Chamonix Furnace

I have been in dire straits in the last 10 days. Recently my running was on the up and I had clocked 30 running miles in the week mid-June. What I didn’t know on the Sunday long run was that my system was already incubating a virus. A virial cold with some added flu for the craic. By Monday morning my throat was razors and my head was pounding. Take it from me, by Saturday I knew it was the cold from hell. I was talked into going on Holiday on the following Wednesday and kept myself to myself on the plane to Geneva. Once we arrived in Chamonix, I took to my bed, later spending much of the next two days sunbathing under a large open window in the apartment. The flat looked directly onto the main square. There was a row of pizza restaurants underneath us and the buzz of continental late night dining and the clashing of plates and cutlery took a little getting used to. As my condition improved, I took to hanging out the window, people watching. So many people on the move.

There was a running festival on. Fifty nationalities. Seven events including two over the night-time. All of my flat sharers had variously entered the KMV (a vertical 3km up to one of the cable car stations), the Mont Blanc half marathon and the 10k. What with my various ailments, I hadn’t entered any events, and looking out over the balcony through the incredible heat, I felt no pressure and a great deal of relief. We were opposite the post office which had a digital thingy on the wall which made announcements and also signalled the time and temperature every minute. It read 40 degrees on the Friday afternoon. It was like a furnace. Everyone else had had the lurgy to some degree and all were coughing and feeling out of sorts. 

The first event was a 90k run and the runners had set off at 6am. By 3pm they started to re-appear in dribs and drabs through the town and their appearance was marked by sporadic outburst of whooping and cheering by the pizza punters.  

The start of the KMV was from the square behind our block. It was a time trial with runners setting off at 20 second intervals. The paths were impossibly steep and narrow in places. We could hear the clapping and the microphone from the flat…the windows were all wide open to try and keep us cool. We walked past the square and as the dark destroyer (loz) set off and we clapped her on her way, a daft mission to altitude and glory. It took her an hour. She was followed shortly afterwards by Nicola Duncan who I recognised and I told her to work harder. She shouted that she’d done 170 miles the previous week. 

We were kept awake for most of the night by the clapping and the overly energised chap on the microphone. By Saturday morning we were all a heavily sleep deprived. There was an air of grumpiness in the air. Despite this, Speedy Joe was up for the half marathon and we clapped her off from the Park at 6am after a 1 mile walk from the flat. She was carrying enough water to refill Kielder.  The organisers had insisted on this and had initially rejected her jaunty suggestion that a small plastic bottle would suffice.I made my way to the finish up at the PlanPlaz. Ant who had decided not to take part in the ‘Half’ joined me after 15 minutes and the crowd swelled over the next half an hour. The first runner came in around 2:30hrs. The field soon followed and became increasingly ragged, with Cat arriving in 24^th place in a time of a 3:30hrs. Tough day out.    

The 10k was scheduled for 1pm. It also left from the Park. We wandered back to the Park just after lunch and sympathised with Marg and Loz for their impending furnace experience. If anything, it felt hotter than PlanPraz.  After the start, we wandered to the 9k mark and waited for the two to make an appearance. It took an age for the first runners to come through and both loz and marg were completely fried, like the rest of the field as they passed. I have never been so thankful to have passed on this dubious festival experience.

We ate out in the evening in the restaurant next door and it was a disappointing affair. We were hoping for a quiet night, but the muppet around the corner still had his microphone on and was whooping the thinning crowd to an inch of its life. I was generating very negative thoughts as I lay in bed in the evening heat.   It was the novices race and the disturbance extended well into the early hours. Sometime early on Monday morning the microphone torture trailed off and the weather broke with a spectacular electrical storm. 

My condition improved and the high point of the holiday was a walk up to PlanPraz followed by a run back down through the woods with Speedy joe. It was 40 minutes of gravity assisted technical descent and an experience that salvaged my holiday.