The weather was good to us : although hot, not too humid. Just a few light showers towards the end of the race, luckily, nothing to make the rocks too slippery to run.
In between mountains, it was pretty runnable. But....those mountains were huge !! As the profile outlined. Nothing apart from plodding for me. I felt well looked after, with continuous monitoring from the live tracking system, and many race staff at strategic tricky points.
The checkpoints were numerous, although I found the food pretty repetitive after a short time. I stuck to drinking the race carb drink, flat coke , and water. Peanuts, crisps, and nut flapjack was the order of my intake at each point. I tucked into my own bars and jelly sweets whilst out on the course.
The encouragement from the race staff was well accepted and enthusiastic.
For me, highlights included running across a skywalk at the First cable car checkpoint; watching the sunrise over the mountain range ; sitting at a checkpoint located at a Swiss train station, while work was being carried out overnight on the carriages ; meeting and chatting to numerous lovely lovely people. Ultimately, making my way across the base of the north face of the Eiger, in the dark, past the Eiger train stop window, was the biggest buzz of all.
Insane, beautiful, glorious, exciting running.
Such an amazing opportunity, such an amazing race.
