I wrote this a few days after returning from Transalpine 2013. I meant to write a more details account of the race but didn't get round to it and now I can't remember much detail! So here's the "short" version!
This time last week Andy and I were in the bowels of hell, struggling round out penultimate day of the Transalpine Run. But as with everything, even though you think it will never end, it does and here I am a week on sitting at work writing about it.
I will do a more detailed blog with pictures soon which I will post the link up for when its done, but for those of you that don’t have a spare couple of days to read this then here are the stats and a few thoughts about the experience.
For those that don’t know, the Goretex Transalpine Run is an 8 day event that sees you running from Germany to Italy through, no, sorry…..over the Alps. Each stage is a different length with a total distance of 260km and a whopping 15,468m of elevation over the 8 days. This is broken down as follows;
Day 1: 36.4km. 2083m up - 1469m down
Day 2: 24.7km. 1883m up - 2040m down
Day 3: 38.4km. 2975m up - 2431m down
Day 4: 37.1km. 2000m up - 2698m down
Day 5: 6.3km. 971m up – cable car down!
Day 6: 37.8km. 1627 up – 1369m down
Day 7: 42.6km. 2381m up – 1937 down
Day 8: 39.8km. 1897m up – 3106m down
Day 1 started well enough with our plan being to go über conservative from the off. Its all too easy to get carried away with the energy and excitement but we stuck to our plan and finished in 5.57 and 38th /105 mixed teams.
Day 2 was the “easy” day with only 15 miles to run but the fact that it took 5.14 to finish shows just how “easy” it wasn’t. We were not that speedy on the climbs but my descending training had paid off and we were picking off teams on the descents which we were both hugely enjoying. There really is nothing better than a good long descent to the finish passing people and Entschuldigung-ing as we go. Finished 33rd / 103 today
Day 3 was billed to be tough and it was. It had the most amount of climbing with 2 whoppers to negotiate. We had a pretty bad day here with a major bonk for me on climb two (which was, frankly, ridiculous) and ambled in in 8.07 and 52nd place of the now 92 remaining mixed teams.
Day 4 just needed to be got through as we were then due a “rest day” on day 5. It looked Ok on paper and I cant think of any major incidents on day 4 so I assume that we fared better than we had the day before. A shorter day out with a run time of 6.26 and a finishers position of 45th out of 91 teams.
*its worth mentioning that each daily placing counts towards tour overall placing for the duration of the event. Needless to say we slipped down a few places after day three but were slowly clawing our way back!
Day 5. The day I’d been looking forward to the most. The rest day! Well, almost. All we had to do was hike/run 6.3km up a mountain as fast as we could. The set you off in a handicapped order so the slowest first with the fastest bringing up the rear. You can run as a team or go solo but they combine your times for the overall team time so I wanted to not be that far from Andy. I had half wanted to take it easy and use it as recovery but as soon as I saw the bottoms of a mixed team coming into view, the competitor in me kick in and I chased them down. We finished with a combined time of 2.03 (1.01 for Andy and 1.02 for me – I nearly caught him but male pride spurred him up the final km when he turned and saw me!) we finished 22nd today so a good day for team Tri London and we were stomping back up the overall scoreboard!
Day 6. After the easy day and the resting of the downhill muscles thanks to the cable car we took down the mountain, and the afternoon we spent in the local spa pools with massage jets a Jacuzzi’s galore, I felt good going into day 6. The end was now in sight and a big psychological hurdle had been broken through with only 3 stages remaining. It looked a relatively simple day with the first major climb at the beginning and then a couple of “humps” before descending into the next town. Sadly, my descending legs decided to leave me here and it was an uncomfortable downhill day for me with a worrying quad pain. We let 2 teams pass us in the final 1km and decided that was enough and made it in ahead of the next mixed team by 7 seconds! 38th team of 82 for this stage. The legs went into the fast flowing river for a cooling off ready for the following day which was the longest stage so far.
Day 7. A full marathon that turned out to be 45km. this was by far my worst day, despite it being so close to the end. The first 17km were downhill on road and whilst that might sound nice, it really isn’t. Then after some lumps and bumps that actually turned out to be far steeper than the profile suggested, we hit the major climb of the day. This was 9km of up, that went on and on and on with no respite that took forever. This is also where Andy’s Achilles started playing up so an unpleasant time for us both. The downhill was awful for me despite the quad guards and hiking poles and Andy had to run on ahead to enable him to run pain free (or at least with less pain). A dismal 8.02 hour day which had us limping in in 51st place
Day 8 – the final day! Another tough day of 40km (41km, actually but who’s counting?) but thankfully they’d put the climb at the beginning of the day. after this it was pretty much downhill to the finish with a couple of “rises” along the way. The biggest amount of descent of any stage so far in TAR history, 3,106m. Miraculously, my descending legs came back and we flew down the first descent. The rest it a mixture of ups and down and a rather painful fall but we made it to the end intact and still speaking in 7.17 and 43rd for the day which put is 40th team overall.
Finishing together and un-injured is a rarity for a team in TAR and the fact that our category alone lost 27 teams over the 8 days shows this. And not all of those that finished were un-injured either – there was more strapping and tape here than I’ve ever seen before. I think we were lucky but also a big part of it was down to how sensible we were with training before the race and maintenance/recovery during. High doses of protein (we took a tub of powder), BCAA, fish oil, magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, ice baths, leg draining, compression and as much sleep as we could fit it. I’m not ashamed to admit that 8.30pm was a reasonably late night for us! But it just goes to show if you look after yourself you can have a much better time of it.
As always, a stunning event with views that pictures don’t do justice to and the best organisation I’ve ever come across. A ridiculously tough challenge but that comes hand in hand with the pleasure of running in mountain terrain. If you’ve never done it then I urge you to do at least 1 days running in the Alps somewhere - it really is stunning.
A couple of pictures attached, but it wasn’t all like that!
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