I probably should have known in 2019 when I started ultra trail running that it would come to this. Still, despite over-commercialization, huge crowds that I'm typically not a big fan of and Dacia as main sponsor, UTMB's starting line had something magical. On September 1st, I joined almost 3000 participants who were setting out to run, hike and crawl anywhere between 19.37h and 46.30h around the Mont Blanc massif.
My brother P., my girlfriend and I had arrived in the area a couple of days earlier to get acclimatized in the Bauhaus skiing resort of Flaine that was closing down for the off-season. And they were serious about closing down, with no open supermarket, bakery or restaurant remaining on the last day. The weather was fairly cold and rainy, which created snowy conditions for the PTL and TDS that took place a couple of days before the UTMB.
The day before the start, we moved to a small flat just 100m from the finish line in Chamonix, which also turned out to be right across a night club that closed at about 5am. Fortunately, I did not have to sleep there most nights thanks to being out on the trail, unfortunately, my brother and girlfriend did. Bib collection went without hickups, but I misunderstood a guy taking a survey about how often one was planning to change shoes during the race, and said 5 times - don't trust any statistics coming out of 2023's UTMB.
