Imagine someone persuading you to run a 80km race off road with over 3km ascent.

Imagine running that race with the longest training run being 8km long.

That was my first ultra. See here.

Just over a year later and I’ve ran the CCC. 101km with 6.1km ascent.

We drove out a week before the race arriving 3am Sunday, and on the bikes by 10am. A good way to stretch the legs after a long drive.

On the Monday we had a free morning before starting set up for the expo in Chamonix. The expo runs along side the ultra trail races and is a way for the competitors, or general public, to see some of the best running brands out there. We decided to take a quick trip up the VK to Brevent.

The expo opened midday Tuesday. It rained hard but that didn’t put people off coming to see us. The rain didn’t stop and the town started to flood. The l’arve river was incredible. The noise of moving boulders under the water was quite strange. It was like lots of mini earthquakes. The spray of the water was also impressive!

Wednesday and Thursday were warm and sunny with an even bigger turn out.

By the end of Thursday, my feet were tired after standing for three days solid and there was nothing I could do with only a day till the start of the race.

The CCC starts from Cautmayer and passes through Champex and finally finishes in Chamonix.

The start was at 9am and after a short bus journey with Marin, I was ready to go.

Below is how my race went.

5km // legs heavy. Feeling hot. Big queue.

10km // can’t descend. Feel sick. Slow down. A little drizzle with sun.

20km // trying to keep it steady. Overheating. Drinking lots. More drizzle with sun.

30km // had some coke. Tried some orange. Felt sick. Couldn’t eat. Legs tired.

40km // got really shaky. Lack of food and sugar. Had to sit down for a few minutes. Ran out of water and drank from a dodgy tasting stream. Felt more sick.

50km // climb to checkpoint and really struggled. Lots of stops. Ran out of water. Seriously warm/overheated.

55km // met Marin. Changed to vest/singlet, calf guards, Footbeds in shoes, arm warmers. Tried to eat. Couldn’t. Had a 30min break.

60km // hallucinated. Blacking out. Dizzy. Not good. Met someone at the top of climb puking. Helped him then ran down. Legs felt ok. I could run pretty fast and it didn’t hurt! Not like me.

70km // got dark so put on head torch. Had some soup. Changed to LS merino top and waterproof. 3/4 tights with calf guards. Started raining.

80km // feeling better. Light battery died. Onto 2nd battery. More soup. More coke.

90km // end of last climb. Looking forward to the descent. Wanted to try for KOM/CR (phone out of charge). Drank some coke and went for it.

101km // legs felt fine on the last descent to the finish and finished fast. Pushed it. Passed over 30 people on the last descent.

101km
6100m ascent
17hrs 40,
175th (105th in category)

It wasn’t the time I wanted. But after the race I’d had, I was happy to finish. Thank god I wasn’t doing the UTMB!

It took two days to recover.

We then started #eurotrip

More to come …