Chamonix Day One
After a day of airplane, train and bus from Paris, I made it to Chamonix! I wanted to do a group run first thing this day and I had several choices. I choose the latest run I could find on facebook at 9 am, mostly because I was too tired in the morning to do the 8 am ones. This one was lead by Trail butter. I have had trail butter on one or two races before in Oregon back in 2017. Run the Alps also led the run and they host 4 day runs over the UTMB course (Tour du Mont Blanc), among others things I'm sure.
Getting in late last night and the tight time transfers between my methods of transport meant I really had nothing available for breakfast. I ate a spring energy peanut butter gel and walked to the coffee shop where the run was going to head out of. It was only 4 minutes from where I was staying. I had some trouble finding the place on google maps however, there was a series of shops that went inwards from the middle of the block. Google maps kept saying it was a separate block that showed I had to go through some private driveways to get to. Lucky the group didn't leave right away, it actually leave some 15ish minutes after the meetup time. I would find out in all the events I attended in Chamonix that starting on time was more of my NYC culture. The coffee shop had some healthy desserts of which I ate two pieces of. I talked a bit with one of the Run for Alps leader and took two Trail butter samples.
The run started, we jogged through the city and went up La Flora. I could see some of the booths, still closed at the moment. The point had some nice views. I talked to the guy from Trail Butter, Jeff who is from Oregon. Eleven out of the fifteen points I used to get into UTMB came from Oregon so we briefly talked about Oregon Ultra races. I talked with Jacob from Czech. He did UTMB last year and was just here this year to enjoy being in the Alps. Definitively a little jealous and reminds me maybe next year I'll be more adventure focused instead of just getting my adventures through races. I lost the group on the final uphill to La Flora. Group pic and then run down where I was behind the group again. I think I may have been the only one in the group doing UTMB so I didn't think twice of not being able to keep up with everyone's else easy pace. Back at the coffee shop I met a woman from SF whose boyfriend was doing of the races. She didn't know people ran beyond 26.2 before meeting him. I was pretty relieved to find most of the people speaking English in the group. In my commute to Chamonix from Paris, while everyone did speak a little English I wasn't always able to communicate effectively to figure out train and bus schedules. I ate the Trail Butter IPA flavor which I found unique and delicious.
Afterwards I got groceries. I must have butcher saying Bonjour cause the cash register immediately asked if I speak English or Spanish. Ate a real breakfast back at the apartment and took a quick nap. My next thing was to go to the expo and do some last minute mandatory gear shopping. The expo is pretty similar looking to the holiday villages we have in NYC. A lot more fancier than any expo I been to before in any race. Particularly I was looking for a waterproof pant shell and an emergency blanket (sort of those post race blankets you get). I got both easily enough. I walked around the expo for quite a bit.
Next was meeting up with Jerrry, another Queens based runner doing UTMB! We met at the finish line and got drinks. Talked for 1.5 hours. It was nice seeing how he got here, he did a 100 miler back in 2003 and then focused on marathons. I think in his late thrities, he noticed he was slowing down and went back to ultras. He did CCC, which is a sister race covering the last 100k of the UTMB race, last year. I learned useful things from talking with Jerry and we talked for 1.5 hours.
Then was the quest for dinner. I had to possible things for that night. One was a North Face event titled meet your heroes where North Face athletes talked and took selfies and such. The other, more interesting to me, was the Strava event about running stories from a vary of guest speakers. The strava event started at 7 pm and was out of tickets (free event but had to register via event brite) so I was going to the North Face event. The strava event mentioned that at 6:45 pm they would release some at the door tickets to people at standby so I thought of doing that but I decided to go to the North Face event at 6 pm since that was a sure thing. It was 5 pm so that didn't leave much time for dinner. I would have wanted to eat Indian since it would be pretty filling but went to a English pub place called Poco Loco. I got the vegan falafel bowl. The dish was pretty disappointing, it came with 4 small falafel pieces, some pieces of watermelon garnished with some delicious topping and a lot of cabbage. So pretty much nothing. Ate and went to the North Face event. I saw one of two athletics talking pics and talking as I headed to the basement where the event was held. They didn't check phone or anything for pre registered food. They had a spread of French looking snacks, mostly cheese and dried meat. I was able to eat some grapes and a mushroom tortilla wrap. They also had beer and wine of which I took a glass of beer. The event was in a tiny space in the basement of their stores. No chairs, people had to sit on the floor. It was packed, it felt really hot and by 6:30 pm they still didn't start so I left and decided to try for the strava event.
I got to the standby line for the strava event maybe around 6:35. I was the first on line! I talked to the second guy on line about qualifying for UTMB. About 6:40 pm they let us in. It was an amazing event. Heard Sally and Lucy talk, both whom I have heard before on podcast. Saw a barley's movie which probably scares me more of doing the race than anything. After the event I saw a bunch of people running to the finish line area. I headed over and saw a large crowd had gathered. First and second place of TDS came in a few minutes of each other. The crowd energy was amazing, maybe the best I ever seen in a race and this is coming from someone who taken part in two world majors races. TDS started 4 pm the day before and it was 10 pm now. The course changed this year, 20k was added to it, making it a 145k technical race. I wanted to hang around and cheer longer but decided that sleeping would help the most for my race in two days.
Chamonix Day Two
I would have wanted to do another shakeout run with a group but the events I found didn't list their routes and I didn't want to risk it. I decided to to do one of the strava routes that strava had created for people during the week. Most of the routes ranged in the 10k distance and difficulty was based on elevation gain. The strava hub was at Big horn which was a block from where I was staying. I decided to do their route to the waterfalls and just ended a bit earlier in the city center to do some more window shopping. Once I left the city however, I found it difficulty to navigate through the strava app route. In the city, the map shows city blocks but once in the trails, you are just following a line. I ended my run at 6.66 miles at the race booths of the expo which I hadn't checked out yet. I picked up a few brochures and entered the lottery for three lotteries for free race entries.
I got my last piece of mandatory gear which was a 100 cm times 6 cm wrap. I actually couldn't find one of that length, got a 90 cm x 6 cm wrap and hoped no one would notice. Went through bib pickup and mandatory gear check which went pretty smoothly. It was pretty much what you would expect. You got your bib, showed ID to get it. Then went through mandatory gear. They checked about six things in the list - headlamps with spare batteries, waterproof jacket, running pants, whistle, warm hat, survival blanket, and phone. I got Indian food which seems to have had the most vegetarian options for me. I attended a runner's film festival, also a strava event that was hosted by Jaybird. Event was great and really had me wanting to do a fast run. They had some speakers afterwards, talking about women in ultra running and urban running experience trailing running for the first time. I went to a Turkish place for a second dinner and got the vegetarian option. This was also a big disappointment as it was just a wrap filled with cabbage (and cheese but no cheese for me so just a cabbage). I stuck to Indian for my meals afterwards.
