I didn’t realize at the time of my first World Cup win that my life would undergo a radical shift, and not exactly at the level of sport. Overnight, the entire media apparatus made me their central focus, and I lost my anonymity. That was when my love-hate relationship with trail running and everything that surrounds it began. These races are the window where brands and runners put themselves on display. So much media attention often makes you forget the basic elements of the sport: a respect for nature and the community that lives alongside it.
The Fully Vertical Kilometer
The smell of chestnuts doesn’t lie: it’s the height of autumn. Despite the fact that there are seven hundred runners, there’s a convivial atmosphere, typical of a small-town race. Everyone knows everyone. In fact, for many people, Fully (as we call it) has become an excuse for an annual pilgrimage, which some people use to check if working in summer guarantees a good winter performance, and others, to cap off the previous busy months.
The Vertical Kilometer is a race of total sincerity. At this event, it’s impossible to pretend. If you’re strong, you’ll make good time, but if you’re weak, there isn’t a single technique or tactic that will let you disguise it. This is exactly what makes it an interesting competition that demands intense preparation and great dedication, and also great physical condition on the appointed day.
This race is the touchstone for all mountain athletes, just as the 100 meters is for high-speed runners, or the 10,000 meters for long-distance runners. Everyone knows approximately how long it might take them to climb 1,000 meters, or how many meters they can cover in an hour-long ascent. These are calculation reference points. “If you climb six hundred meters per hour, it will take almost three hours to reach this peak.” Reinhold Messner calculated that he climbed 1,000 meters in thirty-five or thirty-six minutes, and since the 1990s, increasingly prepared runners, who follow a specific training regimen, have lowered that time. In this sport, Fully is Mount Olympus. For a couple of decades now, runners of all levels have considered their result in this event to be irrefutable proof of who they are and what they can do. Everyone has done it. From the most exclusive elites, determined to shave off a few impossible seconds, to grandfathers satisfied not to have gotten out of shape with the passing years. And also the youngest, hungriest competitors, eating the minutes year by year.
An hour before the beginning, you start to warm up. You jog without losing sight of the other runners, and you watch them disappear into a landscape shrouded in vineyards. You head for the starting point and leave your jacket in a corner, on the ground. You look up and see two parallel train tracks ahead that converge above, 1,000 meters farther up. When your watch tells you it’s not long till the start, you join the line of runners and start getting updated on what’s happened in town in the past month. You move forward until the person in front of you leaves you midsentence, because they’re already focusing on the starting countdown. When your turn comes, you find yourself alone at the head of the trail, watching the friends you were chatting with a moment ago—about the summer harvest in Valtellina or the result of last weekend’s race—start to move away, up the hill. Now it’s your turn to break off the conversation with the person behind you. You focus on your countdown. Go! You set off quickly but without getting too excited. You try to set your pace. Each step is a victory, and whenever you lift your leg to take another step, you think you’re about to throw up. You see 100, 200, 300 meters go by. You don’t even realize you’ve reached 600, 700, 800. You want to touch the 900 mark with your fingers. You want to sprint, but you can’t because your legs are brimming with lactic acid. You look up, look down again, and see the white line pass as you fall on the ground. You breathe deeply, your lungs are going to explode, you won’t be able to recover at a normal pace, you won’t be able to speak until everything is back to normal. You get up, your legs heavy and swollen like jerry cans, to see what time you made, written on a blackboard hanging on the wall. You keep your satisfaction or frustration to yourself.
When you’re running against yourself, the winner or loser is always internal. With your joy or disappointment internalized, you calmly set out down the hill with your fellow runners. You imagine the roasted chestnuts waiting for you below. You’ll have time to think about everything later on.
Pierra Menta
The smell of Beaufort cheese permeates the corridors of the VTF, a tout compris residence with a certain air of decadence, like so many others located at French ski stations. Each year, in the second week in March, its windows turn into a showcase of ski suits in garish colors. On the terrace, a beer provides refreshment from the heat of the sun, which starts to burn brightly after the coldest weeks of winter. In the rooms, water bottles rest empty while the runners, lying in bed, begin to stretch their legs or massage themselves to recover from the effort of this stage of the race. It’s ten in the morning on a mid-March day in 2018, and they make the most of the day in their own way, with the satisfaction of having done a day’s work. Well, not all of them. Some are still out in the surrounding mountains, trying to beat the time cutoff and catch up to the starting point in the wee hours of the next day. As a friend of mine says, there are three categories in the Pierra Menta: the elite, in pursuit of a place on the podium; the people, fighting for a position on the first page of the result table; and the rabble, who have enough on their hands just finishing each daily stage for the four days this race lasts. This friend has had the good fortune to be a member of all three categories in the Arêches-Beaufort competition in Saboya, for thirty years a competition considered the masterpiece of ski mountaineering.
Some things have to change to progress, while others remain the same and that is exactly their charm, since they transport us to a past when we believed everything was better. With the patina of decadence and tradition, the Pierra Menta has become a mythic sporting event. Here, you willingly accept mistakes you wouldn’t put up with anywhere else, since they’re part of the uniqueness of the race. That’s exactly why it’s the best, because it reminds us of a time when ski mountaineering was a difficult, extreme adventure. Like any pilgrimage, it preserves traditions that are enacted year after year. I think of the afternoons at the VTF, the ski suits hung out on the balconies, the chaplain playing the harmonica to thank people for visiting his parish, and the mountains of Beaufortain. Pierra Menta is Daniel waiting discreetly at the end of each stage, hidden behind the fans and journalists, to take our skis and wax them for the next day, asking for nothing in return, just for the personal satisfaction of having had a part in helping us onto the podium. It’s going to the little food store in town after the second stage on Thursday, for a stash of cookies to enjoy that afternoon and recover some energy, which always begins to flag after a couple of days. It’s seeing the same volunteers every Wednesday when you go to collect your number. It’s Pierre-Yves making sure all the runners have an ARVA—the device that emits a signal so you can be found if you get buried by an avalanche—before letting us into the departure pen, after getting up at three in the morning to plot the route by the light of his headlamp. These are the déjà vus that put a complicit smile on our faces because they make us feel part of the Pierra Menta, too.
UNFORTUNATELY, IN THE SPRING OF 2018 I COULDN’T JOIN MY FELLOW runners to eat polenta on Sunday afternoon in the Arêches-Beaufort hall. I was lying down in a clinic, 300 meters away, while a doctor showed me some x-rays.
“You can see the fracture to the fibula very clearly. When the inflammation in your ankle goes down, you’ll have to do an MRI to make sure you don’t have any torn ligaments. You know, in cases like this, that’s where the problems usually are.”
Who would have thought it the night before, when I had already pictured myself celebrating my victory. I was not disappointed, no. Now I knew that it was just a bone fracture, which doesn’t usually bring any complications. I was convinced that even if I had to cancel an expedition and my races at the beginning of the season, I would be training and climbi
ng mountains again in no time at all. Mostly, I was sad for my fellow runner, Jakob Hermann, who had been running the race for the first time but wasn’t able to win because of my fall.
It had been a fantastic last day, with tricky conditions. The organizers, showing off their home brand, had not taken the easy route and had planned trails that made the race harder, with more downhill stretches on un-skiable snow. The rapport I’d established with Jakob, my teammate, was perfect, though this was only the second race we had done together. Before we started the final stage we were in the lead, with an advantage of just over three minutes, but we were feeling increasingly strong since we could tell that our rivals were losing stamina. That morning we had set out calmly, but since we saw we had time to spare on the uphill stretches, we’d gone hard so we wouldn’t have to take any risks on the way back down. Almost by accident, we’d gained that three-minute advantage over our pursuers on the last uphill slope. It was snowing hard, but this didn’t prevent the thousands of spectators—who make the annual pilgrimage to this event to cheer us on—from stoically tolerating it. We waved, causing the decibel level of the cries and applause to double.
We began our descent with wide turns, moving neither too fast nor too slow. On one of those turns, I felt my ski get embedded under the snow. It was stuck, and my body began to fall to one side. I got up to continue downhill, but—ouch. When I put my weight back on my leg, it hurt like hell. I got down as best I could, hardly putting any weight on my left side, and when I reached the transition, Jakob was waiting for me, ready to go up again. While he helped me put my skins on, I told him I’d hurt myself—I didn’t know how seriously, but something wasn’t quite right. As I started upward, the pain flooded my entire leg. Is it my knee? A bone? The ligaments? I tried to take steps without suffering, and for a moment it seemed like the pain eased with the warmth of the effort, but after a couple hundred meters of slope, a stretch began with some bends and I noticed that when I turned my leg, I couldn’t rest it back on the ground. I heard a click-click with every step, feeling like each time I put my weight on it, something twisted inside me. Jakob wanted to help me, but there was nothing to be done.
“Do you want us to quit?”
“No,” I answer. “Let’s keep going. I think it’ll be okay once it warms up. It’s only two or three hundred meters to the top.”
I went on a little more. The others still hadn’t caught up with us, but they were getting closer. With every step, I let out a cry of pain, though I tried to stifle it. I pressed forward a few more meters, but then I was certain I couldn’t go on. My leg couldn’t support my weight, and I was dizzy with pain. We were a few meters away from achieving our dream, but an astronomical distance from touching it with our fingers. I moved myself to the side of the trail and watched the runners go by, each on their way to their own personal victory.
I CAME TO COMPETE IN THE FOUR-DAY RACE AT PIERRA MENTA FOR the first time in 2007, when I was only twenty. It was also the first time I was in the adult category in an event, and I was strong but didn’t have much self-control. I had started out with a fourth-place position in the first Skyrunning World Cup event, but I’d set the pace for the more experienced runners, who passed me on the last downhill stretch. In my second race as a senior, the World Cup in the Valais in Switzerland, I caused a big surprise when I overtook the local runner Florent Troillet on the last ascent and wore a victory crown, beating two of my rivals, Florent Perrier and Guido Giacomelli. After the race, Florent Troillet came to see me and asked if I had a team for the Pierra Menta. I didn’t catch the hint and said I would love to go, that maybe I’d find someone from the French or Spanish team who wanted to do it. Florent is shy and not a big talker, a quality I’ve always appreciated, and maybe that’s why we made such a great team over the next few years. He didn’t say anything, and there was the kind of awkward silence that happens when you’re waiting for someone to speak and instead they look you straight in the eye. It took him a minute to ask if I wanted to go with him. I jumped for joy inside: one of the best ski mountaineers of the moment wanted to compete with me in the most important race in the world!
For the third race that year, I arrived in Arêches-Beaufort in heavy snow, and Florent and I went out skiing right away to stretch our legs. After an hour, he sounded me out:
“What do you say we do some accelerations?”
What was I supposed to say? Let’s go! I followed him for four or five accelerations, and then we went down to the room we’d be sharing for the next few days. In the morning, the sun came out and continued to shine for all four days of the competition.
We barely spoke, even during the stages, when every once in a while we’d say something like “On y va tranquille et on accélère doucement” (“We go slowly and gently accelerate”) as we attacked an uphill slope, and not much else. We didn’t speak much during the long afternoons in our room, either. We told the occasional story, something interesting about our training, or very occasionally shared a thought to break the silence. . . . Sometimes you don’t need to speak to someone to feel at ease.
From the first day, each of us knew what the other wanted without them having to ask. If one of us needed to slow down or wanted to quicken the pace, or if one of us needed a drink or a gel. If one of us needed to help or be helped, or if we wanted to speak or be quiet. It’s true what the most seasoned athletes say: in a ski-mountaineering race, you begin as friends but cross the finish line as brothers. This was definitely the case for us.
Without any excitement, without wanting to believe it, we won the first stage; the next day, the second; and on the third day, again. When we set out on the fourth day, we weren’t so sure. It’s such a long race that no matter how much of an advantage you have, by the end, anything can happen. Luckily, though, nothing happened this time, and when we finally saw the arch, we couldn’t believe it. At that moment, I felt so happy. It’s a feeling that can manifest in many ways. It’s a tingling that rises gradually up your legs until it reaches your heart and explodes in a burst of adrenaline. You could break your shinbone and you wouldn’t notice the pain. Even if you attacked a stone wall with your fists. It leaps from your heart into your head and surges all through your body. When this happiness comes in a team race, it’s really special. Your ego is bursting, but your adrenaline is diluted into a kind of love because you’ve shared some important moments, and most of all, you’ve helped make someone else happy. This was the beginning of some sweet years. Florent and I made a fearsome team, and individually, I began to eat everything up, both in skiing and in running.
The year before that Pierra Menta, I experienced the profound feelings of competition for the first time, when I gave up the junior category to compete in the adult category in the European Cup final, and realized, from that unexpected victory, that I could go far and win serious races. I felt them again in Valerette, Switzerland, and then in the first Pierra Menta, my first time competing in the Skyrunning World Cup, the Zegama when I had just left my teens behind, and a few more races over the next few years.
Yet despite all this, my excitement when I crossed a finish line began to dwindle, and I no longer felt such a rush of adrenaline. I didn’t feel drunk on happiness, and I was increasingly content just to be satisfied. Satisfaction can often be enough, but when the intense feelings of winning have become routine, happiness begins to seem flat and mundane. It isn’t sufficient. Calvin and Hobbes captured it well in a strip: “Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria.”
Once, after seeking this lost feeling, I realized it was better to let it be and abandon the search. Now I think that reminiscing about our well-being in the past can obscure the possibilities of the present. As always, a good memory leaves a nice aftertaste, and our brain will try to bury anything that gets in its way. You don’t need to maintain this excitement to pull out all the stops in a race, especially if you know that when you arrive, even after fighting tooth and nail in a world-class competition, at most you’ll
have the satisfaction of confirming that you’re still in shape. This is more than enough to give it your all.
When you have this revelation, it lifts a great weight off your shoulders, because it means while you’re not euphoric, you also won’t be disappointed. I remember so well the tears in Baqueira-Beret in that first World Cup, when I broke my boot when I was in the lead on the final descent, and I didn’t make it onto the podium. And how I thought I could never show my face again when I was in the lead in a world championship with an advantage of over two minutes, and my bindings broke on the first turn of the descent. I was so angry, damn it, and I spent a week cursing my luck. Now it’s sweet to remember those frustrations.
WHAT REALLY DRIVES ME TO MAKE THE PILGRIMAGE TO PIERRA MENTA year after year isn’t the emotional reward for my ego but the immediate satisfaction, the smell of the Beaufort cheese, the sunny afternoons on the VTF terrace. Going up to the wild and jagged ridge of the Grand Mont, and hearing the murmur as people approach.
What we’re really seeking and what keeps us coming back is a combination of all these little things, and more. Victory is the cherry on the cake. But we mustn’t forget that what really matters is for the batter to be moist and the jam to be of high quality, since in the end there’s only one cherry, and when the cake is sliced, only one person gets it. As the years go by, not even the winner remembers its flavor, but everyone can recall the sweet aftertaste of the jam.
Sierre-Zinal
The sun is about to rise, and in the cold and drowsy dawn air, you can hear the murmur of quick footsteps and sleepy voices. One of those footsteps is mine. Just like every year, I’ve had to get myself up in time so as not to miss the bus. Dressed in race clothes with a jacket on top, I look for an empty seat. I sit down toward the back, and almost that instant the bus starts to move. You can’t hear a sigh, but the jostling of the bus from navigating the switchbacks between pinnacles prevents us from taking a nap. Despite the driver’s skill, it takes fifty minutes to go the 24 kilometers that separate the town of Zinal, at the end of the glacier where the valleys die, from Sierre, the city on the plain of Valais, where vineyards, industry, medieval castles, and the noise of the highway contrast with green countryside dotted with tiny villages, and silence punctuated only by rivers rushing down from the high, snowy peaks. I took this bus for the first time ten years ago. It was nerve-racking! I was so excited and terrified of failure that I hadn’t slept all night. It’s interesting to see how sport has changed my personality since then. Before becoming the calm person I am today who coolheadedly tackles his major goals, I was a bundle of nerves who always spent race days completely worked up.
Above the Clouds Page 9