Chamonix, with Mont Blanc above.
The start, in the middle of Chamonix is very exciting, 4:30 pm, with Mont Blanc looming overhead, and thousands of people lining the streets. About 2,300 runners from something like 74 nations line up, all dressed to the nines in ultraware, looking something like astronauts or polar explorers, because of all of the required gear. It was hot, maybe 75°F, though everyone was carrying or wearing winterish gear for the mountains. Trois, Deux, Un, we're off.
Race photo of the start 2013
Running through the streets of Chamonix feels like the films of Tour de France, close crowds leaning in screaming Allez Allez, and cowbells ringing, Bravo!
The first few miles are flattish. I was in the back and we were just doing 9-10 min miles, people were excited to get going but also it was crowded, so pace was modest. We passed through a small town, then ascended Delevret, the first obstacle, maybe a 3,000 foot small mountain that was rural but not undeveloped, there were houses, a pig farm. Lots of people along the way cheering. To be honest, that first climb seemed long to me, though it was really the least of the troubles on the profile.
Official UTMB race profile
I took some pictures along the way (note: waste of time messing around with iPhone in and out of ziplock bag, since the small rugged waterproof camera I was going to use stopped working during trip). At one point I was trying to take a picture while running and hit the deck and dinged my knee pretty hard (note: should be a run, not really a tour). After that I resolved no more pictures. Plenty of race pictures on the UTMB Facebook photo page. Descent of Delevret was pretty steep but doable. I had to stop and relace my shoes, since I always wear them pretty loose, but on this steep a descent I was banging the front of my toes in the shoebox every step, and getting hotspots on the bottom of my feet; tighter lacing helped, but didn't eliminate toe impacts. At the bottom, a small town St. Gervais, more crowds, and an aid station. Here I lost 10 minutes or so, since my whole backpack and front pack was cumbersome to clip on and off and there were crowds and I had trouble getting to the water, and getting to my water bladder and electrolyte tabs while fumbling with ?20 lb bag. Then out of town and a long slog of about 4,500 feet ascent to the first high pass.
Along this route is the first aid station where crew can meet. My crew of one, David Baum, met me there. He is a member of my wife's extended family who grew up Nashville but now lives in France. I had planned to get to this aid station at 9:30 pm and in fact arrived 9:45 so was almost on target. I called him once about an hour out and then 2 minutes out using my cheap new little unlocked phone with a French SIM (required equipment for UTMB). I intensely disliked this phone since I had only had service one day and didn't really know how to use it well. I was trying to use the keypad to manage the texts and calls, with a lot of the text in French, while running in the dark. The phone company spammed me in French a couple of times while running (essentially, Welcome to Orange phone service!!) and the run organizers sent some texts in French, which were kinda irrelevant. But a little disconcerting to be messing with the device I didn't know getting texts while running. Anyway, Dave had helped me the night before to program the keypad lock and his number, so at least I could call him.
I called him just about time of arrival. The aid station was packed and noisy. I was hoping Dave could take care of the filling the bladder thing, which was so cumbersome, but the assistants were really not allowed into the area with water and food so I struggled with the pack and water thing again for 5 or 10 min, using a garden hose essentially. The food at the aid station was not for me, cookies, sausage, cheese, I didn't see anything I thought I could eat. Fortunately, I had forced myself to eat exactly per my plan, in fact I was ahead of schedule, which was 300 cal/hour. I taken in about 1650 by the time of that aid station (5 hours 15 min into run), eating nearly everything I had brought for the first 5-6 hours, so I was perfect and on target. I had a good and practiced plan of ProBars, Gu Roctane, Sport Beans, beefstick, Twizzlers, Honey Stinger waffles. When I emerged from the aid tent and found Dave, he helped me to unpack some of the warm stuff, gloves, coat and capris and put it all on, and get my headlamp on. I asked him for food to restock about 2,500 calories or so, all of the bars and sport beans I had brought, but then we realized I had not communicated well, Dave knew I had brought food at the start but thought I had enough for the first 50 miles, but really I decided to bring only for the 31 km=19 miles to this aid station to save weight. Dave had scrambled to buy some French fruit bars, so I took all of those and was off into the dark. (note: write your crew plan out for them, provide prepackaged deliveries of supplies, not vague instructions or principles. Even a highly motivated and generous crew member(s) like I had cannot deliver you what you want or need if you do not make it very clear what that is).
The next couple of segments were continued ascent, but not terrible. Some of "stops" on the course map are really just points of interest without any aid or even chip scanning, which was disconcerting because at one point we had passed Notre Dame Gorge a long time back I was not sure if we were there yet or not. When I don't know where I am on the course, I find it confusing to manage mentally, and in this case it was kinda hard to communicate with other runners because most did not really speak English and I did not have enough French to say, "did we pass Notre Dame yet"? When I got to La Balme (39 km=24 miles) we had actually been doing some climbing, honestly for me it was harder and more sustained climbing than I ever do. Since the town of St. Gervais we had climbed about 2,000 feet, but that was only the base of the climb we were to do. In La Balme I did the water fill from spigot thing again with flailing, but worse because I couldn't fit the pack with bladder under their spigot so I had to fill it with my expandable cup, which took some time, fiddling, spilling. Maybe took 5-10 minutes. Another thing I was figuring out is my pack was so compressed with all of the required clothing that my bladder was probably only taking 500 ml instead of 1.5 L like usual. (note: I will be dry without water much of the race. I did buy a water bottle at the expo cause someone warned me about bladder filling issues at UTMB and I used it at a few stops, but somewhere early in the race it dropped from my pack, I did not notice, very unfortunate). It was cold and I was wet, and in the minutes I was filling water I started shivering. I should have gone inside the aid tent (or noticed the nearby fire) but I didn't and my first impulse was to put my pack down and root around in there and get my required waterproof pants and winter hat out and get those on. I did find them and dress, with lots of fumbling with headlamp and pack, by the time I was done with that I was shivering uncontrollably. I got over to the aid tent, got some chicken soup but it was not warm, had been sitting a bowl for a while. It was the first food I had had for maybe 2 hours, and I drank a cup of Coke or two. So, without my typical food items I was falling behind on nutrition and failed to compensate, I was flustered with that, but couldn't visualize eating anything they had except soup and Coke. I resolved for the time being to use Coke for nutrition until I could figure things out but that was a bad decision because many of the stops have nothing or just water not even Coke, so in the end, that was a fatal error. I was still shivering, then realized there was a fire and I went and sat by the fire for maybe 15 min, shivering the whole time. I couldn't stop teeth chattering even suited in winter gear and sitting 2 feet from a fire. Then, I realized I was 15 minutes from the cutoff time, which was unthinkable, I have never been anywhere near a cutoff time, so I realized I had to get out. So I leaned almost into the fire for a minute, stopped shivering, and started running. After about 5 minutes of running I was warm and no shivering. [There were a lot of mistakes and lessons here - pack needs to be super nimble and easy, water filling for this race is much much better with bottles than bladder, warm clothes need to ready to go, very easily accessible, best to dress in a wind protected place, not out in wind and cold, also, basically, if I had spent only 3 minutes in the aid station to get water and move on I would have been fine, would have never gotten hypothermic, which cost me 30 min, and I should have eaten some foods there even if I did not like the idea of any of what was available).
Now I am setting off onto one of the steepest climbs of the race, the Croix du Bonhomme. In retrospect I was neither mentally nor physically prepared for a climb of this grade or length, especially not at altitude, it is over 8,000 feet. I did plenty of 85-105 mile weeks, and a lot of my weekend trail runs had >6,000 total feet of total elevation gain (in say 30 miles). But total elevation gain does not tell the whole story. Sustained grade is something I am not used to, the only experience I had with this in 2013 were three long runs in Mount Mitchell, NC area, one of which was Black Mountain Marathon in Feb. The trail was rocky, sometimes wet, and very steep, basically this was like walking on a very steep stair stepper. We climbed 1,600 feet in about 3 km (I calculate this to be about 14% average grade). Everyone one was single file on the single track trail, so we kind of all locked into a steady pace of power-hiking basically, but my heart rate was maxing out recurrently, I was just in the red zone for a long time (in retrospect possibly influenced by the fact that I was not eating, taking in enough fluid and electrolytes, and I had just been hypothermic). I decided to listen to my heart rate and kept stepping out of line every 50 steps or so to let my heart rate come back down, which was awkward to step out and in of line recurrently. When you look up the mountain, there is an endless line of headlamps to what seems like the top of the mountain, but this is a falsehood, since when you are on the mountain the sides to the peak roll away from you (you can't see the peak when you are on the side) and the effect is that no matter how far you have climbed that line of headlamps is still the same length, in other words you can't tell if you are making progress, if you are "getting close" or not. That climb seemed like it took forever, and in fact, I was going very slowly. Finally, at 2 am I hit the peak of the Croix du Bonhomme. I looked at my little laminated course card that I had made and suffered another mistake. I had typed in that the cutoff time at the next station on the backside at the bottom of this climb was 2 am, so I looked at the card and realized the unthinkable, that I just missed the cutoff and my race was over. My phone dinged off with a text and I didn't even look at it, I figured it was a French text from the race telling me I missed cutoff. Wow that was a bad feeling, and I was kinda depleted anyway from the climb and now many hours of not eating. I knew it was one of the very highest points of the course, and I was basically alone right after the little table where they scan your number (no aid) and so I just turned off my lights and looked up. It was completely dark, and the sky was cloudless, so the sky was filled with stars and the dark shadow of the range of the peaks of the Alps was all surrounding and I had a classical mountaintop moment when I thought, it was worth it just for this, and I still do believe in God and I dearly love my wife and my family. I am not sure why all that came at once, but it was an immediate involuntary epiphany.
So, I am tapped out and on the top of a cold mountain, there is nothing to do but get down the back side. I sort of half-heartedly jog down the back, I was not really pushing things, cause again, I thought I had missed the cutoff. I didn't have any water and hadn't eaten for hours, but thought no matter, I am about to stop. I am processing the disaster of not finishing all the way down, just shocked by it, and thinking what I will say to my family and friends. The whole hour I am trying to figure out what just happened to me, and how I will deal with it. At 3:15 am I get to the station at the bottom, they scan me in, I wait for them to strip my number or something but they don't, they pass me on to the next table, for replacement headlamp batteries. I ask the woman in my minimal-to-zero French about the barriere horaires (cutoff time) and she tells me no, it is not 2 am it is 4 am at this station. Yikes, I had written the wrong cutoff or a time from another year or something (note: just a typo or something, not sure how to prevent but this cost me dearly in terms of mental management of the race), but I am faced with the reality that I am still live in the race, even though I have been kinda slacking it for 1:15 on the way down and feeling sorry for myself and mourning the loss. So, on the fly, I had to reboot. Oddly, I did the same usual flail with water. The water was outside and I futz with the pack and bladder to try to get it filled and the senior lady who only speaks French is trying to help but is just making it worse (did I spend 5- 10 again putting water in my bladder, outside in the cold?? yes). I start shivering again. I go in the aid station, there is chicken soup, I eat a bowl of that and 2 cups of Coke. I need more, but am too nauseated to consider anything. But hanging inside the tent eating is warmer than outside, so I get the shivering under control there. I look at my course card (what else is wrong on this??) and start getting my mind back around what is the next climb etc, since I had already switched off. I go back and get new batteries for my headlamp and flashlight. Someone mentions in German (I don't speak, but get the idea) the cutoff is now 15 min away (meaning I spent 30 min in this aid station just for water, batteries and to drink a couple of cups of stuff?? I don't know how that happened; note: max 5 minutes in these stations, its not just the time, the loss of body temperature is triply time damaging). I plunge out into the darkness. About five minutes into running I warm up, the Coke kicks in, I realize my race is back on and I start to get excited about my new lease on life, and I feel better than I have for many hours. Life is almost good. This feeling didn't last very long.
The next segment is about a 3,000 foot climb to the top of one of the highest points, the Col de la Seigne. I push upward, but on this climb there are far fewer people around, so I can set my own pace, which, albeit slow, is mine and I didn't have to keep stepping out of line. It is a long climb. At one point, I saw a very large cat in my headlamp scoot across the trail and up a tree, then sat looking at me with green reflected retina. After the race, Dave helped me figure out this was a rare lynx. Very cool moment. This climb too just seems to go on and on. I am moving slowly. I am completely out of water for a long time. I crossed a stream, so took off my pack, get out my expandable cup, drink several cups of water, then try to fill my bladder cup by cup. I fiddle around for a few moments to get my electrolyte tabs out and into the bladder and resealed. I am crouched at the stream for 5-10 min doing this. I am so very glad to have some fluids and for the first time in a long time not just water but also with the Nuun tablets I usually religiously use. I never drink straight water while running. The thought crosses my mind I might be low on electrolytes since I know exactly how to manage salts with Nuun tablets, but in this race that has been all messed up, and I drank a lot of water. Hyponatremic dehydration is really one of the principal medical risks of this type of running, and I know this as a physician and am usually very careful about this. Fortunately, I had kind of a backup plan, which I almost never use, but did bring in the front of my pack, S-caps, which instead of mixing in the water you can just take directly as capsules, and I was taking these periodically to accommodate for the lack of Nuun in all of the water I was drinking; in retrospect I probably did ok with this, but have less confidence/experience with S-caps so was vaguely concerned about this in the back of my mind the whole time.
Near the top, my vision was fogging, I am feeling wobbly, I am pretty sure because there was a fine mist blowing over the top of the mountain and hitting my glasses, but the thought crossed my mind that the visual stuff was real and meant I might be about to pass out because I was so low and calories and fluids. Finally I am well above the tree line for a while, and the land is just sort of tundra and grass, and it is 6 am and the sun starts to rise slowly, and sunrise occurs just as I summit the Col de la Seigne. From the top, the Alps are spectacular and rosy and beyond any postcard image one can imagine. That was a very magical visual moment, but also I felt drained. There is no aid at the top, just a few guys to scan your number. I leaned against their little plexiglass house, then asked if I could come in out of the cold for a second, and got a couple of electrolyte tablets in, and then was bold enough to ask if they had any Coke, and they did share with me a cup from their staff foods. Then they told me I was 40 minutes away from the next cutoff at the bottom, so I bolted out and down the mountain. I was running the most I could at this point, since getting to the cutoff (about 5 or 6 km, 3 miles-ish) in that time was only on the edge of possibility with the paces I had been running previously. I got down the mountain, I felt like I was really pushing it. I got to the station, got 2 cups of Coke, and got out of there with 5 minutes to spare. I was at 40 miles now, and though ever closer to the cutoffs I started to believe again that I would finish. The sun was up, which lends optimism. Down a road for a few miles, then another climb, the Arete du Mont Favre, basically they call it a ridge, but it is about a 1,500 foot climb. Shortly into the climb I am completely overheated, cause I am still in full cold weather gear but now the day is heating up. I am sweating profusely but don't have a lot of water with me. While running up I manage to get my buff, hat, gloves off. Ascend more, well into the climb I experienced very strong cramping and abdominal pain, which from experience I know can be relieved, so I did, basically in the open on the side of a high ridge, and then futzed around with pack some cause you are supposed to pack out any materials you bring in, so I do. Back to climbing, I pass through a herd of steer who are eying me cautiously, and I sort of tiptoe through that, I did not want to get gored and meet my end alone on the side of a ridge in the Alps. I get through that and crest the ridge. A few race officials are there to scan me (no aid again). One of the workers sees my US flag and asks where I am from, TN, and she is from KY, and I am having a multiple sentence exchange for the first time from race people, she asks if she can do anything to help, and I say yes, and was awesome, she helped me get my headlamp disconnected, coat off, and I packed it all, and was much cooler, and more nimble. I ask her for staff Coke and she gives me a cup, and then she warns me the next cutoff 2 stations away is 11 am and looming, so I push off. I am running the whole next segment, really the best that I could do, it was a downhill and I just let my quads get pounded and ran as fast as I could sustain, seemed I was doing very well. I hit the penultimate station before halfway (where I would meet Dave my crew, who had been waiting untold hours) grab a cup of Coke, ask how far, and they say, probably won't make it, it is 4 km and I have only 35 min I think. I was only in that station less than a minute. I am thinking, I have to do this, I will sprint, and normally, 10 minute miles is just a regular relaxed pace. So I start bombing down this last segment. At first, there is hope, and I speed up even, but then, the trail becomes very very steep with a lot of steep stair steps and loose very steep grade dusty trail. I am moving pretty fast but it is not possible to get any rhythm. I kept moving, I was pushing it best I could, there was nothing more I could give. I started to hear the announcer, below, but through the forest I cannot tell how far it really is. Switchback, switchback, switchback, tick tock. I emerged from the woods right at 11:00 into the town of Courmayeur thinking I am almost making it, but turns out the Sports Center is actually 3-4 blocks away in town, so I am not going to make it, and I pass two other Italian runners who kind of chuckle and ask me why I am running, we're out. I finish to the Centre Sports, and Dave meets me, and I'm done. I've run 49.5 miles, did 14,080 feet of elevation gain, and the same in loss, ran for 19 hours through the night, and I have lots more endurance, more running in me, and I really was not particularly hurting in any way. So, very disappointing that I tapped out.
So, in summary, some amazingly cool moments, especially running through the crowds, the mountain tops, the views, sunset and dawn. But also, a string of very basic, some very stupid, very rookie mistakes that I very much know not to make, but I made them anyway. In many cases I was thinking while running "you are making some very drastic basic mistakes" but couldn't reverse course for some reason.
In reflection a day later, mistakes or things I would do differently in this race if I did it again -
1. The cutoffs are tighter earlier in the race than later, so best to get through the first half at faster pace to build some buffer.
2. Nutrition plan blew up, for several reasons. First, Dave and I really only had about 3 hours together to go over race, and I did not communicate well my plan, it wasn't written for him (should have been, he was taking notes when I was reeling off all of the details), and I did not prepackage large ziplock bags with the food I wanted, or my choices, as I had planned. I was pushed for time so vaguely said bring me lots of choices when I need them, and he knew I set off with food, so had no idea I need thousands of calories at the first crew stop, which was only 19 miles into the race. Second, the aid stations in this race I found very unhelpful, with nothing really that helped me specifically. Some of the noted points along the way on the profile are not even labeled on the road in an obvious way (at least to a foreigner) and there is no race official really there, so that is irrelevant, and some of the some aid stations are essential women with garden hoses or 1 liter bottles of water to pour. Third, when there was food at a limited number of stations, there was really nothing of interest to me except the chicken soup. There are definitely no gels, or bars that one would recognize, there was cheese, cut sausage, dry cookies, maybe some other things, I didn't really study. Might work for some people. In Western States on the back half I just sort of defaulted to Coke in the last 40 miles, which worked fine there cause the aid stations were pretty frequent, maybe once an hour I could get Coke. When I chose that strategy on the fly here, because I did not have my own food with me and did not like what was on tables, that was a bad decision, because maybe only 3 of the aid stations had it in the first 50 miles, although I begged a cup from staff at two non-aid stations.
3. Fluids. Bottles are the way to go here but I always train with a bladder. I would only do this race again with bottles. There are 3 or four reasons for this. First, I probably lost at least an hour fiddling with my pack and bladder to fill them, because the pack is so unwieldy with the 30 items or some of required clothing and equipment, but bottles would fill in seconds. Second, even the water-only stations are spaced too far apart, there are several stretches of 8.5-9 miles with no water resupply. There are occasional streams, which are melted snow, and thus drinkable, and with bottles on the front of the pack, one could just bend down, scoop, and go. Also, thinking ahead of what are the stretches without water supply that are too long, and figuring out with some local recon where the streams are to refill in those segments, would be extremely helpful. I learned from others that this is knowable, and with a GPS watch, one could plan this very carefully. The other thing is, I always train with electrolytes in my fluids, and that is how I manage it, and it works great, is always proportional. But I think if I had it to do over again, I would train for this race with water, and take S-caps separately, basically as I ended up doing. Keeping the fluid thing super simple, water from a hose or stream into 2 bottles on the front, that literally would have saved me a least an hour of the 19 hours I spent on the front fifty miles, plus even more, because twice fiddling with water resupply out in the cold for 10 minutes led to hypothermia that had to be managed, which cost me another 15-20 minutes each.
4. Phone. You have to have a live phone so race can contact you during the race, and helps to talk with crew. I bought an unlocked cheap phone for 20 dollars at home and then a $20 SIM card in France. I was thinking this was a cheaper solution to the requirement than using international call rates on my own iPhone. But using that little phone was nearly impossible because it is all keypad driven, and I was not familiar with it, and a lot of what was happening was in French. In retrospect, international use of my iPhone would not have been significantly more than what I did, I am an expert at using my iPhone. In fact, using Siri, I could have dictated texts to my crew Dave on a very regular basis on the way to the first station as I do at home with people, using handsfree essentially with regular iPhone headphone/mic. Also, several times I got texts and did not even try to pull the phone out and wrangle the keyboard to find and read those texts, once even assuming wrongly I was over time. A text on my iPhone shows to the front, just glance and go.
5. Temperature control. I spent a good part of the race overheating (hot) or cold, just because I did not really know how to anticipate the temperatures. Admittedly, the mountains are very unpredictable by nature. But the start was hot, but when we got to elevation and sunset, it was sure to get cold, so the top of Delevret near sunset is the time to put coat on and get the other stuff ready. That was hard to imagine we'd be in high 30's low 40's F only a few hours after sweating so much at the start. The mountains, basically, are cold, because the temp is low at night and it is windy. Honestly, since I have been training in 95°F and 80 % humidity in Nashville all summer, it was really hard to get my mindset around the fact that the night time on the summer mountains in the Alps is essentially like the Nashville winter. In winter in Nashville, I would never run for hours and get wet and then stand around outside for 10 or 15 minutes. But I did that several times during the race, with bad consequences. Also, the next morning, not long after the sun comes up, the temp really shoots up fast. The mountains are exposed, and especially at the lower elevations, it gets warm and the whole winter getup that you were wearing two hours ago is now way too hot. I should have had a quick plan to convert back to day wear at about 7:30 am but I waited several hours longer because of the pack hassle.
6. Pack. I have alluded to the pack troubles I had, but not really explained. I have an awesome pack for ultra running, a Salomon Skin S-Lab12 Set that is really well designed for this sort of thing, and I have trained with it on all my long runs, and am very familiar with it. But UTMB has a long list of clothing and gear you must have. I never really trained with absolutely all of this stuff in my pack (waterproof hat, coat, and gloves, a midlayer, space blanket, cup, long pants, and a bunch of other stuff. In order to plan for also carrying easily accessible food, tablets, map, phone, etc, I jury rigged a Salomon custom front pocket onto this pack (is not really designed for S-Lab 12, but I made it work with some zip ties and extra clips), which is something you will see adventure travelers wearing. I love having this little pack on the front, because everything is very accessible. But I found it bounced when just attached with the original suspension straps and clips, so I put some bottom clips on it and a strap on my pack shoulder straps that can cinch it down, and it is very secure it does not bounce at all. But this means that the front pack has 6 clips to secure it, and the main pack itself already has 2 chest cross straps. So, on long runs this summer (6-8 hours), I trained with this front pack installed, and it worked great. Except that in a six hour run I really only had to fill the bladder once or twice, and the pack was easy to manage, hold, and prop open bladder all with one hand. But during the race, first of all I needed water much more often because the bladder was compressed with all of the clothing crammed in the back and was not filling what it should, and ran out very rapidly. So I was continually trying to take that pack on and off with all of those clips to clip out and then back in, not easy with gloves on, or when frustrated. Also, the pack was very difficult to manage with one hand cause it was much heavier and bulkier than usual, and had the front pack flipping around, so I couldn't hold the pack with one hand and with the same hand hold the bladder open while filling with a cup in the other hand. In retrospect, this was just a structural problem, I needed three hands. So, in summary, I would use two bottles on the front not a bladder and thus rarely have to take pack off, and no extra pack on the front with all of the clipping flail. Keep it simple, two clips in front and it's off. This is what I had in my Camelbak with which I did Western States, and in that setting bladder was fine. There, I could take the pack off while running with two front clips, switch it to the front, open the bladder still while running, fill in 30 sec, screw top on and go. I only spent minutes in those aids stations. A Camelbak won't work for this race because you need to carry so much stuff and Western States aid stations are so much better and essentially more frequent (and 10 drop bags) you don't have to carry much, but the principle is, getting the pack on and off should be instantaneous and something you can do even on the run. UTMB has one drop bag, at mile 49.5. You're carrying everything you need and more the whole time essentially.
7. Poles. I have been trying to run with poles on long trail runs for over a year, to get ready for this race. To be honest, I really don't like running with them, but I had gotten a lot of advice one should have them for this. I was skeptical, but forced myself to use them over the last year, and in the end, I did use them. The poles seemed very, very helpful on the steepest climbs. If I did this again, I would definitely use them again, and would learn how to use them better maybe. The reason I have never thought them that impressive in training is that I never do steep 3,000 foot ascents in training, that just doesn't exist in Nashville. The steep ascents are where you get the benefit.
8. Race organization. The race is well organized overall, but there is a lot of confusing stuff for a foreigner to figure out about forms, and pickup and such. The instructions are very particular about getting insurance (essentially to helicopter you out), so I followed directions as best I could and obtained a French Running Pass that is essentially a club membership that includes insurance. For that I have to get my doctor to sign (and "stamp" but there is no such stamp in US medical system). I went to a lot of trouble to get that card/registration, but no one ever asked for it. I did register through the race site for an optional GPS tag so my crew man especially, and friends and family, could follow me live on Google maps, but turns out no one could see me. Problem was, when I checked in the race they gave me a bib with electronics and a second bag tag with some electronic looking stuff. I asked if this was the GPS I had reserved and the guy said yes, but turns out I was supposed to pick up the GPS unit at a booth at the expo in town. So, I never had it. Bus ticket. I reserved and paid for a bus ticket for my crew member, but he when he tried to pick it up at the checkin, he got a run around, no you there, no it should be where you were, he was sent four or five places, then told it closed at 3 pm. (?3 pm). Then someone told him to just try showing up with the email receipt, which is what he did. Finally, no one even checked for tickets at the bus. Security deposit. You give 20 Euro for chip deposit and get it back at finish, but if you tap out early for me, no apparent plan for that.
