Trail du Grand Ballon, Le Markstein, France (48km, 2100m D+)

My greatest failure, and yet my greatest triumph... As a break from 120k+ races, I entered the Trail du Grand Ballon 48k race in the Vosges mountains in May, located just about a 1.5h drive from my parent’s place in the Black Forest. With a 7am start (6am for my brother who did the 70k distance), we arrived the night before in an area looking exactly like how I imagined the old GDR to look – dilapidated houses, closed shops, dead dogs in the streets (almost). A pizza of questionable quality from the only local restaurant set us well up for disaster the next day. The next morning, a short drive took us to the starting line on the Markstein, a hilltop about 5k from the eponymous Grand Ballon. One peculiarity of the race is that it starts at almost the highest point, and sends runners into a downhill for about the first 8k. The trail was described as very runnable, which, after my experiences in Gran Canaria, would be a very welcome change of terrain. Seeing my brother off at 6am, I strolled around a bit, visited the excellent mobile toilets (France is decades ahead of Germany when it comes to mobile toilets), and then took a place pretty close to the front of the field.

The weather forecast indicated some thunderstorms later in the day, and it was quite cold in the early hours, so I decided to run in my winter gear which at least gave me some heat training after a couple of minutes. Off we went, and indeed the first downhill could be run very easily, although I was running a bit more recklessly than I would normally have liked to avoid cramping someone faster’s style. Hitting the bottom of the first valley, there already seemed to be a runner out due to injury, a bleak reminder that even the most innocuous of descents can have near-fatal outcomes if one doesn’t thread carefully.

A scene straight out of your generic Zombie flick

 

We then started an often-runnable climb up the Grand Ballon. I managed to catch a couple of other runners uphill, and the first stragglers from the 70k race started to appear as the two courses shared some mileage. I just drew some water from the aid station at the top of the climb, being slightly disappointed that we actually did not run all the way to the top but took a turn about 100m below the summit. Then, over rolling terrain, the course led back to the starting line, completing the first of two separate loops.

After a short but very steep downhill on a skiing slope, we passed the beautiful Lake de Lauch where a volunteer announced that I was in 6^th place, which caught me a bit off guard as I hadn’t felt like I was moving particularly fast. With some enthusiasm, I tried to catch 2 runners on the next climb, but at this point running slopes with more than 10% didn’t seem feasible anymore, so I just stayed more or less in visual contact for the next 10k. To my surprise, even for such a short race, some runners had organized assistance at aid stations, so I lost valuable seconds refilling my water bottles, while the others were just handed full ones and continued right away. At the second to last aid station before the last long descent, I was again told that I was in 6^th place which I thought, with a bit more than 10k to go, would definitely put me out of the medal ranks. Still, I ran the last downhill fast, taking just a quick toilet break of a bit more than a minute, and overtaking one more runner, making me 5^th (or so I thought). The final 600m ascent was surprisingly hard, and I switched places with two other runners for a while, one of whom I had caught up to, and the other hand had caught up to me. Thinking the first 3 places long gone, I gave it some but not all, and let one of the other guys pull away on the last third. 

 

At the top, I briefly caught a glimpse of two runners about 100m in front of me, but despite a fairly brisk pace on the final 2k was not able to catch up with them. I reached the finish line after 4.45h and to my surprise was told that I came fourth in a field of 370 runners – about one minute behind third place, and less than two minutes behind second. Just missing out on the podium (and particularly on a couple of locals craft beers which were the prizes for the thirst three) made it a bit difficult to be happy with my best position ever, but at least I still received a fairly solid ITRA score of 715 and some confidence that on a local level with an easy course I was borderline competitive.

 

My "No craft beer for fourth place?" face

 

I would definitely recommend the Trail du Grand Ballon to anyone looking for a runnable ultra in a very nice region (the Alsatian landscape looks much better than the towns). Later arrivals like my brother were caught in a hailstorm so the weather can be tricky, but conditions for my race were just perfect.

Those did not outrun the hailstorm