Festival des Templiers

We had to set the alarm for 2am in order to get Forrest to the start of his race at 4am. We are staying at a charming gîte about 45 minutes drive from Millau, literally in the middle of nowhere. It feels incredibly remote. And it was incredibly dark when I made my way across the garden to the car just before 3am. I walked straight into a tree and gave myself what has turned out to be a real bruiser of a black eye. The previous evening I tripped up a step (of which there are many in this quirky conversion, part of a rambling farmstead) and pulled a muscle in my side in an effort to recover and avoid falling flat on my face. Writing this up the day after, that is giving me more grief than anything from the race. I managed not to fall over even once.

We didn't have time to get to see Forrest start his 106 km event in the first wave but did catch the second wave of 900 runners. It felt quite emotional with the music playing, the road lit up with so many headtorches. I yearned to be going on that huge adventure too, before reminding myself that I was going to be setting off myself in three hours time, albeit on a somewhat less epic adventure of 36 km. I had to catch a shuttle bus to the start of my course, which took a spectacular circuitous route back to Millau. S left me to meet Forrest at the first main checkpoint and was soon able to watch the sight of hundreds of headtorches winding their way upwards along the trail. I'd like to have seen that.

My own race would have provided the same sight for the spectators. It's a long time since I've raced with a headtorch and had forgotten how much fun it is, especially at a point where the track narrowed and entered a phase where it undulated along a narrow traverse path on the side of a deeply forested hillside. I felt like I was running faster than I should have been then but it was too much fun to slow down, especially on the downhill sections, which were stunning.

Dawn is always exciting, when the landscape reveals itself for the first time and you get a chance to see where you actually are. It was literally breathtaking, like the moment the cloud lifts and you can suddenly get your bearings in the world. It was then when I first thought about Forrest, who was at that point over four hours into his running. Conferring later, he was able to confirm that he was having the same wonderful experience.

The trail proved more technical and difficult than I'd expected, with lots of little ups and downs and many rocky sections. I felt like I was going well, keeping my position, until about 16 miles and the penultimate climb when I lost all muscle strength and started to cramp. The wheels fell off as I haven't experienced in quite a while. I had to stop to let a number of runners past on the single-track. I picked up some rhythm again, and a few places, on the following descent but the moment I started climbing again, the cramp returned with a vengeance. It felt like I was crawling up the last brute of a climb on my hands and knees. Every little slip or slight twist put my calves or glutes into spasm. 

In retrospect I was perhaps expecting a bit too much from myself, with only a handful of runs over fifteen miles this year, none of those over twenty, and only the one (on Snowdon) with as much as 5,000 ft of climbing. I wasn't well enough conditioned, especially on a warm and muggy day. That final climb never seemed to end. Every time it levelled out to offer a bit of flat or downhill running, the path rose steeply up again. With the cramp getting worse I was cursing at every one of those unexpected steep ramps. Even when the summit of the last hill was reached and the long technical descent started, there were still more sharp re-ascents, even one that took a route through a cave! The organisers have a twisted sense of humour.

During that last tortuous hour all I could think about was finishing and also what to tell Forrest. Do I warn him of just how brutal this last section is - both psychologically as well as physically - or would that risk denting his resolve? Perhaps it would be better to let it unfold naturally.

S met me at the finish (taking the picture here) and we headed off to help support Forrest in the second half of his race. We soon encountered a major problem when we found the road to the checkpoint closed. They were operating a one-way system around the mountain. After coming across two more road closures it took us over 30 miles of winding road and almost an hour to reach a point that had only been 6 minutes away! We parked up and waited, expecting him to come through very soon. And then a phone call. He'd decided to abandon after 42 miles. He'd taken a tumble earlier and was experiencing pain in his shin. After feeling good in the early stages, his body no longer felt right. He described it as total body fatigue. He was worried that it was less than a month since he had Covid. I know that once your head makes the decision, the body follows and shuts down completely. He could barely move at all and requested we come to pick him up, only a few miles away. Except that the one way system was in operation and they wouldn't let us through. We had to go back around another 30 miles of twisty mountain road!

A few miles in and we realised how ridiculous this was. Tears were shed and jaguar energy kicked in. You don't mess with a mother when she wants to care for her son! The traffic control guy allowed us through to argue our case with the gendarmes and they eventually yielded. We found our boy in a good frame of mind. He could have carried on but it would have been a very long, slow and painful last 20 odd miles. It's always a brave decision to pull out and I admire him for that. He lives to fight another day after having a thoroughly enjoyable training run! Writing this, the day after, his legs feel pretty good. It's only the bash to his shin that really hurts. Unlike me. My legs are totally trashed. I'm okay on the flat but steps, both up and down, are torture. And, of course, our Airbnb back in Carcassonne has no less than four steep flights of them.

For the record: Marathon du Larzac, 36K and 1450m of climb, 126th out of 427 finishers in 5.10.43, 5th out of 29 finishers in my V60 category. I'm trusting those ahead of me were much younger V60s! At one point I thought I was on for a very respectable 4 hr 30m finish. It was won in an astonishing 3.19.12.

You have to experience these routes for yourself to appreciate just how fast the front runners truly are. But then, with sponsorship, they're professional athletes now. It was the very most amateur of sports when I was I first competing properly some 40 years ago. I read somewhere that about 13,000 runners take part in the festival over the long weekend. It's an absolutely massive event.