Ardechois 57 km Trail Running: "First Blood"

Short report:

57 km long, 2400m climb/desc trail run, 8h51m, finished 178 out of 251, and 268 starters.

Long report:

The race is in a little town in the middle of the mountains near the "Cotes du Rhone" region, so I had to hire a car in Avignon to get there and back. I booked a Fiat 500 because the roads there are  bendy as hell, and a small car is easier to handle and park. Then Europcar decided to upgrade me, and they gave me a brand new Peugeot 508. It's a boat. You can land a helicopter on the roof. You can fit another car in the boot. Damn.

What I asked for.

What they gave me.

The drive to my hotel in Valence went without a hitch. The upgraded car included a Satnav mademoiselle that kept saying "tournez a gauche", "tournez a droite", with a voice more suited to say "embrassez moi".

After the check-in in my hotel, and since I won't have time for breakfast in the morning, I go shopping and I drive my ship into Valence trying to find a convenience store open this time of the evening.

I forgot that in France everything is closed on bank holidays, and on Friday the 1st of May, Worker's Day, nobody works in here.

After a while I found an open shop, but because of the one way traffic system, designed by the Marquis of Sade himself, I had to drive through the city centre first, then past the train station, then past the shop, then around the block behind it, until I finally reached the pavement in front of the store, and I can finally try and park HMS Peugeot.

The shop doesn't have a great assortment of goods. Mainly toilet paper, booze and biscuits. Vodka for breakfast? Well, there's plenty of calories in it, but I went for a selection of bickies instead. And orange juice and a red bull.

I headed back to my hotel to go for a pizza in a place nearby, but got tempted by a much nicer proper restaurant and I had the most delicious supper. Back to my hotel room. It's 23:15, time to sleep. I get in my bed, close my eyes and the alarm clock goes off. It's 6:20 a.m. already and time to get up. Damn.

I drive up to the tiny town of Desaignes, and once there I get directed to "Car Park 1", which turned out to be the furthest one.

Desaignes High Street.

Short jog to the start line and I'm panting already. It's 2 mins to the get go, so no time to soak in to the atmosphere, more like splash and dash.

At 8 o'clock the race starts and the climb begins.

The course can be summarized as follows: 700 meters up, 700 down, and again, but steeper, and again even more steep.

But the devil is in the detail, and the trail is littered with fake summits, almost vertical climbs and breakneck descents.

3 hours into the race I'm starving. So much for biscuits for breakfast. Next time I'll try vodka.

I stopped for a pee, and it looks like I'm dehydrated. I drink my camelback dry, and in the next water station get a full refill of the thing.

The trail is beautiful. Shadowy woods, waterfalls, great panorama views of the valleys from the top of the hills... The smell of the pine woods, the tall grass, the singing rivulets, I'm loving this!

Then at km 32 the road splits between the 36 km course and the 57. As I turn into the 57 one, it gets very lonely. And then it gets brutally steep in the downhill, and later ridiculously steep up...

In the downhills all my leg muscles are hurting bad. I'm thirsty, hungry and tired. I almost forget how much fun I'm having. I check my Garmin. 12 km to go. Good.

It gets very hard to go fast downhill as the terrain is sometimes loose rocks covered in dry leaves, often just loose rocks and dirt. Feels like running down a huge pile of Lego bricks.

Slow and steady, I left behind a few fellow runners, some sitting by the side of the path waiting for the trail fairy to take them home, one puking their hearts out, others fighting cramps... The race was not what I expected.

I check my Garmin again. 12 km to go. Wait what? Wasn't that the same distance like an hour ago? Dammit. Progress is really slow here.

An eternity later it's only 3 km to go. I started chatting with a runner that caught up with me. "I'm going slow because my knees are killing me, this is very steep", I say. "It will get worse shortly" he replied. I mistrusted my French and thought I didn't understand. Not so. The last kms were more suited for base-jumping than running...

Finish line!

Long story short, I made it to the finish line, and not a squirt of powergels is left out of 8, not a crumb remains of 4 granola bars in my pockets, not a drop of water left in my second waterfull camelback. I feel like a potato crisp. The ready-salted kind.

After posing for my finisher pic, I had a couple of glasses of orange juice, water, food. I relaxed, did some stretching and went for a pee. It's red. Oh dear. Well, this is a first, I say to myself: "I'm peeing blood. I guess I got a little more dehydrated than I thought!"

So I made my way back to the caterers by the finish line, grabbed a 1.5 lt bottle of water and a paper cup. Sat down on a plastic chair and started drinking, slow and steady. The poor man's drip!

As you can see, I did sweat my tits off. 

After half an hour or so I went to the loo again, and it was brief, but the right colour now. That's good news because it's beer o'clock!

No finishers tee-shirt here, just wonderful food!

As for peeing red, I'm glad to know now that it can be fixed by rehydrating yourself PDQ. But next time I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

Next stop: Mozart 100.

Mauricio,-