Close, but no cigar... (Running)

Tuesday 07 August 2007 10:52AM

I’m back from the Defi, but my legs still feel like they’ve had the muscles removed and replaced with cardboard!

It’s funny, working out how you should feel about coming second in a race you aimed to win. Disappointed I guess, but it’s not all disappointment. I had five aims before this years Defi, in order of importance:

1. To win 2. To beat Don Naylor (better banter down the pub than just winning) 3. To win the longest stage (since this was where I ran worst last year) 4. To break 17 hours overall 5. To break 5 hours for the longest stage.

I achieved 2, 3 and 4, so pretty chuffed overall.

It’s also hard to be disappointed when just finishing feels such an achievement. I’ve never done another race where at the start even the best runners feel unsure of their ability to complete the race, let compete against each other in it. The first two days are standard format with everyone starting together, but after that they send the slower runners off first at hour intervals. This means the atmosphere for the three toughest stages is fantastic; every few minutes you catch someone and offer each other some encouragement. This doesn’t normally happen in races since the fast runners will only see the slow ones at the start and finish. There is also a mutual respect between fastest and slowest – the slowest can’t get their head round the idea of doing the longest day in 5 1/4 hours, and the fastest are impressed by the endurance required to do back to back days of more than 10 hours running!

All in all an awesome experience.

Full results here. Scroll down to “Resultats complets”.

Digging into the results is quite informative. Both Don and I had a day where we effectively lost the race. For me this was day 2 (etapes 3 and 4), when I lost nine minutes to Benoit in just over two hours of racing (I lost overall by just under eleven minutes). For Don it was Day 5 (etape 7) when he lost 20 minutes to Benoit and 12 to me. To win this race you have to do more than run very well on a few days; you have to never run badly.

Racing Benoit is also educational. I’ve never raced anyone that goes off so hard at the start of a race. On day 5 Don commented that Benoit’s pace over the first 400m was similar to his at the start of a 10km road race (Don has run under 30min for 10km!). We were sure he would die, and that we would reel him back in over the following three and a half hours. He never did, and that day cemented his victory.

For him this was training for the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, the pinnacle of ultra mountain running in the alps, so it’ll be interesting to see how he goes in that!

I’ll post some pictures up as soon as I have them, there were a couple of photographers on each stage, and some of their shots really capture the feel of the race, so watch this space…