Courmayeur’s town center before starting a steep 1400m climb to our first peak, the Tête de la Tronche at 2584m above sea level.

Two days before, the cold weather gear had been “activated”, which meant that I was carrying plenty of surplus clothing in the form of e.g. long trousers, a secondary jacket and long underwear, without expecting to having to use anything but a fleece. While the pack felt quite heavy and cumbersome when standing around before the start, it felt fairly comfortable for most of the race, even when I added half a liter of water later for what I expected to be a dry section over the Col Grand Ferret. I had also been fully converted to a pole runner not just on the ascents after carrying poles for several races without actually using them before the KAT100 marathon in Fieberbrunn, and never stashed them for the entirety of the race.


After the conga line during the first ascent the field dispersed a bit more, and the most enjoyable part of the course between the Refuge Bertone and Arnouvaz at km 26 went by in a breeze. As I knew where to get water and was carrying enough gels and bars to last me the entire race I skipped the aid stations both at Bertone and Arnouvaz and went straight for the second big climb up the Grand Col Ferret. I had set myself a “good” finish time of 16h, an “OK” time of 18h, and an “apparently everything that could have did go wrong” time of 20h, and as far as I could tell after less than a third of the race I was on track for a good finish, with the only mishap being that I thought I had lost my mandatory face mask at Arnouvaz, making me wonder whether I would be admitted to the next aid stations (turns out, a buff was deemed sufficient). As my support crew had threatened to stay up and wait at the finish line until I arrived I had every incentive to aim for a 1am arrival in Chamonix, but plenty of distance still needed to be covered.


While the ascent to the Grand Col Ferret did not feel too bad and I gained a couple of ranks, I hit the first minor mental speed bump during the long descent down to La Fouly. I was running fairly conservatively on the downhills so as to not shred my legs too early, which meant that some runners were passing me. I also felt a bit low on energy and the peanut butter bars weren’t going down very smoothly anymore, which was a bit worrying as they were an integral part of staying on top of my calorie intake. I made it to La Fouly (km 40, 2700m of climb) after 6h and stopped only briefly to refill my water bottles, but took a longer break a few hundred meters further down the trail to spike the water with Isostar tablets as I had decided to also not rely on isotonic drink from aid stations which is normally diluted beyond the point of detectability. Here, my face mask made an unexpected reappearance out of nowhere, which was appreciated but ultimately unnecessary to gain access to aid stations.


The next part of the race was mostly rolling or downhill until a final ascent up to Champex Lac. I remembered this section from the 2020 speed hike as of the “will it ever end?” style, and indeed managed to misjudge how far I still had to go a couple of times, but kept it together fairly well. I briefly chatted with a fellow runner from the area who was running the CCC for the third time and yet asked me how far we still had to go to Champex, indicating that this stretch of the race was a challenge not just for me.


After a comparatively easy climb I reached Champex just short of the 8h mark, having covered 54km and 3300m of climbing so far. This meant that for a 1am finish I just had to keep up the pace, which was not entirely trivial as it would be dark in a couple of hours, and the downhills from the next 3 peaks were more technical than anything we had done so far. Also, the Tete aux vents, my nemesis from the 2020 thru-hike, was still looming just before Chamonix. From the Champex aid station, I took only water and a couple of slices of bread, but sat down at the lake shore to regroup. This was a bit of an unexpected sight, apparently, as spectators didn’t quite know what to make of a runner who had just left the aid station and seemingly took another sit-down break just 300m down the road. While the La Fouly-Champex section was a bit of a struggle, having reached the half-way point in good time I was now feeling very good about my prospects – stomach in order, feet and legs not hurting more than could be expected, no back pains despite the heavy pack, arguably due to intensive pole usage. The left elbow apparently was a bit undertrained and had started hurting, but that was a negligible setback.

 After Champex, I was jojo-ing with a group of runners with whom I would stay in close proximity until Vallorcine – at this point of a 100km race, you apparently do not meet anybody new anymore. I was particularly impressed by female runners who managed the climbs at the same or even a better speed than myself without poles. If somebody passes me in the later stages of a race, it’s typically women who just keep the same pace for the entire duration.


I finished the first of the three last peaks (La Giete) and the descent to Trient before night fell, but at Trient I missed the aid station which was not directly visible from the course itself but required a short detour which meant a short descent and a return after asking a spectator whether there wasn’t an aid station supposed to be in this place. I did not even enter the tent this time as a water fountain was in front of the aid station, and set out fairly quickly again for the climb up to Les Tseppes. 

Night fell just when we reached the end of the climb and started the long descent to Vallorcine. I found that while I wasn’t the worst descender in darkness on fairly technical terrain, there were gung-ho runners whom I had passed on the way up who still went full throttle downhill. At this point, I would have happily exchanged the downhills with more climbing as up seemed to be less risky in darkness, and I was also doing the chasing and overtaking rather than being chased and overtaken on climbs. I entered Vallorcine at km 81 / 5200m of climb after roughly 12.5h, which meant that I still had more than 3h for 1000m of climb and 19km. I spent about 15mins in the aid station to fuel up, eat some more bread, down more gels (I was starting to feel a bit jittery from what must have amounted to 10+ espressos in the form of gels over the course of the day), and then set out into the night for the final ascent first to the Col des Montets, and then up to the Tête aux vents. I was feeling fairly strong at this point and was starting to make some progress in the leaderboard, having improved 28 ranks between Trient and Les Tseppes and another 12 between Vallorcine and the Tête aux vents. 

 


During the final ascent, one could see the “band of light” from runner’s headlamps, although there weren’t that many runners around me anymore as I had moved up to rank 183 by the time we reached the top. A few runners sat by the side of the trail but seemed to be questioning their life choices rather than being in critical medical condition, so no intervention seemed needed. Up on the plateau, the trail turned into a nightmare of rock slabs and debris which even in broad daylight is fairly un-runnable. We were lucky that it had not rained all day, as having to master this section in wet in addition to dark conditions would have been an even more dispiriting ordeal than it already was. I caught up to a Spaniard who was cursing constantly and was having as much of a good time as I had. 4km was a fast speed in these conditions, so the 3km between the Tête aux Vents and La Flagere, the final aid station, took an according amount of time. I also lost 3 ranks to runners who were feeling more lucky on the descents, or just wanted to get it over with, one way or the other. 

 

At La Flagere, a ski lift station for the winter season, I realized that a <16h time was now just out of reach as the final descent into Chamonix was again one of the most technical sections of the entire race, and I did not want to take any risks that close to the finish. I still managed to net 1 rank on the downhill despite being passed by a group of 3 gunning for a sub 16h finish. While some fellow runners were only slow or careful, one was slowly hiking even on a broad forest track just outside of Chamonix, and did not seem to be very encouraged by my “only 3km left!” comment.

 

Just after the 16h mark, I reached Chamonix and entered the final stretch winding through still quite populated streets to the finish line at the town square. My brother joined me on the last few meters for some shaky hand-held smartphone footage of my triumphal finish which, while still looking like a I had just seen an army of ghosts, I did not sprint as usually as no other runner was in sight. I finished in 16h and 5 minutes in 185th place, "beating my bib" by about 200 places. 


Walking wasn't fun for the next couple of days, but I hadn't completely destroyed myself in the process. However, due to 2020 reschedules, the next 100km race was supposed to take place just one week later, leaving me wondering whether forfeiting my entry fee was enough of a motivation to bring me back to the starting line in Salzburg for the Mozart100 just one week later. While I would not exactly call the CCC "the experience of a lifetime" (probably one needs to do the "real" UTMB for that), the race and atmosphere were still great, and it brought me close to many elite runners I usually only see on Youtube by staying at the same hotel as Jim Walmsley, getting coffee from the same shop as Stian Angermund, and saying "hi" to Seth Demoor.


Official highlights video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfTT6N1qU1Q


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