Life is an ultramarathon

I eventually got my pictures of the UTMB. I'm not looking quite charming on all of them ... It would be interesting to establish a relationship between the face aspect and the number of kilometers run. I'd expect the experiment to be biaised because everyone tries to smile at the photographer, but well, these results don't show that much biais

Click to enlarge pictures.


Ascent to la Charme (~10km).

 
Descent to Courmayeur and in Courmayeur (~70km).

 
In the Val Ferret (~85km).

 
Just after Arnuva and in the ascent of the Grand Col Ferret (~95km).


Ascent to Champex (~115km).

 
Final "sprint" (163km).

Ultra prictures.

Updated 02/10/2007

The UTMB organisers announced they might organise a new race ironically called "La Petite Trotte à Léon" - Léon's short stroll ... Léon referring to Mr. Lovey, deputy president of "Les Trailers du Mont-Blanc" and initiator of this idea.

It would be a super-TMB of 220km with 17,000m of ascent to be done by teams of 3 in less than 4 days (25^th to 28^th August). The number of teams may be very limited (50) and would be restricted exclusively to former UTMB finishers. Teams couldn't split up. A map would be provided, but the route wouldn't be marked, and would include less than 5km on roads. Compulsory rest of 4 hours in a row every day in the refuges, where some food would be provided (and only there). Every team would carry a bivouac tent. No ranking at the end.

It seems really tempting to be honest ...

Ultra UTMB.

We've been talking about it for ever, we eventually made it. We trained for Tough Guy today !


This picture was taken on the way back. Clearly, the training wasn't tough enough for Dave ...

Ultra back on circuit training.

I've performed the first upgrades on my bike. I've changed the pedals for the Look Kéo Classic and I've added the Oval A710 extension bars.
The bike seems decently equipped to me now, I don't plan to change any more parts in a near future.
Following a fall due to the pedals, I also had to change the rear derailleur hanger.

Ultra minor bike changes.

... on the New Scientist website ! Follow the link at the middle of the article to see me running on a treadmill. You may not want to, though.

Ultra famous ... or not !

I had the feeling that the Nice Ironman was much harder than the UK one. That was confirmed by some posts on the Runner's World forum.
However, looking at the facts, it's not that obvious. Surprisingly, there's more ascent on the UK one, for both the bike and the marathon. I thought the nice backcountry would be more hilly. On the other hand, the temperature in Nice will be much higher, particularly on the run, well exposed to the sun. As for the swim, the waves in Nice maybe a bit of a problem, but that should be compensated by the higher water temperature...

		UK Ironman	France Ironman
General	Location	Sherborne Castle, Dorset	Nice, Alpes-Maritimes
	Date	August 2008 ?	22nd June 2008
	Cost	?	330+10+40 = 380€
Stage
Swim 3.8km	Laps	2	2 with a land exit in between
	Start	In water mass start	6 starts sections
	Time limit	2 hours 20 min	2 hours 15 min ?
	Environment	Lancelot Brown Lake (15.5°C)	Mediterranean Sea (24°C)
Bike 180km	Laps	3	1
	Ascent	2287m	1800m
	Time limit	10 hours 30 min	10 hours 45 min
	Water points	9 ?	8
	Environment	English countryside	Southern France backcountry - may be warm
Run 42.195km	Laps	2+2 ?	4
	Ascent	773m	Totally flat
	Time limit	17 hours	16 hours
	Water points	18 ?	24
	Environment	English countryside	Seafront (Promenade des Anglais) - may be hot

Overall, the website of the Nice Ironman is much better than the UK one. I know it may not mean anything about the actual race, but it gives a bad impression...

Ultra choice to make.

I think it's now time to decide what will be the main sporting events of my year 2008. I've got some fairly well defined plans but I also feel undecisive about others. I'll give a confidence index to all these ideas, and we'll see by the end of 2008 whether I was correct or not...

As previously argued I won't run the UTMB again in 2008 - confidence: 99%.

The main ideas so far are the following:

• the CCC (100km in 2008?) or the potentially new race starting from Champex - confidence: 5%.
• a marathon on 1^st January, starting at midnight. How cool would that be to start the year by a night marathon ? I see it quite friendly and not too fast. This idea has already been implemented, for example by the Neujahrmarathon. Champagne available at aid stations - confidence: 10%.
• a long ultra in Spring:
  • the Grand Union Canal Race - 233km from Birmingham to London - confidence: 10%.
  • OR the Pennine 100 miles, a trail involving night navigation - confidence: 20%.
  • OR the full Thames Path OFF (most likely solo and without assistance) - 295km from Sea to Source - confidence: 30%.
• the Dublin Marathon in October to close the season (I could nearly do it this Automn actually ...) - confidence: 40%.
• the Nice Ironman (June) OR the UK Ironman (August) - 3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42.195km run - confidence: 70%.
• I'm registered for Tough Guy (c) at the end of January (if they eventually send me my "passport" back) - confidence: 99%.

The long ultra and the Ironman being obviously the most important, I may decide not to do both. In this case I'd replace the unselected event by a (relatively short) 50 to 100km trail.

More generally, I'd like to enter more (small) races for the fun.

Ultra plans.

Well, everything is in the title... I've been increasingly asked to use GoogleEarth for my para-academic activities. Just to see how it looks like, I've imported some old GPS track into GoogleEarth. Note that the free version doesn't allow that directly, but a couple of lines of Python can convert very easily any route file into KML. The blue sections were missing and have been drawn by hand. Enjoy.


Click to download the file

Ultra track.

According to Michel Poletti, the trends for the next edition of the UTMB are the following:

• Not much changes on the UTMB.
• The CCC will most likely be 100km long for 5300m ascent, including a starting loop around Courmayeur in order to stretch the group of runners before the ascent to Bertone.
• There may be a third race starting from Champex (so that each country has got a start), but nothing decided yet.

Ultra trend.