Day 2 – Stiff but not sore. Amazing. Thought for sure after that decent yesterday I would be. We got outta Dodge, I mean Courmayer, around 8:30 after another amazing meal. Everything is so authentic here, well duh right.  Toph and I pushed hard up the first climb right out of Courmayeur with Scott trailing. This morning I was trying out Lisa’s poles, or sticks as they call them here. They’re basically essential gear for this terrain and everyone here uses them. I’ve always wondered why they’ve barely caught on in the US and we trail runners kind of mock the Euro’s for using them, but mock no more will I. I see why they are necessary. These trails are so steep they aren’t really runnable for any extended run of more than like 1 mile. Our first climb out of town was about 2500-3000ft in 3 miles. Yeah, I could run it but I wouldn’t be running the next 25 after that. I’d be trying to find my collapsed lungs on the side of the trail and reviewing my breakfast in the most unpleasant way. The sticks do help on these trails and I definitely saved my legs a bit using them on this climb while keeping up with Topher. Guess I need to start XC skiing in the winter more to work on those lats.

From the top of the climb we had a beautiful fairly flat traverse of about 10miles where we did all of our photography and video for the day. We worked with Scott getting shots in a few locations down the trail before running into the Bonati Hut where we met up with Sebastian and Fred for some filming and interviews. It’s hard to get a bad shot in a location like this. Lush green hills full of wildflowers, glacial rivers rushing down the hillsides, and picturesque stables high above the Val de Aosta floor made for some incredible scenery. I think the shots we got today will make up an amazing experience for viewers. Check out the video at Mountain Hardware in a few weeks. I’ll post a link to it on this blog when it’s up and keep an eye out for photos in PR stuff next year.

Down the trail we met up with Erin and the gang for delicious Italian potato and rosemary pizza and Coke. It was nice that we were taking it slow and relaxing a bit between sections so that we could enjoy the finer foods of the region. That wouldn’t go over too well in a race but for this, it made the whole experience just that much more enjoyable to be able to fully experience the culture of the region. After all, we had to fuel up, we had another 3000ft climb to the highest point on the course, the Col du Ferret. In the interest of time and getting in before dark, Topher and I pushed on pretty hard as the others were going to skip the last 10miles. All told we shot photos and video for 4hrs today. That adds a lot of time on the feet and Topher and I definitely were feeling it in the final miles today. We cruised down the climb, stopped for an apple torte in La Poule, pushed on to La Fouly where we stopped for an ice cream, I had a Shrek Popscicle, it was delicious. It’s amazing how good something like that can taste after 20 hard miles and about 8hrs on your feet. One final climb of about 2000ft up to Lac Champex and we were home for the night.

Lac Champex is an interesting little town geographically. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before. It’s set in a Col or mountain saddle and while one side slides away gently the other is a straight up cliff face. The latter is the side our hotel was on. Literally. Probably the sweetest hotel location I’ve seen. 2000ft above the valley the yard of the small inn went right to the edge. Awesome. We all sat down to a delicious homemade dinner by the owner, another friend of Topher’s, watched the final of the World Cup, and went to bed.

Tagged as: max king, mont blanc, montrail, mountain hardwear, topher gaylord, tour du mont blanc, trail running