Still Alp - obsessed

This blog post is certainly out of sequence...

Today, December 15th 2016, I entered a race in the Alps.

Typical of my "blogging career" to date, I left off blogging months ago, whilst not even half way through posting about the Tour du Mont Blanc. Maybe it's because this is meant to be a blog about running (mainly) and I'd already blogged about all the proper running that took place on the trip. I may return to it, especially as I have some great photos to share, but then again, I may not.

I knew setting off on the TDMB that I would be leaving some gaps and that Lisa, in particular would have at least 60 km of the total "unwalked".

Lisa and I parted the ways on the last Saturday, which was spent entirely in Switzerland, and was mainly downhill walking in the Swiss Val Ferret, dodging numerous showers. Perhaps prophetically we decided to walk right down the valley (leaving the TDMB route) to the railway junction town of Orsieres.

Lisa ceremonially binned her cheap poles and got her connection to Martigny and the around Lac Leman to Geneva and home while I "cheated" and got the bus up to Champex Lac for my last day of walking on the Sunday.

Since coming home in early July, the running has continued to go pretty well. It's been relatively easy to get into a routine of running virtually every day. Cocoa needs exercise and so obviously loves tearing around up on the moor, and I am finding it easy both to the find the time and the incentive to get out. But somehow or other I had convinced myself that I no longer needed to be competitive in my running, despite the fact that it should be obvious that goal setting had always dominated my periods of regular running. Gradually as the year has passed, I've seen some goals appear out of the mists that I frequently encounter on my moorland runs (that was a bit of a laboured metaphor, sorry). I've been steadily accumulating miles, and perhaps more significantly, elevation gain and loss, in my running stats. Today I'm looking at 3300 km of running and 100,000 m of elevation for 2016 in my Strava profile. I've dared to imagine myself as a budding mountain runner due to a combination of relatively untroubled hiking with a 7 kg pack on the TDMB and daily uphill and downhill running every day on Dartmoor.

It was in October 2012 that I ran the one and only Ultramarathon of my running life, a 48km low key event in Nottinghamshire, without a great deal of "vert". Two and a half weeks ago, I ran another one, but this time it was 54km and with over 2400m of vertical gain and loss. I'm 4 years older, but now I have the hills well and truly in my legs, so finishing had to be a realistic goal, didn't it? (I will blog on this in separate post.) Finishing would mean 1 magical "UTMB Qualification Point".

And that's what I now have, so I have entered the OCC, the shortest of the 5 races in UTMB week. The odds of getting in are about 2.5 to 1 against, but if I fail these odds are double in my favour for 2018.

OCC stands for Orsieres - Champex - Chamonix, 55km mostly on the TDMB route and appropriately, at least 2/3 of it is on sectors that I missed last summer.

I have a goal - if I get in - and if not I will just have to find another one....

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy