I pulled out of the TdG after 110km, 7,885m of vertical gain and 31 hours and 55 minutes on the clock, one third of the way around. I am feeling very upset and emotional this morning and writing a race report is partly my way of processing the emotions of these events – so apologies for the introspection.
I tell everyone I should have retired from trail running after the UTMB – I trained well, had a great race and I would have finished on a high. I don’t know why I decided to sign up for races in 2024 and this explains why my training has been inconsistent and I have just scraped through my other races. I came into the TdG under prepared and with low expectations – my goals were to enjoy myself and finish, nothing more than that, although secretly I was hoping to do a little better as I had managed to get a few good sessions in the final few weeks.
This race is really silly comprising 330km and 24,000 m of vertical ascent with the highest point at 3,200m. Everyone sprints off the mainly downhill start which is crazy for a race that takes the best part of a week and so I went with them. As soon as the first climb starts there is a bottleneck and everything calms down. My strategy was to never work hard and to be very careful on the descents to take it easy to protect my right knee which is arthritic, has a torn meniscus and a damaged ACL.
I have not been at altitude for a while and so was not acclimatised. The pros sleep in hypoxic tents prior to the race! The first climb was fine until it began to get high and then it became really, really hard even at my slow pace. Then I began the first descent, I basically speed walked / ran but somehow managed to trip and had an unlucky fall smashing my good, left knee into a rock. Instantly the knee ballooned and it looked like someone had inserted an orange under my knee cap. It hurt but I could keep moving pretty well and despite the pain was feeling pretty happy – my pace was well ahead of my expectations despite making absolutely no effort at all, I was 324th out of 1,200 so top 25% which was fine and normally I improve position as races progress.
There were two more big climbs to come before the second of the six “life bases” where you can shower, sleep, get massages and even order a beer! On the second climb it was hard but just like the UTMB I was no longer being overtaken and actually starting to come past people. I was 200m off the summit when I heard the familiar and ominous roar of a rock fall. Suddenly there were large rocks flying past and I shouted “rockfall” to warn the others. I was able to scramble up to a rock face that offered me protection but those people below were sitting ducks. Unfortunately, one girl was hit in the leg and had to be helicoptered off the face but she could easily have been killed and with so many people below it was a miracle that no one else was seriously injured or worse. The only upside was the adrenaline rush helped me complete the climb faster.
I then began the descent and the first 500m or so were fine and then my bad knee really started to hurt. The irony is that my right knee was not hurting at all – the body is amazing, when I hurt my left knee, my mind switched off the pain in the right! I stopped walking / jogging and just started hobbling down the 2,000m descent. It was agonising and demoralising as everyone came past me.
I had plenty of time to think about what to do. By this stage I was in love with the race and did not want to pull out, this is a very special race. I have toughed it out before such as the Val d’Ran when I had to complete the race walking backwards and stopping every 200m to either vomit or do the other thing. With the TdG, even though I had already covered 110km, the race has not even really started and what lay ahead of me was another 210km and 16,000m of descents and well over another 100 hours of racing. God knows I like to suffer but this is the sort of suffering you only confront when your life depends upon it, not so you can earn a finisher t-shirt.
I resolved to see the medical team and ask them to do everything they could to get me back out on the course. I knew I was tired and emotional as I had not slept through the first day and so decided not to make any immediate decisions. I really was hoping for a miracle.
The medic told me I had knee bursitis which is when the sac in front of the knee becomes inflamed and, in my case, ruptured and full of blood. The sac’s job is to reduce friction between the knee bone and the muscles, tendons, etc. For a runner it plays a pretty important role and mine was in a bad way. He put a needle into the knee and withdrew the fluid which immediately reduced the swelling but as there was now nothing in the sac the pain was excruciating. I tried to sleep so that I could then make a better-quality decision but sleep was impossible. I got up from my camp bed (the race organisers provide halls full of camp beds for racers to sleep) and tried moving around – it was impossible. I had planned to test the knee walking down some stairs but I couldn’t even walk on the flat easily. I thought withdrawing was inevitable but I wanted to wait some more so I asked for a beer and ate some ham and cheese while I waited which I promptly threw up.
A friend, Anthony Gent, who had completed the race had told me that his goal was to enjoy the race and I had adopted that as my goal. It was a good advice because he said if you feel you are not enjoying it, you are racing too hard. I concluded that I was not going to enjoy the rest of the race and so I made the decision to withdraw.
I always battle with these decisions. I ask myself, am I being mentally weak and just using this as an excuse. Whenever I race, I spend a lot of time initially thinking of all the legitimate excuses for giving up and part of the satisfaction in racing comes from overcoming these thoughts. When I withdrew, deep down I felt I was being weak because I could still move, albeit with a lot of pain and very slowly. I was just using it as an excuse to abandon.
Eventually I was transferred back to the start and back to the apartment and bed – the knee was really painful and it was clear I could not have continued.
When I woke up this morning, the knee felt good, I could move around the apartment easily and for sure I could have raced on it. I was angry with myself for pulling out too soon, for not waiting until the last minute, for being weak and pathetic and for just using the knee as an excuse. Catie is here commentating on the race and was prepping for the day, speaking animatedly about how everyone was doing. The weather conditions were perfect and I just desperately wanted to still be out there. It has been a long time since I felt this low – I was utterly miserable.
Eventually I resolved to go down to the café and get a coffee and think about answering emails. I started down the steps and my knee was immediately in agony and it was clear that it was the right decision. Even if I had decided to continue, my speed on the descents would mean that it was very likely I would eventually breach the cut-offs and be pulled out. However, the cut-offs are very generous and it would have taken a long-time before they caught up with me and so I would have suffered for literally days only to be stopped. It would therefore have been pointless to continue but as I write, I wonder whether it would have been more “honourable” to have been pulled out rather than voluntarily withdrawing.
I am sure some of you reading this might be thinking “why does this matter, it’s just a running race, it’s a glorified park run?” I do not have a good answer to this question. I wish I knew the answer because I am sure it would help me make more sense of my life and the choices I make.
I have many faults but I have always been quite good at seeing the positives in any situation. Since the UTMB I have been a bit lost, unfocused. I now really want to complete the TdG but not only that, to race it well. It is something I feel passionate about and that passion has been missing of late. So I have decided to postpone my trail running retirement for another year and to focus the next 12 months on the TdG. The further upside is that it means I can race the Verbier Grand St Bernard Trail which is my local big race and one that I have always wanted to do. I would also work on my mental toughness and develop strategies for how to manage the “looking for excuses to withdraw” syndrome that I always experience. This is probably something of a knee jerk (pun intended) decision and I will wait and see how I feel after a couple of weeks but I can feel a fire burning and I need that in my life.
I feel better already!
Expeditions 