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.
