Training and Laughs Continue...

So the Birthday meal turned into way too many Birthday shots meaning Thursday was a complete right off.

I agreed to going a run with Dorian on Friday. I still wasn’t feeling particularly great on Friday morning but decided to go anyway. We drove up to Switzerland (passing a recently written off Ferrari 360) to a small village called Trient and left the car there to then follow part of the Ultra Trail of Mont Blanc back to Chamonix , 33km / 1500m of up and 2000m down.

It was a pretty horrible day weather wise but I felt good on pretty much all of it , I slowed a little at around the 22k mark but then devoured a Mars Bar , Double Decker and a Gel in about 3 minutes and after that felt strong again. Only one minor niggle and that was a small amount of pain in my left shin , it got worse that evening but it seems to have gone now. I think we were about 4hrs 40mins and we had a few stops for photos , to refill with water and to check the map as trails go all over the place here.

Pouring

And it didnt stop - Brilliant 800m Descent to Vallorcine

It was a great day and a good easy pace and was good to get a little bit of distance in legs before the Marathon later this month. I will do it again soon when less hungover.

On Saturday myself and Ally wanted a bit of a laugh so we decided to go up the Aiguille Du Midi armed with a disposable BBQ , a sledge and some flippers(no idea why). We got the 9am lift and just as we got out the ice cave at top we were greeted by absolutely tons of folk who were taking part in some Arcteryx weekend. There were groups everywhere doing courses ranging from safe glacier travel to pretty hard climbs, us sledging didnt go down too well with some guides!

Ally armed with sledge and flippers on a rammed midi arete

Ready to go

We got a few strange looks as we headed down the arête with some rather strange gear our packs. After Ally did some pretty hilarious sledging(many videos to post soon) we got the BBQ going over at the bottom of the Cosmiques Arete and pretty much spent the entire day eating , having a wee drink and doing more sledging. It was the busiest I had ever seen the glacier and our plans to just solo back up the Cosmiques were changed as by 3pm there were still guides coming back down to the start saying the queue at the abseils was 4 hours! We decided to do the boring slog back up the normal way. Now this walk is horrible and without doubt the worst slog in the Massif , its not that long but with the scorching heat and at at 3600m up to 3840m its pretty brutal stuff. Surprisingly I felt strong on it and didn’t need to stop all the way and just plodded on up only stopping near the cave to crack out a beer! An awesome hilarious day and great for acclimatisation even if we didn’t climb at all we were sitting around up there all day soaking in the views.

BBQ at 3650m

Ice Axe is always useful

I went a little ride on the bike this morning up to the Col Des Montets and back. Not been on the bike much recently but all went well and it was a rather rapid return back down the Col to Cham. I’m not that great on a bike at distance , I mean I can pedal along 50+ miles but I am by no means good at it , its kind of like a vice versa with my running. I’m not an amazingly fast runner but can cover a fair few miles whereas on my bike I much prefer and I am much better at short flat out rides than long distance ones.
Weather not looking great this week and I start back work on Friday. Here’s hoping for sunshine or at least dry weather to finally get the rock shoes on!