Race Report: Marathon du Mont Blanc
Golden Trail World Series 2021
Photo from pre-race shakeout by Martina Valmassoi
The final days before Marathon Du Mont Blanc were a crazily cool time. I finally met some of the people from Salomon that had helped me organise this trip, as well as other incredible athletes. I went for a beautiful shakeout run near Aiguilettes de Possettes with Martina and got some EPIC pics on one of the most beautiful days in Chamonix. Then the night before the race I got to experience my first team meeting with Salomon where aid stations and drink hand offs etc are organised.
Race morning came. Ahhh race mornings. There is nothing quite like them. For me every single race morning looks pretty similar, just the time and location changes. Normally I don’t worry too much about my sleep the night before the race because it is always pretty bad and it is the sleep in the week leading up that counts. Unfortunately, as explained in my last post, my sleep in the week leading up to the race was about as bad as it could get. So waking up to my alarm at 3:30am on the morning of Marathon Du Mont Blanc after another restless night and only 90 minutes sleep, I was feeling pretty rusty to put it mildly.
But I have done too much preparation in the past and been through the routine too many times to let that phase me too much. Everything else was normal - with clothes, drinks, drop bags and everything else organised to within an inch of its life. So I got up, ate my breakfast of a gluten free baguette with peanut butter and banana, and did my pre-race mobility and activations.
Rocking up to the start line I was a mixture of excited, scared shitless, exhausted and so pumped to be there. I called my coach Tim Crosbie and partner Matt just before the start for final pep talks, had my moment of panic where I wanted to cry and laugh and scream at the same time, then gathered my thoughts and focussed all my intentions on what was to come.
1. Early on in the race (~12km), right before the major climb starts (Credit - Martina Valmassoi). 2/3. Around 25-30km on the long climb to the finish
Once the gun went, I settled into a comfortably hard rhythm for the relatively flat and fast terrain. I then don’t remember much for the first 12km of the race. I know I felt about how I usually do the first 10km of a long race - slightly sluggish from the carb load/taper combo. But overall it was an uneventful part of the race full of rolling forest trails where I tried to play it smart and keep myself in check.
I hit the first aid station in 1:08:32 (12km, 636 gain/207 loss) feeling good, but also apprehensive about the climb to come. Climbing is not my forte and I was a little daunted by the switchbacks and the pain I knew they would bring. This was the first point where it became obvious to me that my mental game was not what it usually is, because I was passed by multiple women on the 4km/800m+ climb and pretty much just let them go, never trying to stick to the back of them and fight just that little harder. I was telling myself I would make use of the downhill to catch them later, and that I needed to conserve energy on the climb because my legs aren’t used to it yet.
Getting to the top of Aiguillettes des Possettes I was excited to start chasing hard and making up for my lost time. I trusted in my downhill and my endurance, so this is where I mentally switched into race mode. The race gods (and my untaped, newbie ankles) had other ideas though, as only a couple of hundred metres past the summit in the technical rocky section, I rolled my ankle bad enough to make me curse, come to stop, and wonder if I had done serious damage.
After a few shaky steps I could feel that my ankle was structurally functional, it just hurt. I raced on because it felt like I wasn’t making it worse when running, but it made for an incredibly painful descent down to the second aid station at Vallorcine (22.2km, 1415 gain/1177 loss), and my hopes of chasing people were thrown out the window.
Starting the long climb to the finish, I was in damage control mode. My ankle seemed to go in and out of painful phases where one step would tweak it and make it burn for a while, then it would get slightly better until another off step. On the rocky, root ridden and steep terrain I was on, I had no hope of not tweaking it again and again.
On this climb is where I started to mentally cave. It is possibly the weakest I have ever felt during a race. Everything that had happened in the lead up to the race caught up to me, and now moving slower than I wanted to and in pain with almost every step, I was overwhelmed. I almost packed it in, but instead I did something I would never normally consider during a race. I remembered that I had my phone on me (mandatory gear), and I called Matt. I knew he would be at his place with a group of friends watching the live stream and probably panic at seeing my call, but I needed something to break the downward mental spiral I was in. All I said to him without any further explanation when he picked up was ‘I need you to make me laugh’. He did, with some stupid joke or comment about a platypus that I can’t for the life of me remember, but between that and hearing the chatter of friends in the background, I was taken away from the hole I had dug and was able to refocus and push on.
I turned the rest of the race into a game. As with any pain, the less you mentally focus on it the less it screams, so I focused on the person in front of me and would try to challenge myself to catch them in a certain number of minutes. There were no females around, I hadn’t been passed by or seen anyone in around 2 hours by this stage, but there were men near me that became my targets.
I missed my drink at the last aid station with 5km to go, but I wasn’t too worried about fuel by that point. The guy in front of me was the only thing I focussed on and eventually, that approach got me to within 1km of the finish line. I came into view of the finish off in the distance and the relief I felt in that moment was surreal. I raced the last couple of guys across the small patches of snow (very shakily) and to the finish line, feeling a huge sense of accomplishment paired with a weird sense of despair and happiness. I hadn’t looked at my watch since the first aid station by this point, and I was kinda annoyed with myself that I hadn’t because I reckon I could have just broken 5 hours at least if I had of focussed on chasing the time a bit more at the end, but that was a secondary thought to just the relief that it was over.
I came in 28th Female in 5:03:22, which actually did suprise me to still hold on to top 30 after the day I had out there.
The finish line experience for me was a rather lonely and anti-climactic one, as I was so far behind the pace that anyone I had met in the previous couple of days was already back down off the mountain (we ended at the top of a gondola, not near the start), so there was not a single familiar face in sight. I got a drink, sat down, cried, smiled, tired and failed to call my coach, then just sat alone and enjoyed the view for a bit. It was raining and freezing by then though so I soon caught the gondola back down to my little studio apartment, buying frozen peas along the way so I could ice my ankle when I got there. I spent the early afternoon in bed, icing my ankle and refuelling on chips, nuts and fruit, while talking to people back home; before saying goodbye to a few people and jumping in a car with Davide Magnini for the long drive to the Dolomites. It was mildly chaotic to be leaving within hours of finishing, but I was actually relieved to be getting away to a new location to start the next phase of my trip.
It was an unforgettable day that began full of excitement at the start line of MDMB and ended with a romantic dinner for one at a gorgeous little hotel called Albergo Alpino in Vermiglio, Italy. There I spent the night alone, mentally sorting through the lessons and happenings of the day, becoming more determined each minute to turn things around and not let this be how the rest of the trip went. Then finally, blissfully, I fell into a deeper sleep than I had in weeks.
Nearing the finish finally, navigating the snow at the higher altitude, and grinning out of pure relief to have made it.
THE RACE STATS
Strava file Here.
Distance: 38.08km
Elevation Gain: 2885m
Elevation Loss: 1877
Time: 5:03:22
THE GEAR/NUTRITION
Shoes: Salomon Sense 8 SG
Watch: Suunto 9 Peak
Fuel: Tailwind, made up with 77g powder/L, total 2.5 Litres = ~38g carbs per hour
Other: 2 x Revvies 100mg energy strips (12km and 30km)
Marathon Du Mont Blanc 2021 truly was an unforgettable experience. Photo 2/3 Credit Martina Valmassoi.
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