Humanitrail 25km, Les Diablerets. 21/09/13
Last weekend i took part in the Humanitrail race in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Marketed as a 25km route (but actually coming in just under 27km) it began in Les Diablerets and made its way up to the ski resort of Villars.
Villars is a place where i spend almost all of my free time so i felt like i knew the route extremely well, which consisted of two medium sized climbs with a very runnable final 10kms on the drop back down to Les Diablerets.
After a season of running long distances slowly i was very unsure how i'd cope with adjusting to this small and fast distance. It started fast as i expected with the first 3 kms following an undulating road section. Not wanting to get stuck in the traffic i stayed out towards the front of the pack but with a time of 12 minutes for those early kms i knew that i couldn't stay up near the sharp end of the field. Settling into the first climb i had a number of people overtake me as i struggled to find a pace i was happy with as we headed up a very muddy and steep field.
Having visited the area to recce this climb the week before i knew that despite the pain i only had to keep focus for around 30 minutes before reaching a plateau. This brief respite allowed me to regain some focus and push on allowing me to reach the first summit after one hour of running.
The next section of the route took me down into the heart of Villars and i felt the psychological boost of knowing the route allowing me to prepare for the next climb. Despite my feelings in the early stages of this race, i was now around 18th place and the field was becoming strung out.
After an uneventful second climb i finally topped out on this course just under two hours, and prepared myself for the next hour or so of extremely runnable terrain that was ahead of me. Arriving at the bottom of that climb the course took a U-turn so i was able to see how much of a cushion i had on the runners behind me.
What followed could only be described as me running scared for the next 10kms. With two hours of running already in my legs, i could feel now that i still need some conditioning for these shorter distances. After taking my final Mulebar Gel (my third of the race) i simply kept my head down and maintained a pace that i hoped would keep me ahead of any of the fast chargers behind me.
Two very comfortable looking runners did overtake me during the first stages of that 10km, but following that it felt like i was on a training run. I couldn't see anyone ahead of me and i was too scared to look behind!
Having kept a strong pace on the final downhill into the village i then started to realise that the race was coming to a close. After running scared for the best part of the previous hour, i allowed myself a cursory glance back and could see no one was chasing me down with me crossing the finish line as 22nd place male, or 24th overall out of 260 runners.
The time of 3hrs 26min was still destroyed by the top placed males (one of whom also happened to be a 7 times mountain running champion) but i finished the race feeling extremely satisfied with the sense of a job well done.
Even better news came from my girlfriend Niki who, despite taking a nasty fall in the early KMs, found herself on the podium with a third place finish in her age category.
With the season coming to a close its now time to readjust the running goals for next year, develop a winter training plan and look forward to the early races of next year.
Gear wise i tried to race as minimal as possible. I had the great Scott T2 Kinabalu shoes on my feet which perform so well in this terrain, The North Face 'better than naked' shorts and T-shirt and an Ultraspire race vest that carried a 500ml bottle filled with water along with 3 Mulebar gels.
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