April 1st
Welcome to the club, number 020270.
It would appear, looking back as I type these words, that this whole thing officially started on April Fool’s day. Hmm.
I don’t know why, I guess I’m just at that age when you start running.
What am I running for? To get longer legs and bigger lungs?
What am I running from?
April 5th
As I pull on my approach shoes again (I do not yet have the appropriate footwear), Aine says to me “If you go out running dressed like that, people will think you’re just late for a bus…”
April 14th
I’ve bought some running shoes, and what I think you would call a bumbag if it was for anything other than running. It doesn’t have space for a thermos, or a sandwich, or a warm coat. It is a ridiculous thing.
“People kept parping their tooters at me” I tell Aine when I get home.
“Ooh, pay no notice to them…” she coos soothingly.
“No no, in an encouraging way,” I reply. “You know, as though I was a runner.”
April 16th
After work, I change from my chef’s whites into a borrowed pair of Aine’s spandex pants and a thin thermal top. “You look like a ballerina,” Philippe sniggers, unashamedly. “Do you like running?” he asks as I fill the two 50cl bottles clinging to my hips with a mix of pineapple juice and water.
“Soon, I hope…” I reply.
Does the uniform make a difference? I think it does. In these clothes, when I’m passing people, I actually feel encouraged to keep running, and even to run a little faster, in case people mistake me a runner. In my old attire, baggy bouldering pants and whichever T-shirt from the floor I could get one more use out of before it goes in the laundry, it felt as though I should slow down or stop running, in case people mistook me for a runner.
Tonight, for the first time in my life, I run from my workplace to my home in one long stretch, with no walking breaks.
May 1st
I’ve just bought some nice tight running pants, they show off what little junk I’ve got wonderfully, and I got two pairs of running socks reduced to a tenner. They also had, new in the shop, a tiny tiny backpack that puts your bottles on your chest straps, but today I’ll be wearing my silly little runner’s bumbag that rests your bottles on each cheek. I’m about to pull on the trail running shoes I bought recently and have been scared of ever since because they rubbed my heels raw, but I reckon they’ll be okay today because I’m wrapping myself in duct tape. I just need to gather my thoughts (I left them around here somewhere), and then I guess I’ll go and jog until it gets dark, then switch the headtorch on and turn around.
Just got back. Instead of slowing to a wheezing stumble at the top of the first rise on my regular route, like I usually do, I kept on running, which came as something of a shock. I turned left instead of right and carried on uphill under a grey sky, then rain, then hail, then dazzling late-evening spring sun, for about 800m of altitude until I reached impassable snow – I know this because I tried to pass it, but I was not in the correct attire for balls-deep post-holing. On the way up, in the thick grey rain, I passed two other runners on their way down. They seemed genuinely pleased to see me, and, I think, I them. Anyway, I dug myself out of the snow, ate a cereal bar, then I turned around and ran all the way back down to a cold, frothy pint of restorative sports drink.
The next morning (this is a lie, it’s early afternoon), I’m struck by a strange desire to go running again. Something is changing in my brain.
June 6th
A miserable day – a thick blanket of grey cloud shields the valley from the sun, and there is a constant mist of drizzle. Perfect for going for a run.
Dan, Aine, dog and I have a go at the vertical kilometre under the Brevent bubble wires before heading across to Flegere and then down to Argentiere via the Chalet des Chéserys. By the time we get back into the valley, a cold rain has soaked through our flimsy running clothes and we bail on the idea of adding another 10km by running home to Chamonix.
June 8th
We are camping in the Cogne valley, Italy, for two nights. We cannot face another day’s cragging under an oppressively hot sun, so we walk up into the trees. Some of us are in approach shoes, carrying rucksacks filled with water, some of us are in running shoes and have pockets stuffed with cereal bars. Quite soon, we realise that we don’t have time for both yomping up to a pretty lake for an icy swim and lunch in the sun at a charming little Italian restaurant, so we turn around. Training might not be going as well as it could be.
The fresh pasta and wild boar bresaola more than make up for it, though.
June 9th
Went for a run earlier in 34 degree heat, almost turned around after the first half an hour because my dog was starting to foam at the mouth and seemed really keen to stay in the occasional patch of shade, but I promised him there’d be snow if we just keep going. Sprayed some of my orange energy drink into his mouth from my platypus nozzle, he seemed to perk up a bit. After 1000m of vertical, 1 hour 15 after starting, we find the first patch of snow, and the dog rolls around in it like a polar bear cub, tail flailing like a helicopter rotor, digging holes and shoving his face into them. Running up the length of the slope and sliding back down again, paws stretched out in front. Haven’t seen him so happy in ages. We did another 300m vertical until too-much snow blocked our path, then turned around and ran back down to town, where I dropped him in the fountain. Now he is passed out on the couch.
June 14th
After scrambled eggs, boxty and black pudding, I feel pretty greasy and queasy before a run up to the lakes above Servoz with Georgie and Dan, and I almost lose my fuel a few times. Once at the top though, the barley in the black pudding kicks in, and I’m leaping around like a bloody chamois. Remember: barley is a good thing.
June 16th
I’ve noticed the cost of cereal bars adding up, so I’ve started experimenting with making my own, with dried fruits and nuts and oats and things. I am melting butter, golden syrup and brown sugar in a pan. I take the tupperware box of brown sugar from the cupboard, take the lid off, and scatter a big handful of sugar into the bubbling butter and syrup, before realising that it is in fact raw couscous, and not brown sugar. I’m going to try and simmer it in the syrup for a bit, see if I’ll get away with it.
Results: it gives energy, but the couscous gets into your lungs. I might omit it from the next attempt.
June 28th
I am running home from work along the path behind the golf course, during the weekend of the Mont Blanc Marathon and various other races. A group of about 40 people are sitting in the barn at Paradis de Praz, it’s a wedding or some other party, and they are all pissed as farts. As I approach, one of them stands up and shouts “Allez, allez!”
I grin, and wave. They all stand up, cheering, to give a raucous applause, and my feet seem to pick up the pace. I could get used to this.
July 2nd
I’m running home from work again, straight down from Argentiere to the tennis courts in around 45 minutes, and I think about using the last of my energy for a sprint finish – just until Place Mont Blanc, where I’ll slow to a walk for a warm-down. I speed up.
When I get to Place Mont Blanc, something strange happens – my brain says slow down, my legs say fuck off, keep going. “Stop, we’re tired,” my brain tries again, as my thighs pump down the high street, past a crowd of bemused drinkers outside The Pub. “He’s a bit late, isn’t he?” I hear someone smirk, referring to the races of the previous weekend. My lungs are about to burst, I decide the finish line is the level crossing on the way down to Cham Sud. I sprint past it, but still nothing happens. “Stop, you dick!” my brain shouts, and with a gasp I stumble into a walk outside Technique Extreme. This is a confusing episode.
July 13th
My addiction is getting in the way of training. I go for a quick run up to the Cascade du Dard before work, but my eyes keep drifting off into the woods, looking for the telltale spots of gold hidden in the undergrowth, throwing off my footwork. I stumble and slip a few times.
On the way back down, I can take it no longer – I lurch off into the trees, grab a handful of chanterelles, and stalk my way back home slowly, looking for more treasure. Training and mushroom hunting do not go hand-in-hand.
July 29th
I forget my headtorch, and I have to borrow this relic from the emergency box at work. Its cloudy yellow glow barely illuminates the path in front of me, and I frequently stumble on rocks and roots. The circular beam triggers hallucinations of holidays past, of being seven years old on camping trips in Wales, before being startled suddenly by a giant squid’s eye staring at me from two metres away.
My spandex pants are in the wash and I have to wear baggy trousers, which I’m pretty sure contribute to wind resistance. It is because of this that I don’t break any speed records today, and certainly nothing to do with my post-work caffè corretto being more correction than coffee.
August 5th
I’ve started experimenting with those “fruit flavoured” gels in squeezy pouches – they seem to work, but my god they are horrible. Still nicer than that moth was, though.
August 19th
It was the hardest door I’ve ever had to closed in my life. There were blankets, there was gas. There was decent coffee, and a stove-top moka pot to brew it in. There were vac-packed slabs of poitrine fumée and two loaves of old-but-edible bread. There was a nearly-full case of beer at the foot of the lower bunk. Desperately, I checked my phone signal: still zero. Aine would be worried if I wasn’t back before dawn. I had to keep running.
After milling around Chamonix in a cold and grey early-morning fug, chatting to the staff at an almost-deserted lift station and sipping coffee from an old plastic spice jar, and then twenty very cold minutes of hopping and dancing along the corridor by the ice tunnel at the top of the Midi, shaking blood into my fingers and toes and grinning sheepishly at the guides and clients putting on their crampons; the Panoramic across to Pointe Hellbroner finally opened to traffic. “What the fuck is this Frenchman up to…” the liftie said to his colleague in Italian, glaring sternly at my tights and trainers and inadvertently praising my accent, as they discussed whether or not they should let me across. Eventually they agreed that I didn’t present enough of a risk to myself or others to worry them too much, which I decided to take as a compliment. The swirling clouds persist for the whole crossing, and the surrounding peaks play hide and seek as I munch on a bacon sandwich.
I’d forgotten that the final stage of the Italian lift was still closed, so after jogging down the metal stairs to a glacier covered by six inches of fresh snow, I have a few hundred metres of high-footing it past several ropes of appropriately-dressed mountaineers, most of whom return my cheerful “Bonjour!” with something bordering on confusion. Soon enough, I am safe inside the Torino lift station.
The Italian lifts, whilst covered by the Unlimited pass in the winter, are not free to use in the summer. Bugger. I fork over twenty five euros of my emergency omelette fund, the friendly liftie pityingly giving me a one euro discount. I have just enough left for a cappuccino and a speck and fontina roll at the Palud cafe, and a few too-heavy coins of change. Into the jar they go – I am now penniless, relatively naked, and miles from home. It is 11:20am, and I set off towards the Col Grand Ferret, the border into Switzerland, and then – hopefully – France and Chamonix.
For the first 25km, the path is wide and easy, and navigation is simple on the breadcrumb-trail of donkey turds or going the opposite way to dozens of mountain bikers, following the route of the Tour du Mont Blanc, but then with a sharp left towards the Portalet and the Lac d’Orny, the going gets significantly tougher on the hardest climb of the day, with a steep 1300m ascent over rocky ground.
The clouds, reassuringly absent from both the Italian and Swiss Val Ferrets, start flying in from below, wreathing the cliffs around me and occasionally blocking the view entirely. If this carries on or gets worse, I’ll have to take the lower, longer route home, adding a good 15km to the journey. The thought depresses me, and I counter it with a Snickers bar and caffeine chewing gum.
I assess my options at the Lac d’Orny and decide to stay on the high path for now, there are two other options for bailing a little further on, if the weather breaks. Taking one of the spiderweb of the paths descending from the lake, I pass a group of three people headed to the Cabane d’Orny on the other side of a low moraine, and I only notice them when they are a hundred metres above me. As I realise the time, the thought occurs to me that they will most-likely be the last people I see until tomorrow, and I suddenly feel intensely alone, under a menacing-looking sky that is already starting to darken at its eastern-edge.
The clouds mericfully thin out as I reach the final junction for the longer but safer route around to the north of the Genepi and the Pointe Ronde, to the Col de Forclaz. The alternative is a much steeper ascent to the Fenetre d’Arpette, with the final climb and the top of the descent on really shitty ground. Time is tight, but if I can make it up and over, and down a few hundred metres on the other side with the last of the daylight, I’ll be home and dry. I set off with a determined stride for the third hard climb of the day, the mist-greyed walls of the Fenetre d’Arpette framing the distant glow of the sunset spectacularly. If I had any left to give, it would be breathtaking.
Right up at the summit the path is horrible, and it takes every ounce of concentration. The descent fries my brain, and the shock of finding the well-stocked Vesevey cabin nearly floors me, but I can’t stop so close to home. In the sixty seconds I spend in the cabin, the very last of the visible light disappears, and I have to switch on my head torch. At the start of the final climb, up to the Col de Balme via the beautiful-in-daylight Les Grandes variant, I slurp down an energy gel, hunger pangs tearing at my shrunken stomach. An undulating, depressingly-long traverse drops me in a thick cloud of freezing mist at the col, and visibility is reduced to barely three or four metres for most of the last yomp down to Le Tour. The clouds part, my arbitrarily-selected finishing tape appears a few hundred metres away, and I throw my last into a sprint, shaving at least fifteen seconds off of a thirteen-hour time. Whoop-de-do. My empty stomach demands some quality time spent retching explosively, but it has nothing to give up.
The next day, I have difficulty walking, but I already find myself thinking that if I had a proper meal and didn’t waste myself on that last sprint, I could probably squeeze another high col in. I’ll have to get the maps out again.
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/509430926
September 2nd
Maybe it was naive of me, but I had hoped it would be a lot easier this time. I thought that’s what training did? You break yourself a little, then you come back stronger…
I had mapped out a route using a piece of string that I thought would be about 60km, with over 5000m of ascent, but around the 25km mark I was struggling, and could barely break out of a brisk walk for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Soon enough, it started to feel a little bit like survival jogging, and I remapped the route in my head to take the quickest path home, guessing it to be about 45km total. Starting to squeal involuntarily in the final few hundred metres, I arrive back at home some fourteen hours and twenty after leaving that morning.
After peeling the sweating, stinking tights and sleeves off me and sinking an ice-cold restorative sports drink, I ran the route I had taken through mapmyrun.com. It turns out that if I had taken the original route, I would have accidentally found myself on an 85km/6500m run, with not enough food and little hope of getting home before daybreak. The shortest way home turned out to be 65km/4600m. Though broken, I instantly stopped feeling sorry for myself, and decided that pieces of string might not be the most accurate way to measure long distance runs.
It’s a nice warm-up, clambering up the ladders by the Aiguillete d’Argentiere to the Tête aux Vents, striding at pace through the nature reserve in the early morning before the crowds arrive, and down the blocky-but-decent path to the Col des Montets, then eating some distance on the road towards Buet, the start of the Berard Valley, and up until the cluster of tiny lakes halfway up the Val de Tré les Eaux. From that point onwards, however, and for the next fourteen kilometres, the path is seldom anything but shifting rocks of various sizes, from grit and pepples to splintering slate tiles. When the Cheval Blanc first comes into view on the way up to Col des Corbeaux, a crumbling pile of grey-white gravel, it’s summit towers 800m over you, but once you are around the corner, past the junction for the outrageously-exciting but time-consuming dinosaur footprints, and at the base of the actual climb there’s barely 300m left of it, and it looks merely depressing, rather than debilitating. The path is well-marked with skywards-facing fingers of rock, but the ground is pretty shitty and it probably isn’t one you’d want to do by headtorch.
On the way up the Cheval Blanc I started getting lactic squeezes in my knees, and for a while I had to climb kind of straight-legged and lop-sided, which opened up an old war wound in my right hip, and thanks to the heat I was already running with a pretty bad chef’s arse (and, being a chef, I’ve known a few bad ones). I had forced down a litre of porridge for breakfast, and by halfway up Tré les Eaux this had transformed into a relentlessly painful bubble of trapped gas. Despite tooting some pressure off while trotting along the saddle of the Cheval Blanc and across the barren, flat-grey moonscape of sculpted limestone on the Combe du Buet and Le Cabaret, my aching legs, stinging ring, and my swollen abdomen combined to sink my mood and sap my energy. It’s a pity, because the scenery up here is other-worldly – the crumbling 1500m west face of Buet and the Tours de St-Hubert, the soaring limestone towers of the Cornes du Chamois to the north-east and the Rochers des Fiz to the south-west, and all around you more fountains and waterfalls spouting from the cliffs than you could count. It’s just a pity that, being a runner and not a hiker, you can’t stop and drink it all in with a pair of binoculars and a cup of tea.
The route now descends for 1700m along the Fretes de Grenier and down into the woods of La Grand Joux before climbing back up towards the Cirque des Fonts, which is, to be honest, unnecessarily beautiful, and if you haven’t gone to see it before, you should stop what you are doing right now and go there. As the path turns south and climbs towards the Petit Col d’Anterne, I see two runners coming towards me at a fair clip, with bigger bags than mine and legs filled with walnuts. I wonder how long they’ve got left today, as we exchange a tired nod.
Up to the Lac d’Anterne and towards the Col d’Anterne, and with a low ceiling of dark grey cloud obscuring the surrounding peaks (which was not in the forecast, I worry), the area has a distinctly British feel to it. After filling my platypus at the Refuge de Moëde Anterne and stomping down to the Pont d’Arlevé through puddles of sheep piss, the end is in sight (barely 18km away) and the final 800m climb to the Col du Brevent doesn’t seem like such a great task, but the path steepens significantly for the final 300m and I’m forced to stop and whimper like a lonely puppy every now and then. It is with a whoop of glee that I reach the Col still with good daylight, and the head torch isn’t needed until well-along the low traverse for La Flegere. With a sudden moment of clarity, I realise that if I’m quick I might just make it down in time to grab a pizza from the Stone Bar, so I lift my knees high over the gnarled, sinuous obstacle course of roots on the descent through the Bois de la Trappe to Argentiere.
What have I learned? A huge porridge breakfast won’t make me popular with people running directly behind me, and there’s going to have to be some serious lubing-up to avoid future chafing issues. Take a moment to picture that, if you want.
Overcome by my love for all things concerning honey bees (what incredible creatures!), I accidentally bought eight 20g tubes of Sports Honey at the ultra marathon market last week. I thought I’d misheard the lady, but no, only four euros change from a twenty note, and it’s too late to say no at that point really. Works great for a massive kick up the arse before a steep climb, but once they’ve run out I’m just going to refill a used screw-top fruit gel pouch with my own honey for a fraction of the cost.
I hurt less today than after the big jog of a fortnight ago, and I’m already thinking of where to go next. The cycle continues: out comes the map and the piece of string.
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/522214588
September 7th
Georgie says I shouldn’t bother running too far so close to the day, so we do a quick 27km to train on part of the actual route, between Buet and Brevent. The anti-frottage gel works great.
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/526398574
September 18th
I’ve invented a new sport. It’s called “off-trail not-running”, and the best place to try it out is on the route from Old Argentiere up to the Bec Rouge Supérieur, next to the Col du Passon. At 16km there-and-back, with 1700m of up-then-down, it’s a short, steep bastard of an outing on the most unimaginably terrible ground with a very short stretch on a glacier.
The trail from Old Argentiere up to near the Abri de Péclerey is fine and over quickly, and on the climb to the Bec de Lachat the path is at first sheep-like in nature but rapidly turns goaty. The cairns are there, but some are quite small and attention has to be paid lest ye wander off down a path carved by an ibex on the forage. This is great if you have a digestive system capable of breaking down complex cellulose molecules, but fruitless and time-consuming if you don’t, and may lead to some interesting scrambling to get back on track.
Past the first Bec Rouge, there are dozens of genuinely-terrifying opportunities to trundle some five-ton chunks of razor-edged rock down on top of you if you don’t plug your hands and feet in the right places, and after a quick, chilly hop over a reassuringly-flat bit of the Glacier du Tour, you have to stay well to the right to find a decent path up the second Bec Rouge that avoids surfing down landslide rivers on tombstone-sized granite slabs, as happened twice in the short time I was watching. Once at the summit, with the 
Col du Passon to the east and the Aiguille du Chardonnet towering over you, you have an unimpeded view across to the Aiguille du Tour one way and, the other way, various north faces in the Argentiere glacier basin, if the clouds are behaving. Today, they weren’t, the freezing rain was starting to get the better of me, and the rocks were by now actually wet instead of damp, so I sucked down the last of my home-made Sports Honey and turned around.
The descent is not an easy one, and for once when trail running, when descents are usually a little quicker, the route back along the ridge to a proper path takes as long as it did on the way up. There are two ten-meter patches of actual running, when crossing two wide grassy cols, but other than that it’s mostly a hands-and-feet job until you are rolling down on wet mud and alpenrose back to the established trails above the Argentiere forest.
This would be a brilliant route for testing new shoes on a wide variety of the most hateful conditions, and it’s pretty hard to get lost in bad weather seeing as you are straddling a ridge line for a lot of it. All in all, I can’t recommend that you do this route unless you are looking for a thoroughly miserable time.
Pete Houghton 