Photo from Mount Royal, Frisco, Colorado.

"That is happiness; to be disolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." - Willa Cather

Saturday 5 September 2009

Transalpine Stage 1

Today we started our 8 day run across the Alps from Germany to Austria to Switzerland to Italy

And oh my gosh! It is no small miracle we survived. I don't know why I thought we would be fine without any mountain running exererience to speak of. But this is HARD. It was steep and rocky and worst of all was muddy. At one point I started crying so much from my crippling fear of heights that I almost dropped out. Luckily I had both SR and Kimberly Gimenez (from the US of Big Horn 100 female winner fame) to cheer me on.

All I can say is we made it and we are just going to try to survive through another day tomorrow. There is a 50% dropout rate in this race and I would not be surprised at all if that ends up being us. Stay tuned.

Today was 34 km from Oberstdorf Germany to Lech am Alberg Austria. It was gorgeous. And took us 6.5 hours.

The starting line



Two new friends from New Jersey, Kimberly and Elizabeth from California and two from Denmark



Suffering



And more suffering with a good view in the background.

3 comments:

Olga said...

I hear ya on fear of heights, trust me:) Usually, it gets overcome once I have a goal in mind. Don't look down, move straight under your feet, and you'll be ok. And say to kim for me, she is awesome gal!

Abbie said...

Good luck! I hope things look up for you. How awesome will it be to complete such a race? You're awesome!

Danni said...

Breeeeeathe iiiin and out. It's ok. This is fun. And you're strong enough for mountain running -- you just need to do it for fun and let yourself relax and have fun!!!