SwissAlpine K78 - Race report
Sarah and I first read about the SwissAlpine K78 after reading James Adams’ 2008 race report and it instantly appealed. A scenic 78km route, 2750m (9000ft) ascent and with (reportedly) great organisation and support - sounded perfect. It was to be our second ’proper’ ultra as at the time we'd also signed up for the South Downs Way 50. That race turned out to be very good for me but not so good for Sarah - a combination of health issues and lack of time to get training in led to a DNF for her - so after that this race became all the more important as a way to try and ’get back on the horse’ and bury her SDW50 demons. We also decided ahead of time to run this together - this was just two weeks before my main race of the year and first 100 miler (the NDW100) so I wanted to try and avoid totally trashing my legs so that I had time to recover before then.
After spending a night with a friend in Zurich we headed to Davos via a very scenic train journey. When you sign up for the race you get a return train ticket for the journey from the airport or border train station to Davos (plus free travel on public transport for the duration of the event) which is a really nice touch and makes the entry fee actually pretty good value. However it's worth noting that Switzerland is definitely not a cheap place to visit! Food and drink are very expensive, even when buying supplies from a supermarket.
When we got there we left our bags at the station and went for a little wander down to the sports centre where registration was taking place. There was also a mini-expo which we had an amble around. Lots of shiny gear on display but thankfully our bank balance came away relatively unscathed, with only one visor purchased. We also caught a bit of a video of the previous years race, featuring the winners covered in blood and scratches! What were we letting ourselves in for...?
After that we headed off to find our accommodation. We had booked a B&B about 5km outside of Davos because all the cheaper hotels in town where booked up for the duration of the event - it’s definitely worth sorting accommodation out early if you are planning on going or else you will end up paying megabucks for one of the pricier swanky hotels. We took a taxi to our B&B (again, not cheap - a 10 minute taxi ride cost us about £25!) which was a nice, simple family run place and where there were a couple of other people staying who were also doing the race. Unfortunately we made a slight miscalculation in assuming that there would be somewhere to get an evening meal there, so our pre-race dinner ended up consisting of some cobbled-together cheese sandwiches and a bowl of muesli. Not exactly ideal but it would have to do.
On the morning of the race you have to hand over your drop bag by 6:30am (this gets taken to the half way point and then back to the finish line for you, all very well organised) so we did that and then joined the customary toilet queues. By 6:55am we were at the start with the sun just peeking over the mountains in front of us, tunes blaring out of the loudspeakers, all very stirring stuff. And then we were off, running through the streets of Davos with much cheering and bell ringing to see us on our way.
The first 30km are along a mix of undulating tarmac and easy trail, and are run alongside the C42 (the ’easy’ marathon route) and the K30 runners who started at the same time from Davos. This means it would be pretty easy to get swept up and run too quickly in this first runnable section, but we settled down into a steady pace and tried to ignore what the others around us were doing. In the end we covered the first 30km to Filisur in around 2 hrs 50 mins, pretty much as planned, despite getting caught in a bit of a slow-moving human conga line in a few sections of narrow singletrack.
From Filisur onwards is where the climbing really starts in earnest, and soon we had left the road and arrived at a long section of switchbacks up through a forest. Although reasonably runnable Sarah was suffering a little from stomach issues and wasn't feeling all that great, so we opted for a bit of hiking up the trail to let things settle down. Towards the top she was starting to feel better and we coasted down into Bergun, where our drop bag was and where the C42 marathon finished (and the K42, the ’hard’ marathon, started). The temperature had definitely started hotting up by this point, with a high of 33°C forecast for the day, and the plentiful aid stations with their supplies of water, wet sponges, sprinklers and Iso tea (a sort of cross between energy drink and iced tea) were most welcome. The support was also really first class - cow bells and and enthusiastic shouts of “hopp hopp hopp” were everywhere and really helped to spur us on. The number of aid stations (around 30 in total) mean that this is definitely a race you could do without a bag if you chose, although I personally prefer having my gels and other bits and pieces close to hand for when I want them rather than having to be at the mercy of the aid station positions, regardless of how close together they are.
After applying some suncream from the drop bag and grabbing a few more gels we left Bergun and jogged up a long section of moderate climb along a tarmac road, cutting back and forth across the mountainside and offering some great views of the valley below. At the top of this we turned off onto a stoney trail which got pretty steep quite quickly, and we were soon in full-on hiking mode for the next hour or so as we slowly marched our way up the long climb to Keschhütte, the highest point in the race. You gain about 1300m of height between Bergun and Keschhütte and with the temperatures reaching over 30°C this was definitely hard work. Luckily the amazing views helped to take our minds of it, with snow-capped mountains and icy-looking streams all around - absolutely stunning.
When we finally reached Keschhütte the siren call of the massage tent nearly proved too much for Sarah but I managed to tear her back onto the course, promising her one at the finish instead. We then had a nice bit of descent before another shorter but tough climb up to Sertigpass (and another massage tent to be avoided) and where we found ourselves running through big snow patches - somewhat odd as it was so hot but quite fun nonetheless. After this it was more or less downhill for the next 20km back to Davos. Lovely!
....Or rather not so lovely. Maybe it was the promise of a massage or maybe she was just getting bored of my company, but it was at this point that Sarah pulled out of the bag a hithero-undiscovered talent for running extremely fast (read: recklessly) down very technical terrain. And I do mean technical - steep, snaking, scree-covered goat tracks with sharp rocks everywhere (hence the bLood-covered winners from last years race), if you took a spill here you were definitely going to be in a lot of pain. But this didn't seem to faze Sarah at all and we absolutely blasted down the mountainside, overtaking runner after runner and with me finding myself pushed to my absolute limit to keep up with her. My quads were really screaming when we got to the bottom and onto the friendlier doubletrack that wound its way down into the next checkpoint. So much for keeping my legs in good shape for the NDW100!
Possibly thanks to the lightning speed of our descent but just before we got to the next checkpoint Sarah's Suunto Ambit started playing silly buggers and informing us that we had now run 71km, so only had 7km left to go. Now whilst this was very welcome, about 5 minutes ago I was sure we had more like 12km left so something seemed odd - we were quick downhill but not that quick! Despite my telling her not to trust it I think Sarah got her hopes up a little here that this was all we had left, and so when we asked the lady at the aid station how far was left and she told us “14 kilometres” it was a bit of a crushing blow! But that also didn't seem right, and soon after we came across a route marker which promised 10km left, which seemed much more sensible. A quick glance at the watch confirmed that we were definitely going to make it in under 10 hours, which given that before the race we'd been talking about taking 11-12 hours to run it was a good mental boost.
After the GPS incident the last 10km ticked by fairly quickly with lots more great support for Sarah - I seemed to be completely invisible as every spectator shouted “hopp hopp hopp Sarah!” (our names were on our race numbers, another nice touch) and “Frau (girl) power!” but totally neglected to acknowledge the non-female person (me) running next to her. I promised her that next time I'm going to wear a skirt and a pair of inflatable tits, then we'll see who gets all the support.
Sarah was (literally) counting down the final meters as we dropped out of the woods and back down into Davos, and with a bit of a sprint around the running track we finished in just over 9 hours 27 minutes, definitely a much better time than she was anticipating so lots of smiles. This ended up being 18th lady in an international field and just an hour behind Lizzy Hawker (who was admittedly obviously taking it very easy as she's won the race before in a much faster time) which was a great confidence booster, especially given that she has did pretty much zero ultra-specific training before this race. I'm certain that if she can get a good block of training in at the start of next year she'll be able to absolutely smash her nemesis, the SDW50, and finally close that frustrating chapter in her running life.
At the finish I set about demolishing a sausage and chips while Sarah headed off to get her well-deserved massage... And was promptly denied as they required you to have a shower first, and with no towel or change of clothes it was not to be. Next time then!
All in all it was a really great, scenic, well organised event that I'd highly recommend as a good race to use as a first-foray into ultra mountain running. We'll definitely be going back again soon.
(Slightly borked) GPS route and splits on Strava
