This is the planning and lottery season for most major mountain
ultramarathon races during summer 2016. Many of the lotteries are already over,
for instance regarding the major US races Hardrock 100 and Western States Endurance Run. Others are ongoing, like
the one for Leadville 100. My lottery for the summer of 2016 has not started
yet and I will have to live in anxiety for another month.
My highest priority course for next summer is once again the longest and most difficult UTMB race Petite Trotte à Léon (PTL) in Chamonix in France in the end of August. The decision to try to
enter this race was easy after my attempt to increase the speed in shorter
skyrunning and vertical kilometer races this year. It did not go well at all
and even though I became faster than ever on relatively flat 10 kilometer courses
with times down to low 38 minutes, I failed miserably at for instance Mont Blanc 80 km and Cervinia VK. Next year I will again focus on one major long
race and the choice of PTL was quite straigtforward. First of all, I hope to
run together with Tobias Lindström who finished the race in 2013 and put
together the Swedish team for 2014, but had to cancel when he got his first
child. This year he was back on track and became a finisher of Tor des Géants
during this year’s harsh weather conditions. It would be absolutely great to
run PTL with him as the course of 2016 looks more technical than ever and he
has a solid climbing and mountaineering background in addition to being an
excellent ultramarathon runner. He is also, like Otto who I ran with in 2014,
an extremely strong person and is easy to get along with and I think we would
be a great team.
Secondly, the course of PTL 2016 looks once again absolutely
spectacular. Nothing can compare with it. The mountains around the Mont Blanc
massif are really among the most beautiful and dramatic in the world and the
PTL course gives the possibility to experience the environment also way out in
Switzerland and Italy. This year the preliminary course starts by climbing up
towards the Chamonix needles along the Bossons glacier, along the north balcony
towards Mer de Glace before crossing the valley and up into Aiguilles rouges
and the high point of the course which will be once again Mont Buet at 3096
meters. After crossing the valley again the course proceeds to the first life
base of Champex after having left France at the Autannes ridge. After Champex
the course will take a wide loop over Mont Rogneux and around Grand Combin deep
into Switzerland before entering the Aosta valley in Italy by the Durand pass.
The track through Aosta valley seem again to be really beautiful following the ridges
between Mont Fallère and the Col Sérena before descending to the second life
base in Morgex. From there the route this year goes directly towards the south
face of Mont Blanc and on the north side of Val Veny before crossing back into
France through Col de la Seigne along what looks to be the GR TMB tracks. Then
the course again leaves the well trodden paths and heads north towards Aiguilles
des Glaciers before crossing into the Montjoie valley over Col d´Enclave. This
pass was the only one during PTL 2014 where the organizers recommended passage
in daylight, but even then it was difficult to find the right way down and when
Otto and I passed we saw another team get into real trouble by taking the wrong
path down into a steep scree slope with only loose rocks and gravel, so I am
happy to have been there already and know the right way. The route exits the
Montjoie valley once again over Col Tricot before passing the Bionassay valley
and taking a high path up to Nid d’Aigle. The end will also take a higher route
than in 2014 through the Arendelly forest through Chavanne Vielle before
descending into Chamonix and the finish.
PTL 2016 course |
There are certainly some runnable sections of the course, but most of
it will be fast mountaineering where navigation skills and experience in
scrambling and moving in difficult mountain terrain without any path will be much
more important. I guess it is for this reason the organization this year has
changed the entry criteria and introduced a pre-screening of all participants
where you have to fill in a formulary outlining your mountain experience in
detail. I think this is an excellent step. PTL certainly requires plenty of
mountain experience together with some resistance to profound sleep
deprivation. It is almost like a Catch 22 race – you should probably not run it
if you have not been running it before already. Having mountain experience will
remove some of the difficulties you will encounter during this race, but
certainly not all and I am mostly afraid of the Arendelly forest considering Otto´s
and mine experience in 2014. However, having been through it once I know now
what to do in order to at least try to avoid to come into the same situation.
It is amazing how quickly you heal and forget the bad things and I now look
forward to the possibility to run even more than I did the same time two years
ago. So, now Tobias and I can only cross our fingers and hope that we both will be accepted for the
race by the organization and that our team Living the Dream is lucky in the
lottery.