24 April 2023

Today’s day 1.

In 19 weeks I’ll try my luck at the so called ‘Little Sister’ of Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, the ‘CCC’. 100km of trail running in the French, Italian and Swiss Alps with a lazy 6000m of climbing.

I’ve been running for a while now, and I’ve done plenty of races, but this one will be the most challenging one. I want to keep a track of my training to both hold myself accountable and to try and extract some learnings as I go. So that’s why we’re here.

Most of what I know I’ve picked up from trawling the Internet, combined with the occasional tidbit from speaking to someone. I know it’s worked fine; some of it must be right. But I’m sure I’m doing a lot wrong. So I’ll use this as a chance to provide a bit of information on what I’ve learned about this funny old sport, and hopefully learn a lot too.

Oh, and it seems like no matter how hard I look there’s no good repository for great Australian trail running training courses. I’ve found a few along the way. So I’ll keep them here too.

A few things to kick us off:

Me and this Site.

Another late thirties dude starting his own podcast blog. Snooooore, right? Sorry.

That’s me. Dad, Husband, Salaryman. Based in the Inner-Inner-West of Sydney, Australia, I’m a parochial Melbournian trying (unsuccessfully) to spread the good word of black skinny-leg jeans, the Hoddle grid and why cold weather is ‘great’.

I’ve been running for a little over ten years. Originally, I was a bit heavier than I wanted to be and just wanted to be able to make the 5km home from the office without stopping. Then I ran a 12km event. Then a half mara. Then I decided it’d be good to tick off a marathon before I turned 30. Then a few more marathons.

Then I met Doug (it’s all Doug’s fault) who told me about trail running. Then I went and started running trails. Then I started doing Ultras. And now I’m here, loving every second of it (but I still blame Doug). I’m not winning any of these races. I’m not trying to. I’m in the middle of the pack; maybe slightly toward the front of it (if I say so myself). I’m usually smiling.

There’s a few things I want to achieve from this site:

• Document my training toward UTMB - CCC. I’m planning to provide a weekly update on how things are progressing. Whilst I’ll be stoaked to just finish this race, I want to use whatever opportunity I have to finish it as strongly as my capabilities will allow (whatever that means).

• Trails library. I’ll use my weekly long runs to build up a list of (hopefully) fun trail running locations that you can try yourself! I’ve always found it tricky to find new and exciting runs, and I’d hope that some of these can save you all some of that trial and error in the future.

• Running tips. I’ve learnt a bit along my running journey. Whilst I’m sure 30% of it is incorrect (at best), enough of it must be right-enough given I’m still going. All I hope is that it helps a few people either start running, keep at it, or enjoy it a bit more.

My Training

For UTMB - CCC I’m rehashing a training plan that I used the first time I ran UTA100. It’s not a massive commitment, but I need to juggle being a good parent and partner, have a demanding job, and try to squeeze in a social life somewhere in between too (ie, I want to have a beer or two on a weekend night). The training plan is an 80/20 plan, based around heart-rate zones, that ordinarily requires two intensive workouts (eg, Fartleks, Hill sprints), three easy runs, one rest day and one long run over a week.

My Kit & Crew

I run in ASICS Kayanos on the roads, and HOKA Speedgoats on the trails, and I’m almost entirely kitted out in LuluLemon (it feels dirty to write that out, but it’s good gear - and you can’t beat that phone-pocket on the thigh). I track my runs on a Garmin Fenix 6s that I picked up off eBay - I hope it’s not stolen, and I hope it’s not fake - either way I love it to bits. Used to ride with the AllSorts but those early starts are too much for me now. Fuck what a group though - check them out if you need a running, riding, swimming, tri, drinking, chatting, coffee swilling etc crew.

The Race

Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc is one of the go to global trail runs. Thousands of runners will descend on the small town of Chamonix in the French Alps to tackle one of a handful of races up and around Mont Blanc. I'll be taking on the 'CCC'. CCC is a 100km race with 6156m of climbing, named for the three towns it takes you through: Courmayeur, Italy; Champex, Switzerland; and Chamonix, France. It's known as the 'little sister' to UTMB, the 171km marque event.

Entries to these distances are by lottery. You tally up 'running stones' from participating in other events and can use those to go into the running (*ahem*). I tackled the UTA100, UTK100 (DNF - more on that another day) and TUM100 over the past year for my entries and, against the odds, managed to get into CCC first time around. Extremely lucky.

There's so much written about these races - go out and have a look - I'll hopefully be contributing my own race report and photos in 5 months time!

It’s about time we wrap this up. Quick snapshot of this week. The training is just warming up. Drops straight into 6 days of work, but all relatively short distances / intensity. That’s good - everyone in the house is sick and I’m just recovering from something myself - so I’m short a few cylinders at the moment. The long run this week is about an hour and a half. I’ll probably start with a classic - out to Centennial Park and back.

Thanks for reading this far. Hopefully that’s a good sign of things to come.