Race Report: UTMB CCC 2023

Race: UTMB Mont-Blanc - Courmayeur/Champex/Chamonix (CCC) 2023

Race Start: 9am, Friday 1 September 2023

Distance: 99.8 KM

Elevation: 6156 M+

Time: ~22 hours

This is my race report for UTMB Mont Blanc’s Courmayeur/Champex/Chamonix (aka CCC), the 100km ‘little sister’ of the UTMB 100 miler. Here’s the race profile (and for more details see the UTMB website):

Read all about my training (or lack thereof) over at the Training Blog.

Pre-Race

Editor’s note: skip forward to the Race write up if you want to jump straight into things! Otherwise strap yourselves in. This is a long one.

The few days leading up to the race were a little stressful and not ideal preparation, in part due to external issues but largely self-inflicted ones. I’d flown into London from Australia, and was spending a few days there before flying over to Geneva to head down to Chamonix. My flight to Geneva was late Wednesday night, and on the Monday (a Bank Holiday in the UK) some technical issues with the UK’s flight planning system led to thousands of flight cancellations across the UK and Europe, plunging airports and travel plans all over the region into chaos. Even as late as Wednesday afternoon, I was still getting notices that I needed to check my flight before leaving for the airport to make sure it was still flying as scheduled, and hadn’t been cancelled. My one back up plan was the Eurostar, which looked to still have seats, but I suspected that was the plan of literally everyone else in my position too.

So on Wednesday afternoon I turned up at Heathrow Airport, nervously checking my flight as often as I could, and made my way through customs, security, the pub (that helped calm the nerves a bit), the toilet, the pub again and then off to the gate. An hour delay on the flight meant a nerve-wracking wait, but we finally got on and flew out. Phew! The main consequence of that delay was that I didn’t get into bed at my hotel in Geneva until 1am, and was up soon after that owing to some lingering jetlag and a few commitments that morning. Not as much sleep as I’d wanted two days out from the race!

From Geneva I took the Alpybus airport transfer service recommended by UTMB, with a bunch of other excited runners and supporters, on the hour long drive down to Chamonix. On the bus I checked the location of my accommodation, and was surprised to see it was about 4 kms out of central Chamonix. I think I misread their website, and took the “we’re 5 minutes out of town” message to mean on foot, and not by car. The complexities this was going to cause became more apparent as I researched the public transport options in Chamonix, only to find that they were sparse to this particular location. I’m clearly just far too used to (and entitled by) regular big city transportation timetables! The flow-ons from this were:

• The afternoon before the race, I’d intended to go into Chamonix, soak up the atmosphere, get dinner and do a spot of shopping to get something for breakfast, coffee and some last minute race supplies I needed. I looked at the transport options in and out, and was really just limited to an hour and a half window in town - no biggy though, that was enough to work with. Unfortunately, this all fell apart when the bus that I needed to catch never turned up. They say trail running is more about problem solving than it is about running, and the problem solving was starting early. I looked around for another way into town. Nothing going. I looked around to see whether there were any shops nearby where I could get food and the race things I needed. No such luck. So in the end I opted for dinner at the hotel (which was excellent - great outcome there), decided I’d just find something for breakfast somewhere in the morning and rely on instant coffee for my fix, and go without those race supplies (the main one being spare batteries - bit of a risk, but I had enough spares to cover myself while I recharged my head torch using the powerbank I was going to carry).

• Getting to the race was complicated. Nothing was going to run until well after I needed to be in Chamonix at 6.30am. Nothing except the race-organised buses that were ferrying people in from out of town. Unfortunately, to book those I’d have needed to have work out this issue weeks ahead of when I did. This one is completely on me. My punishment was waking about a bit earlier than I’d have wanted to, and walking an hour to get into Chamonix. Nothing like 5000 steps to warm up before a 100ker!

• Getting home after the race. I had a rough estimate of finishing in 20 hours, and that would have got me back into Chamonix at 5am, a few hours before any of the transport started running. I didn’t waste too much time worrying about this one though - my estimate was very much an estimate, and I had no real idea of when I’d get in, and if it was particularly early the event had an area where runners could sleep afterwards.

So with all that sorted(ish). I did my registration in Chamonix, and got my bib and finish-line drop bag, and then took the train back to the hotel to pack and get ready.

During the afternoon it’d been confirmed that we would only be required to use the standard mandatory gear for the race (and the additional items we’d need for particularly hot or cold weather weren’t needed). With that info, I got all my gear together, ticked everything off against the list and packed it all into my trusty little Saloman 12 litre.

Before:

After:

After that, I ducked down to the hotel restaurant, ate everything they had that looked like it was packing carbs (on reflection, mac and cheese may not be the best pre-race fuel), and put myself to bed ahead of the big day.

My alarm went off at 4.15am (my first of a few alarms - always need some redundancy in there), and with bleary eyes I threw together a strong coffee and sugar sludge out of the stuff in the hotel room, chucked on my gear, brushed my teeth and went on my way. I’d hoped the reception might have been staffed, and I would have been able to grab a coffee and a pastry, but they were away at the time. So I started the cold, slow walk in the dark into Chamonix, hating myself each time one of those fully-booked buses went past. Doh!

My mood picked up as I got closer into town. Having been by myself for most of the walk, the close I got more and more other racers started to line the streets. We all had one destination - a car park where the buses to the start line were to pick us up and take us in. It was hard to be grumpy with so many other excited runners around. My frown was officially turned upside down. We all boarded in an orderly fashion and were whisked out of Chamonix, through the road tunnel that goes under Mont Blanc and into Courmayeur, Italy, where the race starts.

We got there a bit after 7am, and ahead of a 9am race start that meant a bit of time to try and find food and coffee. Thankfully not far from the drop off there was a small cafe inside a sport centre they’d opened up for racers to hang out in pre-race where I was able to grab an espresso, a long black (two coffees seemed needed, and I’ve never been so right in my life), a croissant and a choc au pain. Breakfast of kings.

From there, it was an event-free stroll over to the area where the start line was to handover my finish line drop bag, stand in line for 30 minutes waiting for the toilet, and then join the other starters. It was a lovely crisp morning, already warming up, without a cloud in the sky. A quick look at my watch and I’d done 7000 steps.

Race

Things got off to a bit of a rough start (again, self-inflicted). I jumped into the starting chute in the section sign-posted for my number (mid 4000s), which was the ‘Wave 2’ start - due to leave at 9.15am. At 9.15 the countdown started, and we started moving! Woo hoo! But then we stopped. And stood around for a bit. And a bit longer. I started looking around at the other runners numbers around me, and everyone had bib numbers in the 5000s - I was in the Wave 3 crowd. Oops. Not the end of the world, just meant a slightly delayed start at 9.30. This time 9.30 rolled around, countdown happened and we started for real! Woo hoo!

The race starts with a bit of downhill, rolling through the cobbled streets of Courmayeur. Heaps of people were lining the streets, yelling, clapping and ringing their cow bells - an amazing atmosphere to kick things off. The intel on CCC is that you want to get off to a fast start, because the track bottlenecks after the first few kms and ideally you’re as far in front by then as you can be. This is all true, but I didn’t bother with the sprint start. I figure being held up at the start, if it saves my legs for later on, is a good thing.

So onto that bottleneck. Once we left Courmayeur, the first big climb starts - it’s a brutal 9 km climb that ascends 1400 metres. That’s close to the entire elevation of some of the 100 km races I’ve done! The climb meanders up a relatively wide trail along a creek, before we ground to a halt (the aforementioned bottleneck) at the start of a series of switchbacks where the path narrows to single trail and the climb starts for real.

There was a jovial atmosphere, as most of us waited our turn to funnel into the trail. The small number of people who jumped ahead of the queue were met with (I think) well earnt jeers and boos. To quote George Costanza: We’re living in a society! We’re supposed to act in a civilized way! I don’t think anyone’s individual time or circumstances come ahead of anyone else's (at least at this end of the peloton), and if things meant you were behind the rest of us funnelling into these switchbacks why should we be held back so you can get a few positions ahead? Rant over.

The switchbacks wound their way up lush green forests, and slowly revealed a beautiful view back into the valley that Cormayeur sits in. After a fair bit of climbing, the terrain starts to turn mountainous as we shift above the forest and into more barren, sparse, rocky terrain. From there it’s a steep climb for the rest till we hit the summit at Tete de la Tronche.

If anything, I think I’m a fairly strong climber, and with the walking pace we were moving along at, I got to the top of the climb in good physical shape. The real battle here was mental - I’m super scared of heights, and running around on the edge of steep and loooong drop-offs is generally not my idea of a good time. I suspect that for most Europeans, or anyone who lives anywhere that isn’t pancake flat, these don’t even register on the fear-o-metre but it was enough for me. A quick little internal dialogue followed. We’re an hour into this mountainous run, at least another 19 to go, and there’s going to be a lot more of this to come. We either bail now (and go back down the scary hill we just climbed), or agree to ignore the heights from here on in. Ignore them? Ok. Deal. It’s never worked before, but seemed to do the job this time around (although I still always ran on the side of the path furthest from the drop off - that’s just common sense).

From Tete de la Tronche we head downhill for 4 kms to Refuge Bertone, the first checkpoint. The food was all relatively standard fare at this stage, water, biscuits, fruit, and bars and energy drink from the race’s nutrient sponsor Naak. In a slightly unusual twist, I was told I was only allowed one Naak bar at this checkpoint - this was a bit concerning given the race doesn’t use drop bags, so I’d been planning to stock up on these at each opportunity. No hassle, I’d brought enough of my own food to bridge the gap and would just eat a bit extra of the things that weren’t being rationed. So I ate what I needed, topped up my water, grabbed a bit of stuff to eat as I left and walked out of the checkpoint. Then suddenly realised my poles were still in the checkpoint, and went back in to retrieve them. Crisis averted.

The next section through to checkpoint 2 at Arnouvaz was 12.6 km of (relatively speaking) flat running along the side of an impressive valley, with gorgeous views back toward Courmayeur. We continued along single trails, up and down the smaller hills, past many many cows with their fantastic bronze cow bells. I was feeling much more fatigued than I ordinarily would have for ~20 kms into a race, which was mainly attributable to the large mountain I’d run up earlier, but also due to taking the downhill out of there a little too fast (it’s just so much fun though!) and the few nights of awful sleep I’d had leading into the race.

The next big climb was 600-odd metres up Grand Col Ferret. Another relatively sparse mountain, with a steep finish, which had some of the final remnants of snow from winter along the trails. It was a relatively uneventful climb, with my only observation being that the race had definitely spread out a bit by this point, and while there were still plenty of runners around me, nothing like the bottleneck from the first climb.

Having peaked Grand Col Ferret and moved into Switzerland, we had a long descent of over 1000 metres ahead of us, with a checkpoint at La Fouly on the way. This was where my first real issues with the race came up. My quads were absolutely cooked from the descents we’d done to this point (which, comparative to the rest of the race, wasn’t too much at that point). After a few hundred metres of descending, my inner leg muscles were on the verge of cramping with each step down. Bad sign early on! I decided to do a little body check at this point to try keep morale at an acceptable level - how were the feet feeling, how were the calves feeling, how were the quads feeling, how was the back feeling, and how was the head feeling. Everything was fine, except those quads. The day had been quite warm, and I’d sweat a lot so was probably quite low on salt, which wouldn’t have been helping those near-cramps. So I made a mental note to get as much salt in as I could at the next stop (and, for next time, to carry salt tablets). The checklist did the job, and I was sufficiently buoyed again to keep on running and get the bad thoughts out of my head.

At the end of about 15 kms of downhill from Grand Col Ferret, we run through a few towns at the bottom of a small valley, including the very picturesque Arlaches, which was full of gorgeous wooden chalets dating back as far as the early 1700s. A very welcome distraction for tired legs. Unfortunately my willingness to take photos at this point was low, so nothing to show you.

In my notes from the section from Praz de Fort to Champex-Lac I’d written ‘down and up (mild)’, which was slightly at odds with the 616m of climbing I’d also noted for that section, and the various runners I was with all mentioning the big climb into Champex-Lac. There was nothing mild about the climb, which involved a number of steep switchbacks on dirt paths up through a forest. Exhausting.

The race’s biggest checkpoint was at the halfway mark at Champex-Lac - a much larger checkpoint, with lots of hot food available. A very salty bouillon and pasta to help with the cramps. They had this combination (sometimes noodles instead) at every checkpoint, and it was a lifesaver. The salt kept my body in check, the carbs were an easily digestible source of energy, and the warm broth made it easier to leave the aid stations later on as the night got colder. Unhelpfully, when I sat down at Champex-Lac I received a message that my bus to Milan the next day, which I desperately needed to get to, had been cancelled. So I was quickly distracted from the run, as I sorted out some much more mundane logistics. Finally, with a new bus booked, and a belly full of bouillon, I was back on my way. At this point, I was about 9 hours into the run, and just over the halfway mark - theoretically putting me on track for 18 hours, but allowing for some second half of the race fatigue, more likely to be closer to the 20 hours I was expecting.

The run out of Champex-Lac follows a small body of water, the Champex-Lac if you will, for a little while before sending you if into the bush again. As we were getting out, the last light of the day was fading, so it was headtorches out for everyone and into the second half of the race. If running in the dark has one benefit (there's has to be at least one right?), it's that it's a change of scene, breaking the monotony of a day of hard running. And nothing keeps you distracted like madly focusing on every hard to see rock, root and puddle on the path and you sprint through the night. From Champax-Lac, we had a relatively flat 5km to Plan de l’Au, before we started up another brutal 900 metre climb toward La Giete.

My memory of locations gets a little hazy here, but at some point at this stage of the race we had a drinks checkpoint in an old wooden refuge (or something like that!), and I took the opportunity to sit for a bit and have more of that delicious Bouillon. After a few minutes I got up, stepped outside, and promptly spun around and went back inside when I felt how cold it had suddenly gotten. In truth, I suspect it was a combination of the cooler temperature and my apparent inability to regulate my own body temperature late in races. So the warm jumper I’d brought with me, waterproof jacket, gloves and beanie all went on, and back out again I went. Still a bit cold, but I knew it wouldn’t take long to warm up again once I was moving.

Out of La Giete, we're back into a long downhill toward Trient. My only firm memory of this entire section is the Trient checkpoint, which was heaving with life - by this point the bar in the supporters area had been handing out beers for a while, and I think they may have just kicked in around then. Absolute party. Nothing for me though but my sweet warm bouillon.

From here we're into a much more reasonable 650m climb up to Les Tseppes (I'd clearly lost all sense of reality by this point. Nothing reasonable about that). And it was about here that the wheels came off.

The very steep downhill from Les Tseppes to Vallorcine was an absolute battle on my tired quads. My pace dropped to slower than walking pace, as I achingly eased myself through each step down the hill, carefully straddling each rock and stair. I was overtaken by plenty of runners all either going at a quick hike or running. Very demoralising as I hobbled along.

The Vallorcine checkpoint was the low point of the race. I was emotionally drained from the downhill section leading into the checkpoint, extremely tired (it was about 3am at this point) and while it hadn’t been an issue yet, I could feel my stomach was close to rejecting more food. Notwithstanding my concerns I knew I was low on nutrition - the three substantive foods an hour strategy had gone out the window with the fatigue. In a high risk manoeuvre, I sucked back one of the Naak apple pouches they had (baby food for adults), knowing I'd get a guaranteed 200 calories into me, and hopefully some of the other jazz they put into those would help too. I sat down at an available bench, and put my head on the table to close my eyes for a few minutes. My watch needed a charge (I managed to catch it at 1% battery left!), so I used that to time the break, waiting until it was at 30% to get going again. That didn’t take too long, and with the small amount of rest, I stood up and trekked out into the night once more.

As we turned a corner soon after Vallorcine, I looked up and recognised a few lights on Mont Blanc that I’d seen the night before from Chamonix - the end was close! I knew there was just one big climb ahead of me at this point. Unfortunately, this is an area where my very shorthand course notes left me in a bit of strife - all I’d noted for this section was ‘Fifth climb mid way through’, when in fact the section comprises two climbs, a short one and then a longer one. Going up the first climb (thinking it was the only one), my race-weary brain couldn’t work out why I couldn’t see any torches further up the hill I was going up, and nor could I understand how I’d completed the climb so quickly, and about 700m short of the amount of climbing I needed. That first climb up to Bechar has a steep and very technical descent after it and, once again, I was let down by my exhausted quads on this. Similar to the “run” into Vallorcine, I was treading very carefully one step at a time, and being overtaken by countless other runners. Morale was low again. Then we started climbing again. And climbed. And climbed. And climbed. The (real) final climb takes you up to La Flegere, which is where one of the chairlifts from Chamonix unloads on the opposite side of the Chamonix valley from Mont Blanc. It was a gruelling climb that just kept going (as a general rule, running anywhere near a chairlift/skilift/gondala sucks), with the occasional audible ‘faaark’ coming from me as I turned a corner only to find another steep climb.

Finally, I hit the top. A small tent, with water and a little bit of food. I sat for a bit, and took an opportunity to reflect on the poor life decisions I’d made that led me to this point. I pulled myself together again and stood up. As I left the tent, the sun was rising over the valley. A very welcome sight after a long night in the cold dark. At this point the end was, quite literally, in sight (at the bottom of the valley). Just 6.8 kms and 800m of descending and I’d be there. The combination of the sun, and end being so close (and, not to be petty, but the strong desire to overtake someone who I’d recognised as a queue jumper from the bottleneck at the start of the climb up to Tete de la Tronche), gave me the motivational boost I needed to take back control in this last section. I wasn’t going to leave anything on the course, wasn’t going to suffer another demoralising descent and figured if I tore a quad at this point I’d still be able to finish - so I threw caution to the wind, and just opened up on the downhills. It hurt. But then it hurt less. Maybe all they’d needed this whole time was just some proper activation, to warm up, and they’d have been fine. Whatever it was, it felt great. The start of the downhill was a kilometre or so of gravel road, then it turned a few kms of paths through the trees (which, thankfully, weren’t too technical), first single trail, and then opened up to a wider path as we got closer to the bottom. It felt great cruising down those, and gaining back a few places (not that my place was ever that important). The only bad thing from this section was that my watch died about halfway through, without warning, and so my Strava ended up a few kms short (suboptimally for those mild OCD tendencies, just short of 100km AND just metres short of 6000m of climbing). This begs the question, did I really finish the race if my Strava didn’t record it all?

The trails finally spat me out on the backstreets of Chamonix, and the path soon ended up coming along the river that runs into town. People talk about how special it is running into Chamonix and finishing this race, and they’re not wrong. What happens during that final kilometre of the race is such a testament to the race, to the town and to the crowds that come along. You feel like you’re in first place, as the people lining the course yell your name and clap you on. My emotional regulation is pretty rough at the best of times during races, but I don’t think anyone could do that and not give the tear ducts a workout.

I crossed the line, went to stop my watch (unnecessary) and stepped into the usual confusion that is the post-race area. Where do I go, who has my medal, what do I do with my life now? Thankfully all pretty easy things to answer. Next stop was two Hoka stands, one to collect my finishers’ vest (my very low body temperature says thanks!) and finishers’ hot dog (I don’t think it’s the official finishers hot dog, but rather the hot dog I got after finishing). They don’t do medals for the race (not sure why, it’ll be a notable omission from my vase of medals, but I don’t care that much). And my next move was clearly to retire from running effective immediately (a day later and I’d softened on that slightly).

After the race, I checked through the many lovely messages of support I’d got. Completely overwhelmed by the number of people who reached out to say they were tracking my progress and congrats on finishing. Shucks you guys. I made my way over to the area where the end of race drop bags were kept, grabbed my gear and jumped on the train back to the hotel. I shuffled through the hotel and up to my room for that all important post-race shower, where as much as I could with my very limited mobility scrubbed off the accumulative dirt of 22 hours on the trails. As the warm water hit my neck and arms I also realised how awfully sunburnt I’d gotten out there. Rookie error for an Aussie, I’d forgotten to slip, slop, slap the entire race (notwithstanding carrying sunscreen the entire way with me) and was crispier than your favourite roast pork belly. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

My bus change meant that I needed to book another hotel in Chamonix for that night, so I got an hour or so of awful sleep (it’s never good post race, and this was no exception), spoke to my wife (who noted that I looked as bad as I felt), then repacked my bags and slowly trekked off to my next destination. Plan was (successfully achieved!) to stay awake until at least dinner time then crash in the hotel, before having to get up at 3am to get my rescheduled bus to Milan. So I dropped off my gear, and went back into central Chamonix to clap on more finishers, eat ice cream and buy some aloe vera (all it took was the chemist seeing the back of my neck to quickly point me in the right direction for the fridge that had it!).

As I was finishing up in town, we got notice over the PA that Courtney Dauwalter who was winning the Women’s 100 miler would be coming in shortly. So I grabbed a spot as close to the barrier as I could get (probably 4 people back - it was so busy), and saw her come through and finish. Wow. That crowd went nuts. Massive year for Courtney, becoming the first person to win UTMB, Western States and Hardrock in the same season - such an inspiration.

As planned, the next morning I was up at a sparrow’s, walking through Chamonix at 4am to find my bus. Even then, the atmosphere was still so electric, as a slow stream of runners from the 100 mile race finished and were each given the same unparalleled treatment that every other finisher enjoyed. So special.

Post Race Thoughts

Thanks for perservering through that! Hope you’ve enjoyed the read. I’ll wrap things up with a few final thoughts:

• This race was everything it promised to be. Challenging beyond all belief, but made manageable by the awe-inspiring scenery you’re running through and the support of thousands of people along the way. I, and everyone who said it before me, means it when they talk about that village atmosphere. In a once in a lifetime race, that’s a once in a lifetime feeling.

• UTMB’s tech for people following the race is like nothing I’ve seen before. First, they used the excellent LiveTrails app to provide runner info back to anyone following from home (and, although I was too scared to turn it on in case it destroyed my phone battery, it also has the option to use your phone’s GPS to track your exact movements). Then the live cams they had set up at number of the checkpoints were such a handy tool for everyone back home to get a little glimpse of how I was going along the way - and if they didn’t capture it live (it’s very hard to pinpoint when someone is coming through!), from my runner’s profile on the website you could get a little clip of me going through each point after the fact. So good.

• I was a bit worried about nutrition coming into the race. The lack of personal drop bags along the way would mean I had less control of my nutrition than I’d ordinarily have, and be more dependent on what was supplied along the way. In the end, this was fine. I had enough of my own preferred nutrition (Clif Bloks and Maurten) to fill the gaps, and the checkpoints had a good variety of things so I could grab whatever I needed at that point in time. I think you find your go-to checkpoint food at each event and for me that was the bouillon and pasta/noodles here. I probably drank a litre of the stuff. Yum, yum. Special shout out to the very European inclusion of cheese and cured meats into the checkpoints - not what I’d ordinarily turn my mind to during a race, but I have to say the salty salami went down a treat!

• For me, it was how my legs held up on those downhill sections that held my own race back from being perfect. Reflecting on things a few days later (after I’d decided not to retire completely from running), it’s just something I need to add into my training - a combination of downhill speed sessions and (unfortunately) some strength training. It’s encouraging to know that this is something I can take control of and, hopefully, improve on to remove some of the downpoints in races such as these.

I’ll wrap things up (properly) this time with a huge thanks to everyone at home who was supporting me and keeping an eye on things. It was completely surprising, and very overwhelming, to receive the many messages of support afterwards. Thank you so much. One massive thanks, in particular, to my wife, who went so far above and beyond what was necessary (which, given the countless hours I’d been out of the house, was nothing at all!) to support me, rally support at home from friends and family, and to let people know what was going on with the race. She even organised a surprise going away party before I left! Spoilt. Thanks honey. Love you.