4 Trails – Day 1 – Ouch that hurt!

Day 1 of the 4Trails stage race = OUCH!

150 starters left Garmisch – Germany for Ehrnwald – Austria in 20 going on 30 degrees. Clear skys and big temperatures were forcast.

It was going to be a hard day in the office. And it was!

All was going great until I got to about 2.5hours. Then everything decided to shut down (and training based on a long run of  55minutes – I hardly wonder why!) I had my ankles strapped before the start to give me some extra confidence, and whether it was that or that I had run out of water and was loosing all energy quickly that lead to massive cramps in the arches of my feet. I stopped to tear off the strapping and then desperately found a cows trough to stand in. Luckily there were no cows to compete with! 

The next 2.5hours I basically grovelled around, taking some ‘shoe off stretching’ stops. Gaby Steinmeyer from Switzerland zipped passed me at about 3hours and finsihed 8 minutes ahead and it was great to have fellow Salomon team mate Julia Bottger chugging away just ahead of me for the last 15km to keep me going.

36km in just over 5hours with a total of  2400m vertical climbing. I’m not actually sure my body can cope with 3 more days of this sort of punishment.

Day 2 – 43km, 2600m vertical climb, hot,hot hot temperatures and thunder storms to look forward to!

Leaders for Day 2

Im going to bed!

After Note: With a little bit of controversy Gaby Steinmayer – overall winner of day 1 – decided, despite the opportunity to change categories, to stay in the master’s women category. This meant that Julia Bottger moves into the pink leader’s jersey and I come into 2^nd place going into day 2.