This year's supposed running season highlight was the TDS, UTMB's less popular and more rugged redheaded step-brother. Not expecting to actually get a bib through the lottery, my brother and I had signed up just for shits and giggles (cannot let those precious running stones go to waste). But, probably due to a runner having died at the TDS last year, the number of entrants was so small that everybody who applied got in, so there was nothing else for us to do than to buckle up and face a UTMB-like challenge a couple of years ahead of schedule. The TDS starts in Courmayeur and then runs clockwise around the Mont Blanc massif back to Chamonix, with some overlap with the UTMB course in the beginning and the end. With race leaders finishing in about 18h, I thought that I was looking at roughly 27h on the course, which would mean finishing at 3am during the second night.
