Trail Verbier St Bernard X-Alpine, or TVSB to its friends, is a 140 kilometre run through the Swiss alps with more elevation gain than climbing Mount Everest.

At this point, I was feeling good and running well. I was 8 minutes into the race.

Out of Verbier

Having run out of the centre of Verbier through the crowds, it very quickly got quiet and got steep.

We’d accidentally wandered this route a couple of days before so it was funny to be going up the mountain bike track that I laughed at while going down the previous time.

After that though, it was unfamiliar territory for a while.

In the early stages, it’s easy to just run to the speed of those next to you. Despite thinking I have a low running ego, it’s very easy to get involved in a game of “I can’t let them overtake me” despite knowing nothing about their training or history.

Very quickly my cheat sticks, named Des and Troy for poor comic effect, were out and already making me feel comfortable. We weaved around the Verbier golf course with random chalet occupants popping out to give an “allez” or “bon courage”.

I’d be intrigued to play a round of golf there – for my reckoning, it was 166m of elevation gain in a kilometre of greens and fairways. Maybe crampons and ice axes would be needed along with a sand wedge?

The manicured paths of the Verbier golf course gave way to forest edge and meadow-like greenery as we began so form an orderly “snake” of headtorches and clickety-clacking poles up a narrow path, cutting out the usual cable car route in favour of switchback after switchback towards the gondola station.

Fun fact. This was only halfway up the climb and 2,000m above sea level. Literally different level.

Through the climb, the only two voices among the tramping feet were two Brits, me and Ben, chatting absolute rubbish about running stuff. It’s yet another example of just how much running with people takes the mental and physical edge off an effort.

After the Les Ruinettes station at 2,200m, we weirdly bumped into Chris FROM JERSEY!! We’d met over breakfast in our hotel (I was wearing my Rock N Road tee) and I knew he was doing the race but to then bump into each other actually on the side of a mountain was a little surreal.

The first two cut-offs for the race were punchy. I couldn’t tell you in pace terms because of the ascent and descent but enough that I was genuinely very worried about them, a thought that seemed to be on the minds of most that I spoke to.

After continuing to climb from the cable car station, you then enter the first “runnable bits” as I pictured them in my head, having scoped them from a restaurant a couple of days previous.

Except what you’re actually running on is a single-track path with 500 metres of falling below you if something goes wrong.

I’ve tripped and fallen plenty of times while running but I had a sudden hit of reality that there wouldn’t be a second chance if I didn’t give the run 100% focus.

Thankfully I was in the middle of a convoy of people, so I used them to give me an idea of what was coming up, and this helped hugely in reducing some of my anxiety about mountain running. I followed the same woman (wearing maroon Altras and not using poles) for nearly 3 miles as we got to the first aid station, Savoleyres gondola station, at 2335m.

There was no cut off for this one but I wasn’t hanging around. I filled up one of my water bottles but probably should’ve fully drunk both as it was still muggy at just after midnight and I was very conscious that I was sweating a lot through the effort. The problem was that there didn’t seem to be an easy spot to grab a drink.

I grabbed a handful of salted nuts to try and replace the sodium that I’d have lost and headed straight out before getting very confused about directions until a volunteer pointed me in the direction of a snake of headtorches going even further up. Also, the nuts were a bad idea – way too salty.

This was the limit of my knowledge of the course. I’d been here in the daylight and guessed where the route went but now in the middle of it, I was surprised how technical the path was so quickly out of the aid station.

Tiny zig zags up an exposed ridge revealed the lights of Verbier and Martigny down below with each turn and continued until we crested the mountain and could look at the full valley. At 1am it was still light enough to see all around and it was quite simply a beautiful place to be.

When I signed up, this is exactly the type of thing I wanted to see.

After a brief moment of reflection, I started descending but it was still so rocky and twisty that I couldn’t really run anything.

The skill of some of the runners that would bunch up behind behind me before flying past with a quick “merci” was amazing. I would love to have that speed on a flat surface and I consider myself a good descender. As much of a cliché as it is, you’re always learning.

At one point my GPS showed that downhill gradient was -39%. It was basically a cliff.

Falling off a cliff

Luckily it flattened out to around 10% along access roads and I was able to actually run a bit. On this section I gained 20 places over the field. If the rest of the course was a gentle downhill then I reckon I might have won…

I also continued to run with poles despite the fact I’d mainly used them for climbs. There was something comforting about them and luckily, I’d trained enough with them, as well as attending courses, that I could modify my run slightly and they felt beneficial rather than a burden.

The first of the punchy cut-offs was 03:40am at Sembrancher which was at 30.1k with over 1,100m of elevation gain and nearly 2,000m lost. Already on my way, I’d seen two people who had dropped out already. The body count for this ultra had begun.

I got in with about 40 minutes to go and for the whole descent I’d been doing 6 minute per kilometre (roughly 10-minute miles). That gives you an idea of what everyone was up against.

At just after 3am, I was sat on stone steps tying my shoelaces and contemplating my life choices which gave me just over two hours to get to the next aid station. In fact, I was so focused on the deadline that I don’t really remember the aid station. I filled up my water bottles and had some coke. I think I also had some orange slices.

Considering aid station food is the ‘bad’ stuff you’re not supposed to eat like crisps and biscuits, it’s amazing how much you crave real food with a buffet of beige in front of you.

It was eerily quiet as I walked through the back streets of Sembrancher although I didn’t have long to collect my thoughts. Through a small tunnel under the trainlines and straight back into the climbing – 34% gradient to start.

By now the field had stretched out and I was one of five people within 500m of each other, silently trudging along the pathway. It wasn’t a happy place.

Each of us took turns in stopping to catch breath or have something to eat, to overtake and then be overtaken. The sequence was stopped when I caught up and started talking to a Swiss guy.

The perceived effort when running with someone is so much lower than when you are on your own. Even when you’re not speaking, it just gives you such a boost. Even after we’d run out of things to talk about in my non-existent French and his impeccable English, it still helped me get up the never-ending hill to Champex.

It was now 4:30am, I’d been going six and a half hours, I was an hour up on the cut off and just under 38k into a 140k race, and somehow I was also back at 1500m of elevation having been up to 2,457m and down to 719m above sea level. I was also knackered.

As were a lot of people in the tent. Some were asleep, slumped over the wooden picnic tables. Some were sipping from bowls of hot bouillon (a very weird aid station option in my eyes). Most were just sat staring into the distance in silence.

I was filling up my water bottles yet again, eating orange slices and getting out of there. I still had a long way to go.

To be continued…