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Latest Race Report: Marathon 54: Davos SwissAlpine 2021

Race start, Ursula back at it!

The first 15km followed a gentle uphill along the bottom of a valley, following a stream as many such trail routes seem to do. We had decided to run this part together and then to separate once the major climb kicked ins, should the weather allow us. I had forgotten how Ursula’s competitive instincts suddenly come alive during actual events (versus training), and had to tell her a couple of times to slow down and that it was a long race. Nevertheless, she hovered slightly ahead, in a way that meant I was forced to maintain her pace if we wanted to stay together. I resigned myself to it and enjoyed the route, watching out for rams or marmots, as well as keeping an eye on the cloud cover and overall weather. Above the mountain to my right, which we would eventually be climbing, the clouds signaled rain and potential thunder, but it remained dry for the moment.

We reached the aid station / farm at 15km and there had been no significant change in the weather. We both agreed that we were going to get wet and soon though, but that we would continue. We also agreed to separate as needed. My perception was that Ursula was faster and so it proved as she pulled away as we began the first of two long steep climbs, which are normally power-walked.

I was surprised and slightly dismayed to see Ursula running up the less steep portions of the powerwalk, but endeavored to copy her as best I could. Still, she hovered about 50m ahead. A light rain arrived and got gradually heavier, and temperatures decreased so we both fished our lightweight rain jackets from our rucksacks.

Pleasingly, the top of the first climb arrived a little sooner than I expected, and I took a gel, some water, then put in my air pods to enjoy a little music as the long single track traverse was about to commence. I have always found this section the most beautiful and exciting of the entire course. Several kilometers long, but not wide enough to overtake or be overtaken by others along the vast majority of it. Although the traverse does not really feel unsafe as long as care is taken, a slip off the edge at many points along it would lead to an interesting tumble of several hundred metres into the sweeping valleys that fell away to the immediate left. As every year, there were also a number of snowfields to be traversed, adding to the fun.

I saw that Ursula had increased her lead and now about 400m ahead, with no runners close to her ahead or behind. I on the other hand had slipped into a trail of about ten runners, which slowed my progress a little bit since I could have run slightly faster if I wasn’t in the queue.

Eventually, the traverse ended, with intermittent lightning and thunder along the way. Now the second of the major climbs began, first through marsh like trails and then over more snowfields and rocky outcrops. The top was visible about 2km ahead and above. Slowly, I made up some time towards Ursula, and by the top, I was only 10 seconds behind her, so she waited to say hello. This was 25km and several hours into the marathon, and with both of us trying our absolute best, only ten seconds separated us. Incredible.

I was aware that the top came as a slight surprise to me. I had thought there was a false summit but perhaps I had already passed it while maintaining my focus on keeping up with the wife. Certainly, it was a pleasant surprise to see the top just appear. At this summit point last year, I had decided to take a five minute rest to deal with my nausea. Now, Ursula simply set off so, as for all of the race up until now, I simply followed directly in her footsteps.

Immediately after the high point comes a steep and brutal descent, initially over boulders and then a set of steep and often narrow rocky switchbacks. Last year, this was the point that destroyed my already fragile legs, and where I had sworn to invest in proper trail shoes. I was delighted to see that so far, my legs felt a lot stronger, and also that the firmer trail shoe sole lent me more stability and confidence on the uneven terrain.

We arced back and forth down the switchbacks together at a reasonable clip. I’d say this was the most dangerous point in the race. Although the risk of slipping off the previous traverse was real, the path during it - while also narrow - is mainly flat and manageable. Here however, the steep gradient combined with very uneven rocky terrain means the chance of a stumble is much higher, and if it happens, the momentum you have is much harder to control. I suppose it breaks down like this: falling off at the worst point of the traverse is unlikely but if you did, it could be serious or even fatal because you would tumble down a steep slope for hundreds of metres. Meanwhile, falling on this current steep descent would be much easier to do but it would not be fatal, though the chance of a cut, sprain, or broken bone would be high.

Although we were carefully overtaking a few participants here ourselves, it didn’t help that there were a number of impatient runners rather more recklessly trying to pass us too. With Ursula a few metres ahead, I saw her catch the toe of her shoe on a rock and for a moment float in midair, arms flailing like a windmill to regain balance. Very luckily for her, she could hold on. While I was well aware that the same thing has happened to me on many occasions, I couldn’t help remarking that we should both take care to finish the race in one piece.

A few hundred metres further on, I spotted a very brief shortcut between switchbacks, and by these nefarious means I switched positions with Ursula. This marked a turning point in our fortunes in the race. I started to edge ahead. Until now, I had expected Ursula to beat me – she was clearly stronger and leading the way on the uphill. However, I also knew in the back of my mind that I was more trained than her due to my overall exertions during the entire year, and that there was a chance she would overdo it and lose ground later on. It would now depend on both that and whether I could maintain my virtuous circle of performance – feeling good physically and mentally and profiting from the resulting psychological boost.

It seemed to be happening. As I left the scree and then marsh like terrain onto the rough but paved road, I found myself speeding up even further. Last year, I had marvelled at how I could run so slowly here downhill – 7 mins per km. This year I suddenly found myself marvelling at how fast I was running it, sometimes dipping into the high four minutes per km. My virtuous circle closed tigher.

The rain intensified and thunder and lightning continued close by. Too close for comfort in face, but there was nothing to be done except continue. I decided not to put my rain jacket back on, figuring that the largely forested final third section would provide some cover. My performance slowed up a little here. My T Shirt was soaked through and seemed to retain the water, weighing me down. I noted that my forearms started to feel as if they didn’t belong to me, due to the cold and wet. I started having problems with my music, controlled from my apple watch. It kept turning off and my cold wet fingers would hardly let me work the screen. I switched from my specially prepared Spotify playlist to music stored directly on my watch to help fight this, but I kept having problems.

These things impeded upon my progress. I think I could have added a few mins to my time if I hadn’t been so drenched. But yes, let’s talk about timing. To be clear, my three previous results were 6:07, 6:27, 6:33. Knowing that I was in shape, and hoping to avoid nausea, my target was to beat six hours on this course. I realised shortly after the summit at 25km into the race that this was well within my grasp. Further on, I also realised that this year, 5:30 was in my sights too. And as the final kilometers ticked down, I knew I had it. I was able to run the entire forest section except for a couple of 10 second walks over steep humps.

I wound my way down back into town and entered the stadium and onto the running track, at the end of which I crossed the line with 5:20:50. For me, this was what I would call a hell of a performance. A few metres from the finish line, I found a wet seat under some limited rain cover and immediately took refuge. I started shivering but drank in how well I had done.

I couldn’t wait to tell Ursula, who I figured should be arriving in about five to ten minutes if all was going well. When so, hers would also be a great time, especially for a first attempt and first marathon for a long while.

However, all was not going well. Within ninety seconds of my crossing the line and sitting down, my phone started ringing and it was the wife herself. Uh oh, this did not bode well. Why was she calling? I picked up and heard a panicked voice on the other end, close to tears. ‘Honey – I can’t walk’ and then kind of sobbing sounds. I asked her again what he matter was, and got the same kind of replies over and over. She had strong pains in her groin area, and could hardly walk. I eventually was able to figure out that she was at around km 39. This was heartening, at least within 3.5km of the finish. I asked her if she could try to keep going, but she sounded very doubtful. The call then cut off.

A minute later she called again and seemed in even more of a panic, repeating what she had already told her and telling me over and over that she couldn’t hear me properly, thus forcing me to raise my voice. I told her I was already getting ready to start heading her way. We lost connection again. I quickly grabbed my finisher shirt on the way out of the race area and changed into it, as my current shirt was dripping wet and cold and I was starting to succumb to more violent shivering.

In the middle of changing with my shirt off, Ursula called again, in the same cannot hear you panic. At this point I had to shout down the line somewhat angrily, ‘stop fucking panicking it isn’t helping.’ By now I had had three or four phone calls and her responses were not letting me think straight, figure out clearly what might be wrong, or what was best to do. In the heat of the moment, I decided I would try to jog over to her and that we would deal with it when I got there. Hardly ideal. Ursula then reported that she saw a race official on a quad bike. I heard her literally cry out for help, and then she said that she had been spotted and was going to speak to him. The phone cut off again. Another call some anxious minutes later, I was able to ascertain that the official was going to bring her to the finish. I went to the medical area and asked if they were informed. They were not, so I told them to expect my wife coming in shortly.

Eventually she arrived, and indeed could only walk in a very weird manner, as if her legs were made of planks of wood, and only then at a snail’s pace. I was concerned to get her to the medical area asap, so guided her along as fast as I could, which was not very. I could see that in her current condition, there would have been no way for her to even walk to the end, so the quad bike arriving when it did was a really lucky coincidence.

Once Ursula got under a couple of blankets, the doctor examined her but felt it was simply a very bad case of cramping up. With some warm bouillon in her, and then a warm shower, she recovered within about half an hour. We were both very pleased it was nothing worse.

There are a couple of points of note here. Firstly, I am convinced it was indeed just a serious cramp. But it’s odd that in all our running - and by now you can safely say we have done a lot of running, including in plenty of cold and crappy weather - this has never happened before.

Secondly, this was the first time in 65 marathons between us that either of us had to quit a race without finishing. I suppose it had to happen some time and will happen again if we keep going.

Thirdly, I have realised that when there is a kind of emergency like this, the way we both dealt with it was very sub-optimal. Ursula’s panic, inability to properly describe what was happening, and insistence on making me shout down the phone, led in return to me not thinking clearly. Even in the best of circumstances, I’m not sure I would have come up with the best solution – which would have been to inform the medical tent or race officials that we had a ‘man down’ and to let them deal with it by sending a quad bike out. Presumably, they would have had this potential contingency plan available. But due to the fog of war I was under, I had not even considered this. Instead, I might have wasted precious time wandering over in my own debilitated state. Arriving to her, we both might have suffered more hypothermia, as I have history of that. At least if either of us had remained clear minded, we might have figured out that it was most likely cramp, and to see if vigorous stretching might have helped, allowing Ursula to finish the race, even if in a somewhat lame and reduced condition.

So, in case it happens again - and perhaps this is a lesson to anyone reading this – there are a few things to keep in mind. On either side of the conversation, try to remain calm and focussed on identifying what the underlying problem is. Panic is incredibly unhelpful. Secondly, use the resources available to you. We were lucky that the official was passing, but the right course of action outside that would anyhow have been to inform them.

Given how this episode of runners tales concluded, we still got off lucky, and within 90 minutes of the race, we were both on a train heading back to Zurich. Due to some track damage, this took a lot longer than it should have, but we eventually arrived home and still celebrated with a takeaway Chinese meal and a couple of drinks. Ursula was super pleased for me and my time, and during the commute back and the rest of the day we talked animatedly about the whole event. I on the other hand was really happy that Ursula had done the majority of the course and could see why I rated it so highly. I was also genuinely impressed at how well she had performed overall, the cramp notwithstanding. What a great running partner. What an amazing great wife I have.

I wore the finisher shirt the whole of the next day. Nicely designed and lighter than in previous years, with a lovely teal / blue colour. Certainly this race provided another marathon camp fire story, to be retold at least between ourselves.

A similar photo to that taken in our first marathon, but this time 11 years later




Hero Shot 2021