Riding the euphoria from completing the Dodo Xtreme and its
sublime course, I signed off for the Ferney trail (http://www.ferneytrail.com/). 35 kms with 2K elevation
gain sounded comparatively easy, so didn't really feel the need for any intense
trail training (read too lazy!!!). Well,
I'll say it right off the bat: VERY BAD DECISION...!!!
Race day, get up at 3.30 a.m for my now well tuned pre trail race routine, and set off for The 'Valee de Ferney'. Rain on the way, it's going to be a muddy affair!
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| Start of the race. The guy in pink would be my hare for a good section of the trail, towards the end. |
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| First Climb of the day, Mt Ingam... Lion mountain as backdrop... |
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| Towards the Summit of Mt Ingam |
From the summit of Mt Ingam, we enter a deep forest, where
the mud is sticky think and slippery. I'm almost at a standstill on all the
descents. I can't understand how people are keeping their balance and just
zooming past me. First of many spills of the day!!!
I signed up to discover new trails and landscapes, but all I
see around me for the next hour and a half or so, are trees and buckloads of
thick sticky gooey muck that turns every step into a struggle. Still half
decent where you have trees to hang on to, but downright perilous on more
exposed grounds. At km 14, I start to wonder whether I would even be able to
complete the trail if the terrain stayed the same. Going down, the leg muscles
are in continuous tension since the super slippery terrain made for extremely
slow descents. Uphills are just as bad, with the sticky mud giving no grip for
the trail shoes, which threaten to skid at every step. Energy sapping stuff!!!
We finally get an open view towards the end of the 'Mt Gingembre' climb.
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| Next few shots are on the way to Mt. Gingembre |
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| Pic from a Mirador along the way to Summit of Mt Gingembre |
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| Next 2 pics are views from Mt Gingembre Feeding station |
Manage to get a few shots from the summit of 'pull over' and the subsequent small peaks, before descending all the way down the valley. Weather had gradually gotten better as the day progressed, and luckily, the terrain had started to dry out a bit, which made the trail CONSIDERABLY less difficult. Even managed to run down the down sections form this point onwards!!! Unfortunately, back to dense forest or just not very interesting landscape, so RX100 back to the side zipped pouch of the camelbak.
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| Next few pics are from BRISÉE PULL-OVER, Étoile and thereabouts.... |
Next photo stops are close to the next peak and feeding station at 'mirador touristes', where the helpers assure us that it was all downhill to the finish. BUNCH OF LIARS...!!!
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| Picture from the Mirador at the feeding station |
Another fairly steep 100 m ascent 3 kms from the end!!! Last snap of the day on the last REAL downhill, before I complete the trail with halmstrings and left calf limit cramping!
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| Hard to tell from this pic that the weather was so shitty in the early hours... |
I can't tell whether my PiGgY brain really just blanked out the
pain from the Dodo, whether I could not cope with the conditions of the day, or
whether my conditioning was not adequate for this trail, but I seem to have
struggled much more than I did at the theoretically much tougher Dodo. This
trail, given the conditions of the day, felt cut for the genuine hard core trailers with blinkers out there going
for a tough challenge. The trekking and photo taking PiGgY is unfortunately not
one of them!
Race exercise log and stats:
