Making the most of a week-long stay at my parent’s home in
the Black Forest, I joined my brother in a short trip to run the Belfortrail,
taking place in early November in the Alsatian’ Vosges near Belfort, just a 2h drive away.
Belfortrail starts in the small town of Giromagny and makes a loop over the
Ballon D’Alsace and, infamously, up a 400m-of-climbing-in-1k ski slope called
Piste Schlumpf (translates to smurf).
Just 7 days after finishing the CCC in Chamonix, I was back
at the starting line of a 100k ultra-race: The Mozart 100 in Salzburg, a 108km/4700m climb course in the scenic Wolfgangsee area. As I
hadn’t expected to actually make it into the CCC and only got in through the 3rd
additional draw, my 2021 race planning had included the Mozart 100 as season
highlight. After the CCC I was a bit skeptical of recovering quickly enough to
have anything remotely resembling an enjoyable experience in Salzburg, but I ended up quite
able to walk again after a few days, and the bragging rights for finishing two
100k ultras in 7 days are nothing to be scoffed at. I had run a shorter version
of the same course in 2019 (Race report here) , so for more than half of the total distance I was
on familiar terrain which I already found to help tremendously in terms of planning and
motivation at the CCC. My brother also had signed up for this race, his first 100k after
about 8 years.
