The kids soccer games kicked off today. This sort of thing will be my weekend mornings for the next couple of months.
More on the possible Long Canyon reroute.
Daryn P’s marathon report.
It is a little bit of navigation through some translation software, but Killian appears to be a bit critical of race officials for their decisions at UTMB. Apparently, the race might even be restarted in some fashion.
PM – 10 miles easy. Warm.
I speak fluent French, here's what he said:
ReplyDeleteThe 2010 edition of the UTMB had created such an expectation due to a field depth never before seen. The weather forecast called for hard conditions, rain and cold at altitude; but isn’t that also the mountain? A mountain is not only sunny, green fields, flowers and cows. But it’s also rocks, storms, snow.. that is what creates the mountainman spirit. We are further and further from this spirit, and even if these courses take the name of “mountain” we never see it. More and more rolling courses, removal of technical sections because they’re “too dangerous”, and cancellations because of the first drop of rain. We are mountainmen and not athletes! Thankfully, we still have the races like Ultratrail of Andorra or Zegama Aizkorri that are capable of respecting the runners and letting the runners decide how far they are capable by their on recognissance and technical ability to finish.
It’s true that the UTMB is different animal; even if she takes the name Mont Blanc, it is not a technical course, and instead is accessible at a technical level that meets the minimum preparation, it is this degree of technical access with a defiance of distance that has made it so popular and has allowed runners without much mountain experience to participate. It’s good, because it makes our sport more popular, and it’s true that the decision to stop the race today was decided (I hope) based on the danger for runners who are not used to cold and stormy weather. Hence dangerous to cross the Bonhome and Seigne passes. What makes it incomprehensible and shameful is that with a budget of around 1 million euros (my guess based on registration fees and sponsors) they are not capable of having an alternative course, run a different route, where there are trails even under rocks!! Here is the problem with registration fees... do they reimburse them? Defer them to next year? The UTMB is a big engagement for a runner, they train for over a year, take time off work and.or convince their families… it’s going to be hard to find a good solution…
One cannot think about it too much and turn the page, so we decided along with other runners such as Geoff Roes, Karl Meltzer, Nicolas Mermoud… to go run the KIMA Trophy, in Italy, at the World Championships of Skyracing. So I would like to thank Marino Giacomettim president of the ISF, and the organization for having signed uu up so quickly and helped us find lodging.
Yeah, I got the general take on it. It seems they ran some semblance of the race today.
ReplyDeleteWow much respect to Kilian, well said.
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