Defi de L'Oisans (Running)

Saturday 21 July 2007 03:43PM

The Defi de l’Oisans, a mountain running stage race in the Ecrins, starts next week (first stage is 29th of July). I ran the race last year, coming a close second to eight times winner Benoit Laval. This year I’m keen to go one better.

Unfortunately, I’ve been talking excitedly about this race ever since coming back from last years, which led to my friend Nonald Naylor also signing up to race. Don is an ex international steeple chaser who has turned his attention to fell and ultra races in recent years. Talk about making life hard for myself.

So it looks like it’ll be at least a three horse race, maybe more I guess, seeing as there’s a whole load of french people in the start list that I’ve never heard of! I’ve been training hard though, and feel much fitter than last year, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pays off. Not been doing much of anything recently though, it’s been very wet so not much climbing, and I’ve not been racing as I got an ankle injury that has taken ages to heal. Hopefully it’ll hold up to 200km in the Ecrins!

My mum’s going to be putting updates online since quite a few friends have asked to be kept updated, so there should be something going up every night or so with positions and times for each day…