Thank you for your patience friends!
Transit, lack of internet and post-race fatigue has slowed my usual speed of sharing the joy of our incredible journey across the Alps with you immediately.
Never fear .. I will get there soon .. just hope you think it worth the wait!
We are thrilled and proud (and a little choked up really) to say that Team Hurt2Help has now finished what is truly one of the elite Alpine enduro-running events in the world and the hardest event we have ever done.
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| Teams Hurt2Help and Schnitzel .. yay!! |
Ending up 38th of 75 starters in the mixed category and 169th of 287 overall luckily (or not) we didn’t realise the quality of the field until we arrived!
Half way through the adventure though we knew ALL about it!
On Day 4 we came to the cold hard realisation that this race was really a beast of a thing.
It had been a long nasty stage with illness, snow and fear putting us in danger of not making the checkpoint cut-off time. All this followed by a distraught (me again!) trudge to the finish in the pouring rain led to a soul-searching realignment of targets.
The distances we could do in a heartbeat each day but the tight period between checkpoints are designed to test and really make this a pure alpine runners race.
Run and run and run.
Climb like a mountain goat.
Descend like a nimble pixie.
Strength and flow. Strength and flow. Strength and flow.
You miss a single cut-off and you are out of the race! You can still run but there will be no finishers t-shirt!!
Suddenly a strip of cloth reaches iconic value.
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| Our 5 minutes .. awesome. |
Stronger and faster as the week goes on was always our aim but now a further plan is hatched: race to V3 (final food and checkpoint) each day and then easy back to town conserving energy for the following day well within the 10 hours cut-off. That is the easy bit. Getting over a mountain in an hour is the challenge ..
Luckily you can learn to be a pixie!
Our running strength seems wonderfully limitless and each day my ability to “flow” and follow my boy down the mountain at pace grows.
How to express the joy of skipping over boulders? Transiting the very top of the world on powerful legs? Clouds below in distant valleys. Cow bells tinkling on hidden cows. I sit here now remembering that pleasure and need the mountains again. Need the mountains again ..
I hope my race review will give you a little taster of what we experienced in our 8 day week. Sadly I was too exhausted each day to keep my usual diary but I am trying now to recreate the emotional pendulum for you regardless.
Enjoy AND don’t forget we are doing all this to raise money for Facing Africa!
So if you haven’t yet sprinkled money on our blisters please dooooo.
Just click their green and white logo on the left here and spend a little money ..
Trust me .. we earned it for them the hard way.
Nice T-Shirts. Hope you didn't have to wait too long. It was a pleasure to meet you at the 2010 Transalpine Run; good luck with your next venture. We're planning on becoming full-time couch potatoes ;)
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