The journey to UTMB took place within my comfort zone. It felt as though I had been waiting for this holiday for ages. The road and breathtaking views were compensation for spending 14 hours sitting on my backside behind the wheel. Sharp peaks with tongues of glaciers left no doubt as to why I had come here.
Taking part in UTMB means running 170 km with 10,000 m of elevation gain. It is Europe’s toughest race, held around Mont Blanc, which rises to 4,805 m above sea level. You cannot simply sign up for this race. Over two years, you have to collect enough points, which can be earned in races of 100, 150 or more kilometres. The longer and more extreme the race, the more points you receive. After the initial verification, there is still a draw, which turned out to be the lottery of my life. There are only 2,500 places among 12,000 runners. The results are announced just before Christmas, so you can try to get yourself a top-shelf present.
Now to the point. When we arrived, my eyes could hardly take in the fact that the real mountains were only just beginning. Runners, cyclists, people climbing on rocks, children playing in the adventure park—all around us; in a word, it was a fairy tale. Although my thoughts and stress quickly reminded me why I was there, for a moment I could feel like a runner helping to create the European capital of mountain running.
Training went according to plan: plenty of easy running in the mountains with short bursts of intensity. Plenty of recovery and denying myself almost everything out of fear that I would pay for it with ailments during the race. So I stuck to tried-and-tested drinks and food, which I prepared myself—or rather, my wife did.
The time until the start passed very quickly, and so, on Friday, 28 August, I stood at the start of the most prestigious race around Mont Blanc, together with 2,500 runners from all over the world. It seems to me that Asians made up the largest percentage of foreign runners. They also have a very similar race around Mount Fuji, and I suspect they want two events on two continents with a similar format on their CVs. Who can blame them? Dreams are meant to be fulfilled.
Vangelis’s song “Conquest of Paradise” rang out from the speakers. During it, silence fell among the competitors, and here and there you could see tears welling up in the eyes of wives and accompanying supporters. Luckily, I was wearing sunglasses, so I managed to hide a little. The goosebumps on my arms and back, and my jelly-like legs, wanted to remain in that blissful state.
The very beginning of the race was not ideal for me. Stress and several days of thinking about my race strategy before the start brought on a severe headache. I wondered whether to take “vitamin I”—Ibuprom—but decided that after a few hours, once all the tension had left me, the pain should subside. It did not let up until the 20th kilometre. Then the climb that continued for the next 28 km helped. The climb began innocently enough, but during the final 10 km we begged for the weather to break and for the race distance to be shortened.
The climb seemed endless. Night running has this characteristic: when you run with a headlamp and look ahead, you see a river of lights stretching all the way to the summit; when you turn your head, you see the same thing, stretching on and disappearing behind the next mountain. As we reached another aid station, we could already hear loud applause, music and cheering from the descent. For the residents, it was a celebration and a promotion of their region. The stations had almost everything: isotonic drinks, bars, French cheeses, cold cuts, bread, biscuits, crackers, salt and, finally, genuine Coca-Cola and Pepsi—not the knockoffs you often get at home, because they are the cheapest and organisers need to make a lot of money from the race. It was so good that we did not want to leave the stations and head back onto the course. That was how our first night of racing passed. The temperature was a pleasant 15°C and there was a full moon. We began the morning with a very steep, rocky ascent followed partly by a descent.
It was hard to make up time and start overtaking. In very similar conditions, I reached kilometre 77, Courmayeur in Italy. This part of the Alps is genuinely dangerous. There are many cliffs and vertical drops of several hundred metres. Courmayeur was the station where drop bags were located—that is, belongings handed over at the start so you could change into something dry, freshen up, sleep for a while and so on. I knew that the less time I spent at the stations, the more time I would have to tackle the endless climbs.
Time passed, and I cannot even remember what I was thinking about. A total reset. That is what is beautiful about ultramarathons. There is no point wasting time with music in your ears. It is better to commune with nature and feel wild for a while. People slept in various places: under trees, on rocks, between boulders and in ditches. With that level of exhaustion and a day and a half of running, nothing bothers you anymore. You become indifferent to everything. My map cheat sheet carried me on.
After 77 km, I could already look at its other side and motivate myself with the thought that when I reached its end, it would mean one thing: finishing the race. After a long day and extremely difficult terrain, my feet began to make themselves felt. Not blisters or toenails, but rather numb big toes and a loss of sensation. I had never experienced that before; it was probably caused by the sharp stones and my toes constantly being bent upward on the uphill rocks. The second night was approaching, and it did not fill me with optimism. My longest run had lasted just 24 hours, while here hour 28 was beginning. I was in Switzerland, where the trails were terribly steep but sandy. The only sound was the bells hanging around the necks of cows grazing along the trails.
I was falling asleep while running. I could feel the trail slipping from beneath my feet because my knees were brushing against the rocks at the sides. I counted and analysed whether I would manage to finish the race within 46 hours and receive the official finisher’s vest. After that time, all I could get for completing the race was a handshake from the organiser. That would hardly have satisfied me, although judging by the expressions on some participants’ faces, it would have been an honour.
The final three climbs were a bargaining chip with my body, trying to extract a little more power from it. To make the cutoff, I had to give everything I had. At the third-to-last climb, I had to assess my realistic chance of finishing within the limit. The ascent looked like Szklarki Waterfall, among other places, and on it you had to cover 7 km uphill.
At that moment, UTMB seemed ridiculous to me. What can possibly excite us about races like this? It is a slaughterhouse, not a race. They had deliberately set such a course to make us vomit and show us what insignificant pawns we were. But in ultrarunning, the mind divides the course into pieces. You do not swallow the whole distance at once; you take it metre by metre, kilometre by kilometre, because you know that in a few hours the crisis will pass and things will get better. It is only a matter of time—or of getting through the night.
Twelve hours in hand and only two summits left. I thought: well, I’m home. When I ran out of the checkpoint, where they had randomly checked the contents of my pack and the mandatory equipment before the climb, my head moved upward toward the ascent, while my legs stopped as if someone had cemented them into the rocks. For the first time, I experienced a state in which my body was completely limp. I sat down for a moment, made a quick analysis, then had two energy gels, a banana and several orange slices even faster, and my body submitted to trudging onward and tackling the trail. I knew the French would not surrender the race easily and that the climbs would not be easy. I was right: they were the two worst ascents and descents of my life. Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side; at the top, temperatures of 38–42 degrees cut off any positive thoughts. The final climb.
It was an endless journey. Two hours of climbing over scattered boulders. When I saw a flatter section after that time, the smile on my face grew to unbelievable proportions. Unfortunately, it lasted only briefly, because around the bend the mountain continued upward—another hour of climbing.
The positive “fleeting moments, like a leaflet” disappeared when I saw another flatter section and the trail disappearing behind the mountain. I expected the worst. And here, for the first time, I was not surprised: the trail continued vertically upward for another hour. If not for the thought that this was the final mountain, I do not know whether the Alps would have swallowed me right there. At the summit I had dreamed of, only 12 km remained to Chamonix, where my wife, daughter and sister were waiting for me. Well, now it should be easy. Not so fast, Milewicz—the wall descending below and the muscle-tearing pain under the skin ruled out a mad giant slalom. The descent took about two hours of running in murderous heat.
When I ran into the town, I could feel the sun melting my shorts into my skin and making them one with it. It was carnage. The cheers and applause of the spectators, and the sight of the people accompanying me, were priceless. I reached the finish after 43 hours of running. Through this race, I proved to myself that boundaries are fluid. All it takes is plenty of self-discipline to show yourself that the bar is merely a creation of our imagination. And we live for as long as we live through our dreams.
Many of you will probably ask: why spend your free time in such a brutal way? I am a dietitian by training, a spinning instructor, and I love testing certain combinations of products, meals and plans that will convince me that they are the right choice during many hours of exertion. In this way, my extensive experience can help others get through this difficult journey. I have been running for a good 13 years and I am constantly drawn to overcoming my own weaknesses. Thanks to this, I do not merely talk—I show people that it is possible, and that all it takes is the will to do it. In my races, I also look for inspiration for my classes, as well as motivation for the people who attend them. And the greatest advantage of spending time this way today is getting to feel a little wild.
I was very pleased to represent our county beyond the borders of our country. I would also like to thank the authorities of Bolesławiec County for helping make my dream come true!!! But the greatest thanks go to my family—my wife and children—for putting up with weekend training in the mountains and waking up every day without Dad and a husband in the warm bed. THANK YOU!!!
Daniel Milewicz