Swiss Alps 100 Mile Trail Race: Success!

The Frenchman and the American at the finish 2022

 In 2021 I tried to run the gruelling and hilly Swiss Alps 100 mile trail race. This beast of a course has 10,000 meters of climbing. For you North Americans, that's 32,000 feet of climbing. That's like starting at sea level and climbing to the top of Mt Everest, while running. Ok, I walked some. But last year's race was hot. And did I mention it was hilly? The first 3 miles climb 4,000 feet and that's just a warm up. 

Something was off last year. While I usually enjoy at least moderate success in my races, something in my body wasn't right last year. Perhaps I had too much salt in me. We were in the middle of a move at the time so I wasn't sleeping particularly well, and I also hadn't trained well enough. The only thing I had relied on last year was my successful 350 mile run across Switzerland, which, it turns out, didn't offer enough hill training. 

But this year was different. Rather than focus on one singular trail experience to get me ready for this race, I built a whole racing and training season around it. I ran a half-marathon, a full marathon, a 50 mile trail ultra marathon, and many long back to back training runs. In the week before the big race I went to bed by 10pm each night and I focused on drinking water throughout the day to get fully hydrated. The payoff was huge. 

Not only did I finish, but I felt strong throughout the entire race. See my race report below for the full story. I am perhaps more proud of this finish than any other race I've done. 

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Swiss Alps 100 Mile / 160km Trail Race Report. 

Nothing about this is normal. For starters, it’s 3am and I’m awake, but that is far from the weirdest part. I’m walking down a country road in a valley in the Swiss Alps in the dark, with the arm of a Frenchman draped over my shoulder. He doesn’t speak any English and my French is even worse. We are soldiers and the clock is our enemy. We are two people out of 66 who showed up to start a grueling 100-mile 48-hour trail race in the Swiss Alps. His name is David and I didn’t know him 12 hours ago. As dusk was setting on the first of two nights that we’d be running this quadruple marathon with an astounding 30,000 feet of climbing, I knew I would need my headlamp soon. I had it, of course. It was shoved deep down in my running pack along with the other safety items the race management requires everyone to carry. Emergency foil blanket. Raincoat. Whistle. Those kinds of things. But stopping to get out my headlamp meant breaking a rhythm and I was feeling the flow. Besides, we were running downhill along the side of a ridge, looking down on the famous Aletsch Glacier in the fading light. It’s the 23 mile long white snake of snow and ice that starts way up at the famous Jungfrau Mountain. I’ve run in many different situations in my 25 years of ultra running but being on a rocky trail while looking down at a glacier below is a unique perspective. 

Looking down on the famous Aletsch Glacier

As darkness neared I was waiting for an inevitable stumble that would indicate it was time to stop and dig my headlamp out of my small Ultimate Direction Race Vest. That’s when I saw them: two runners, illuminated ahead of me slowly making their way downhill. I caught up to them quickly and enjoyed the increased illumination thanks to their headlamps as I picked up scraps of light spilling around them. Though they immediately offered to let me go ahead there was no way I was giving up this great drafting position of pilfered light. Eventually they did stop to get some calories out and I finally pulled out my own headlamp. They introduced themselves: David and Maud, both from France. They said they had met the year before in the same race and had finished together. Maud was the only English speaker between the two but she explained that David had finished this race 9 times, so she was sticking with him. I mentioned that while I hadn’t completed this race yet, I did hold the Fastest Known Time for running the Trans Swiss Trail, a 560-km national trail route across all of Switzerland. That did it. Maud decided that, sandwiched between a soon-to-be ten time finisher of this race, and a proven solo ultra runner, she was in good hands. I was content to have company. I had already been running alone for 12 hours that day, so a little banter might be nice in the dark, even if that banter is in French, which I don’t speak. We bantered here and there. Maud would ask me something in English. I would answer. She would translate into French for David. He would respond. She would translate back into English for me. It was a good thing this race had a generous cutoff of 48 hours, we might need it if we want to finish a single conversation.

On the downhills it became clear that Maud had skills in this department. She flew down them. Her slight frame easily carried her down the lengthy points where we dropped elevation. Both David and I are larger frame runners and our bigger size made us less nimble than Maud when trying to float downhill. We were more of the stomper-plodder types. When it came to the uphills I was the stronger one in the group and they often let me take the lead there. At one point in the middle of the night, a voice called to us from the side of the trail. 

“Hi there. I’m a race photographer. I’ve been taking pictures all day and night of single runners but you guys make a nice trio - do you mind if I take a group picture?” 

We turned off our headlamps so we wouldn’t blind him and affect the exposure. Then we lined up and slung arms around each other and smiled for the camera, in the dark, on a ridge, somewhere in the Alps. As he took several pictures, checking the exposure each time, and without thinking I said, “We’re like the trois Muskateers.” Both David and Maud laughed hard at that and agreed. It was meant as a joke but perhaps to my team it meant more. 

A few times through the night I told them to go ahead, that I needed to readjust something or get some more food out. In all cases, Maud insisted on waiting for me. “We made a pact, Brian. We will wait for you.” This gave me some pause. I don’t recall having signed any documents. I don’t even remember talking about sticking together for the rest of the race. But I also didn’t see the harm in having a support group throughout to keep me going either. Since moving to Switzerland three years ago to teach at an international boarding school in the alps I had longed to find running partners as well as have someone to banter with in the occasional races I enter. Perhaps this was my chance? 

Though at times we walked when I might have run, I decided that the shared experience of doing this race with my new friends was more important than sticking to any goal pace, so long as I stayed ahead of the race cutoff times for each aid station along the way. 

And this is how I found myself walking down the center of a country road next to a stream in the dark in a valley between alps with a Frenchman’s arm draped over me. David was struggling with lack of sleep after 21 hours of running. He said, “Brian, go straight.” He then put his arm around me and we were soon walking stride for stride, with me silently guiding him. He soon closed his eyes and kept pace with me, using his contact with me to ensure he wouldn’t walk off the road or trip on a large rock. He only did it for a few minutes at a time but several times throughout the race this seemed to benefit him. 

I’ve done this same thing myself in the past, but without a running partner. Sometimes, when I’m quite tired and just want to rest but need to keep running I will mentally relax my body and flutter my eyes just enough to look ahead every few seconds to make sure nothing is coming. This only works on flat straight sections of road where there is no traffic. However, I have found these brief moments of relaxation capable of producing some rejuvenation. I’ve been doing this “sleep running” for more than 20 years. 

Loved the look of these tall stone walls holding back earth for this steep climb to Belalp

At the 80km aid station, now halfway done with the course, Maud quickly crawled into her family’s support car and promptly fell asleep. David and I refilled our water and got something to eat and were ready to head back out a few minutes later. We looked at each other in the dark, now starting to shiver from the morning cold and our sweat soaked clothes. We walked over to Maud’s car and asked her family if she was going to join us. They said we should head out. We felt bad leaving her behind but our own safety in the race was at risk, plus we needed to keep moving to stay warm. Reluctantly, we took off, now the Deux Musketeers. 

This is a small retention lake that we had to run 3 miles straight uphill to and around. It is always very hot here with no water so everyone struggles in this part early on near Belalp 

 The rest of the race went as planned. I continued to hit my aid stations on goal pace, always about 60-90 minutes ahead of the cut off times. David was always with or just behind me. Things were looking up. But then we had one final big uphill on the course and time was not on our side. Twice, random runners ahead of me stopped me on their way back from this uphill, headed back to return to an aid station that we would visit twice. Each of these two runners cautioned me about the tricky section at the top of this climb. A local had told me earlier in the day that doing this big climb takes most people four hours. The pieces started falling into place. It was 7pm. Four hours later would be 11pm. It would certainly be dark on this final summit. If the trail was obscure, tricky, and dark, that could take even longer than predicted. 

Distance runners sometimes refer to “brain fog”. After so many hours of running, sometimes runners start to make simple mistakes. These mistakes can cost you in the long run. For example, at the previous aid station I had set down my lightweight foldable hiking poles. Nearly everyone in the race had them. And because I like to use the best equipment, everyone had the same poles as me. Two kilometers after leaving the aid station, I remembered that I had forgotten them. A passing runner going the other way insisted that I turn around and run the 2km back uphill to the aid station to get them. I simply didn’t have it in me. “I just can’t do that right now,” I replied. “You’re going to want them for the next section - it’s really hard,” he responded. I decided not to turn around but did ask two other runners to tell the staff that I would pick them up when I came back on the return in a few hours. 

 The next aid station cutoff is at midnight and we might not even get down until 11pm at the earliest. Things looked like they could turn grim. I told David that I planned to make only a short stop at the aid station and that I hoped to summit before true darkness fell, given the tricky route finding we had been told about. He agreed and said he would go with me, even though he had just come into the aid station moments before. We headed out and established a brisk walking pace for the coming 1100 meter climb. My weather app told me that sunset was predicted for 8:40pm. By climbing higher with each stop I’d hoped that we could maximize the last rays of sunlight. Because of the angle of the surrounding mountains, the sun actually set 15 minutes early for us. I yelled to the horizon, “We still have 15 minutes left - you pop back up!” But neither the sun nor David understood me. I guess the sun doesn’t speak English either. 

At that point we were only a few dozen meters from the first of two summits on this section. We reached an iron cross at the top of the first summit a few minutes after the sun had set, but while there was still decent light. David insisted we take a picture. I was singly focused on getting off of this mountain in one piece but I obliged him in a quick picture of the two of us.

Our quick pic at the first summit in fading light.

Turning around, we scanned the horizon for the second summit we were to climb. There was only one that it could be and yet, it couldn’t be that one. In the fading dark, that other one looked like a completely separate mountain. Would it take an hour to climb that, I wondered? The fading light quickly changed our perspective and I suddenly couldn’t gauge distance or elevation. “There’s no way they want us to go up that, right?” I asked David, knowing he didn’t likely understand me. But he did understand, because when faced with the coming darkness of your second night in the wilderness, language doesn’t matter. In those moments, everyone speaks the same language. “Is it possible?” David asked, speaking some of his first words of English I’d heard in two days. 

View of the second summit, and the illusion that kept us from seeing how close it really was.

We gave in to the inevitable darkness, because while David was able to speak a few words of English, I was still sure that the sun wouldn’t. We took out our headlamps and started up this final climb. Luckily, we had overestimated the time it would take to reach this second summit and we were on top of it within a few minutes of swift powerhiking. At the top, we encountered a herd of shaggy black and white mountain sheep. Though I was still concerned with getting down off this summit, something about seeing sheep lazily munching grass in the darkness on this summit gave me comfort. Yes, my own existence was harried and stressful in this moment, but seeing other beings continuing to eat their dinner, careless of the light or lack thereof, helped me feel a glimpse of peace in that moment. We tagged the second summit and found the trail down. I was suddenly overcome with fright that I would somehow miss the midnight cutoff at the aid station where I left my poles earlier. Not only would I be kicked off the course but my poles might be lost as well. I told David that I wanted to run down the mountain quickly and he offered to let me go. I told him I was sure I’d see him again. 

The summits took 2 hours to reach going uphill and only 30 minutes to descend back to the bottom. Then it was one more hour of road to get back to the aid station. I made it back to the aid station at 10:45pm, well ahead of the midnight cutoff. I asked for my poles and the crew said, “What poles?” Apparently, there had been a shift change since I was there last and whoever got the original message to leave my poles there didn’t pass the message on to the new crew working the aid station. There was a second set of poles left there but they were the wrong size. I took them anyway, knowing that David and I were in last place in the race so there was little chance that someone else would come get them. I tried using them for the remainder of the race but ended up just storing them in my pack since they were too short for my stature. 

After my speedy descent from the last summit I expected to leave the midnight aid station well

before David arrived behind me. However, true to form, he came trotting into the aid station just as I was heading out. “Wait, Brian. I go with you. It’s better.”  We slowly jogged down the mountain, this time, finally on a wide gravel road, signaling our return toward civilization. We discussed our plans for the finish. If we ran all the way in from here, we would finish around 4am. My wife and daughter had been meeting me throughout the race at aid stations and were sleeping now at the hotel at the finish. I didn’t want them to have to get up in the middle of the night to see me finish. I also didn’t feel any urgency to get the race done, though I know that in itself is an oxymoron. David had heard from his family who was also at the finish. They were eager to get back on the road and start driving back home to Paris. He decided he would pull away and head in. I encouraged it and enjoyed the solitude as I took my time savoring the final 8 miles. Just then, a beep sounded from my watch. I looked down. It read, “92 miles.” For the past two days I’d been hearing it beep and register the hard-earned mileage but tried not to keep track of what the total was as that was often too depressing. “38 miles done, great! That means I just have 62 miles to go..” But something about seeing the numbers “9-2” on my watch stopped me in my tracks, so to speak. That just seemed like such a huge number - even bigger than 100 for some reason. So I savored those last 8. When I came into the final aid station, I laid down in the grass and looked at the route. I studied my pacing chart and everything I had accomplished in the past 43 hours. I was enjoying the solitude, but I wasn’t truly alone. After a few minutes resting in the grass, and when my body started to shiver again, an aid station volunteer came over to me and asked, “Excuse me, are you number 9? The race management is watching you on GPS and is asking why you haven’t moved in awhile.” So much for solitude. They assured me that there was no rush but they just wanted to make sure I was ok. 

Soon after David pulled ahead and disappeared into the darkness with his bold headlamp, I noticed that mine wasn’t nearly as bright. Then it seemed even dimmer. Though I had changed headlamps for the second night, this new one had batteries that gave out faster than expected. Soon it was too faint to make out the rocky trail and ensure I wouldn’t trip. Is this really where it all falls apart? In dead last place in a 100 mile race, only 7 miles from the finish and I break an ankle because of a dead flashlight? Where was the Eagle Scout who pledged “Be Prepared”? Then I remembered that I had my iPhone with its own flashlight. I pulled that out and holding it at waist level I was able to illuminate the path well enough to see, though the diffused nature of the iPhone light was far inferior to my own typical headlamp. However, for the five miles it took for the first light of dawn to emerge, the iPhone sufficed. I enjoyed its dim light as I sauntered along a brook, both silent and gurgling as it glided past seaweedy banks or tumbled over boulders who’d found their way into its watery world.  I loved this. Savouring the final miles of a long race when others might be trying to beat the clock. I wanted others to beat me. I looked forward to last place. This was a talented field. Though I was still 3 hours ahead of the race cutoff, David and I were nearly two hours behind the next competitor and nearly a full day behind the winner. Just finishing this thing was thrilling enough for me and I wanted to enjoy it all. Across a wooden bridge and through a neighborhood of chalets I, too, was soon caught up in the excitement of finishing and I began ramping up my pace for a speedy arrival at 6:15am, as planned, where my family would be cheering on my finish. The warm glow of morning light seemed to enhance the excitement.

I rounded the backside of the event hotel grounds: “99.2”, read my watch. Past the sports field: “99:4”. Two short uphills towards the finish: “99.7”. I had already decided that if my watch hadn’t clicked over to 100 at the finish line that I would jog around the hotel after the race until it did. Crossing the finish line, I looked down and saw it clicked over just as my foot crossed the threshold: “100.00”. Never before had I used a GPS watch with such satisfaction and precision. How remarkable that all of those extra trips to the bathroom, second trips to the aid station tables, and wrong turns over 45 hours could have led to this perfect moment of synchronicity? 

It was a great experience. My body performed superbly. I had fun. I enjoyed the sights. And I credit it to good training through the summer, consistent energy intake each hour during the run, and maintaining my salt balance with Hammer Endurolites on a consistent basis. Will I do this race again? I don’t know - it was so completely satisfying to finish. There are other summer races I would like to be able to focus on, like the Backyard Ultra. But then again, wouldn’t it be fun to try and cut 10 hours off of my finish time? These are the thoughts that haunt ultra runners in the days that follow a race. Whatever I decide, I hope that cheerful fellow runners like Maud and David are always at my side to bring some light into my darkness. 

Postscript: after returning home and uploading all of the race data from my watch to my Strava social media  account, I was shocked to see that Strava didn’t think that my rollover to 100 miles was quite sufficient. It automatically rounded down my total distance back to 99.99 miles. I guess I still have some work to do - isn’t that the beauty of ever seeking improvement?