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Meditation spot |
When I first signed up for the guided trail running vacation in January, I wasn’t stressed. I’d been running consistently all winter and looked forward to the extra motivation that having a trip of this scale would provide. Four months into my training, a knee injury shook my confidence. Could my body actually handle the rigors of training, nevertheless running intensely for a week in a row? What did I know about injury prevention and recovery? Sure, I’d done several long trail races but I was always so sore the next day I could barely walk. I cursed myself for signing up for the most challenging trip the company offers. As my departure date got closer the worries intensified. To name a few: getting COVID, twisting an ankle, busting a knee, issues with my achilles, my hamstrings, my back. Debilitating soreness. Runaway ingrown toenail pain. Athlete’s foot taking a turn for the worse. Doing something stupid like closing the car trunk or door on myself. (Sadly, that’s actually happened. Twice.) Owen likes to joke that I should be put in a bubble in the weeks leading up to my big races.
My trip insurance didn’t include fear or anxiety as a reimbursable reason to cancel, so in early September I boarded a plane to Switzerland, hoping the experience I had in the mountains would make up for my lower training mileage. After the 11 hour overnight flight I felt a little groggy but was confident I’d have no trouble getting to my group’s meeting point in Arolla, a remote village in the Alps. After all, I’d be traveling by train and the Swiss train system is known for being reliable and easy to navigate. But when the ticket agent told me that what was supposed to be a 5 hour trip would take 14 hours, I immediately started stress-sweating. The best she could do was book me a ticket to Sion, a destination about 25 miles from Arolla, and I’d figure out the rest later. Maybe I could hitchhike the last stretch?
As I journeyed through the Swiss countryside, I problem-solved. Another ticket agent told me to take a bus from Sion to Arolla. I found a map of Switzerland’s entire public transit system and tracked where I was going. However, another mini crisis shortly ensued in the train bathroom, of all places. I couldn’t figure out how to flush the darn toilet or turn the sink on. With my hands covered in soap I dashed into another bathroom across the way to see if it had any instructions or labels. Meanwhile, a lady almost walked into the bathroom I’d just defiled: disaster! With the knowledge that the Swiss take pride in having pristine public bathrooms fresh in my mind from the book I was reading, I shoved my dignity down and asked the lady how to operate the bathroom. (In case you ever find yourself in the bathroom on a Swiss train, flush the toilet by pressing a button labeled “WC.”) By the time I finally emerged from the bathroom, the train was traveling in the complete opposite direction. Some strange space-time-toilet continuum, apparently.
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View of the Swiss countryside from the trail |
I finally made it to Arolla and met our guide and the six others in my group. The night was a blur of wine, bread, cheese, and trying to remember everyone’s names: Annie, a bad-ass trail runner in her 60s from Montana, Joanna and Keith, from Oregon, celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary, Jason, a dad and coach from Boston, Patrick, a soon-to-be dad from North Carolina, and David, a real estate agent from Colorado with several 100-milers under his belt. Plus our guide Mark, a former Gurkha officer in the British army. The next morning our group set off on our “warm-up” run (10.6 miles), and I got my first taste of trail running in the Alps. It was unbelievable how little we had to work to get such amazing views. This was mountain trail running at its best: green-blue lakes, views of glaciers and snowy peaks, scree fields. But there was a twist: we came across a mountain hut at the halfway point, the Cabane des Aiguilles Rouges, serving sandwiches, soups, pastries, and drinks. I would come to love these huts and cafes that were so plentiful in the Swiss Alps. But that day, I wasn’t so sure about them. I mistakenly ordered a gigantic sandwich and tried to keep it down as we continued on our run. Lesson learned! That night I was only slightly sore but deployed multiple recovery methods: I stretched, rolled out my muscles, and chugged an Airborne drink and a chocolatey sports recovery drink. Those two, unsurprisingly, do not mix well.
The next morning we left the comfort of our hotel and had nine miles and over 5,000 feet of climbing to get to our lodging for the night, the rustic Becs de Bosson alpine hut. We joked that we looked like turtles, carrying everything on our backs. Besides food and water I had a sleeping bag liner, rain gear, long sleeve, gloves, headlamp, toothbrush, toothpaste, sunscreen, and soap. My pack might have been heavy, but I was not going to be weighed down by my lunch again. I ordered just a pastry at the Buvette de l'A Vieille cafe, and smugly power hiked ahead of those in our group slowed down by beers and big plates of food. Halfway through the climb, everyone rallied for a dance party to the Bee Gees, complete with speakers that our guide had carried just for the occasion! I knew right then that these were my people, even if they did eat too much for lunch.
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Village of Evolene |
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Can you imagine running after eating that?! |
When we finally arrived at the hut we took in the 360-degree views and changed out of our trail shoes into Crocs, mandatory footwear provided by the hut. We also got a lesson in hut culture, mostly regarding the use of the toilets, which I listened to intently, not wanting a repeat of the train bathroom incident. After my aforementioned meditation on a rock we all piled into the dining room for a three-course, albeit simple dinner, then everyone wandered outside to enjoy the sunset. Even the two black hut cats joined us! Our sleeping arrangement was a tiny room for the eight of us, equipped with four bunk beds. I snagged a bottom bed, which meant I had to hand various requested items up to the folks in the top bunks: massage ball, water bottles, clothes, headlamp. Sometime in the middle of the night the massage ball bounced out the window and the water bottle fell down to the bottom bunk under Annie’s pillow! Armed with earplugs I didn’t hear any of it though, or the fifteen total bathroom trips that we cumulatively made throughout the night (we counted the next day).
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Becs de Bosson hut |
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Even the hut cat came out to enjoy the sunset |
Day three was our longest day of running, almost 18 miles with over 11,000 feet of elevation change. We descended from the high alpine to the turquoise blue waters of Lac de Moiry, then picked our way across rocky, technical terrain, too remote for any of the cafes that we had gotten so used to for lunch. Finally in late afternoon we plopped our weary bodies into Cabane de Petit Mountet and I greedily eyed the menu. Screw small pastries, today I would feast! I settled on a gigantic bowl of pasta, potatoes, and cheese. Between the rejuvenating meal and the ibex we saw shortly after, I had the motivation I needed to stumble the last three miles to our hotel in the town of Zinal.
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Annie and I, photo by: Mark Brightwell
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Photo by: Mark Brightwell |
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View from our hotel room in Zinal |
That night over dinner our guide gravely warned us there would not be any cafes to stop at for lunch the next day. We took matters into our own hands and decided to pack a picnic lunch. The next morning everyone went to the grocery store to procure their assigned items. I was responsible for nutella and “stole” multiple single serving packets from our hotel’s breakfast buffet. After a couple hours ascending out of the Zinal Valley we came to a little cabin with a picnic table, a perfect lunch spot. It was clearly owned by someone but they weren’t home and we decided if they arrived we would just invite them to join us. We certainly had enough to share: meats, cheeses, breads, mustard, tomatoes, avocados, plums, nutella, chocolate bars, and even bagged wine, cooled in a water trough nearby.
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Hauling a baguette up, photo by: Mark Brightwell |
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What's left of our picnic, photo by: Keith |
That afternoon was some of my favorite running of the entire trip. Perhaps the mid-run wine had something to do with it? I led five of us down a fast, flowy, semi-technical shelf trail, navigating roots and rocks at top speed while views of the Turtmann glacier came closer and closer into view. We finished the run with a soak in a glacial stream before ascending to the Turtmann Hut, our digs for the night. The vibe of this hut was less calm and peaceful, like our first hut, and more rowdy, drunken celebration manifested as the shirtless, barefoot German guys joking with each other and doing handstands on the patio.
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Glacial soak, photo by: Joanna |
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View from the Turtmann Hut |
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Can you believe that sleeps 8? |
The next day’s run was a blur of scree fields with some off-trail running sprinkled in. Another runner, Kyle, was running roughly the same route as our group, except he was doing it self-guided, on his own. Each day it was a fun surprise to see where we’d cross paths with Kyle. Sometimes it was at a cafe for lunch, other times it wasn’t until we arrived in town or at our hut for the evening This particular day, Kyle came striding up to us in the most unlikely of places, while we were off trail picking our way through a mucky field, carefully avoiding the cow pies. As quickly as he appeared, he was gone. Which was usually how each day’s Kyle sighting went.
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Lost sheep high up on the mountain |
I was relieved when we finally arrived at our lunch spot at Jungeralp. It was quite a nice establishment, not really a “shoes-off” kind of place, but at this point on the trip we didn’t care. As soon as we sat down at our outdoor table we all popped our shoes off to let our feet air out. Our guide even wandered inside, shoeless, to check out the desserts. After lunch we had a decision to make: take a cable car down to St. Niklaus, the village we’d stay in that night, or descend thousands of vertical feet on foot. Somehow, no one was tempted by the shortcut. |
We made it a shoes-off kind of place |
When we arrived in St. Niklaus I let Annie, my roommate for the trip, clean up in our hotel room first while I sat across the street at a cafe with Patrick, Jason, and David to enjoy a beer. By this point, Annie and I had our hotel routines down. One of us would get the room first to shower and destinkify, while the other would usually get a drink, then we’d switch. Most importantly, we knew not to bring our trail running shoes into our rooms. In this particular hotel in St. Niklaus, we were all staying along the same hallway, and with seven pairs of shoes festering together we stunk up the place. I felt terrible for the elderly German man who was also along our hallway.
By now, we’d run for five days through the Alps and I thought we had seen it all. I actually hit a low point, feeling tired and sore and uninspired enough that I broke out my running playlist. I didn’t need it for long though. From St. Niklaus the trails had a little bit of everything, from a cave to rockfall shelters to a culvert that we had to crouch down to walk through. We even went across the world’s third longest pedestrian suspension bridge. It was here that we finally discovered what would slow Patrick down, the fastest one in our group. Not a gigantic meal, or multiple beers, or even two liters of wine had done the trick. No, it was his fear of heights on the suspension bridge! That afternoon we danced our way into Fluhalp Hut, our last hut of the trip. This was by far the most upscale: it had hot showers, more spacious rooms, designer slides for hut shoes, and even a wedding happening that night! The best part wasn’t the upscale accommodations though, it was the simple beauty of watching the sun set behind the Matterhorn, knowing we had run almost 80 miles to see one of the most iconic mountains in the world.
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World's third longest suspension bridge |
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The Matterhorn! |
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Sunset from Fluhalp Hut |
Day seven was our last day of running, or so I thought. We made our way toward Zermatt under the hulking Matterhorn, and even got to run with the elusive Kyle all day! Somewhere along the way, our guide casually mentioned that we could also run tomorrow, if we wanted to. I had been looking forward to celebrating our last day of the trip in Zermatt by exploring the city, perhaps indulging in some Swiss chocolates or lounging in the hotel spa. Anything but running, really. As the day went on though, I opened my mind to the prospect of running tomorrow. Our guide said it would be the most beautiful day yet, and frankly I couldn’t let myself miss that. At this point I was a full blown, Alps-worn, trekking-pole toting trail runner who greeted people in French or German and ate gigantic lunches at huts and rolled my way down the trail afterward. What was one more day? The hotel that night in Zermatt certainly helped rejuvenate me. It made last night’s “fancy” hut seem like a trailside lean-to. Our room had fluffy white bathrobes, soap shaped like sheep, and a view of the Matterhorn from our own private patio. I felt severely underdressed for that evening’s four-course meal in denim shorts and a t-shirt. This was not a shoes-off kind of place!
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Zermatt, after our last official run |
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Our swanky hotel |
We had a smaller group for the last day’s bonus run. Joanna and Keith had split off to travel back to Geneva. Annie joined for a bit but headed back to the hotel early. That left me, Mark, David, Patrick, and Jason. I was worried I’d be the slowest one and hold the group back, but at this point I was so acquainted with the trails that I was practically flying down them, even if I still couldn’t keep up with Patrick or David. It was as epic as our guide had promised. We were in the shadow of the Matterhorn all day, on flowy singletrack trails that we had all to ourselves. We nearly touched the edge of a glacier. When I ran out of snacks, I fueled on a Swiss chocolate bar. I devoured my largest lunch of the trip. And best of all, I made it back to the hotel, 101.4 miles of trail running through the Alps, without “stuffing it” (our guide’s term for wiping out).
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Photo by: Mark Brightwell |
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Photo by: Mark Brightwell |
Our last meal as a group that evening was bittersweet as we shared our favorite parts of the trip and our goals looking forward. For the first time on the trip, I think I ate more than our guide, who was slumped in the corner sipping tea and nursing an upset stomach. After eight days of running, we finally wore him down!
That was on September 11. Four days later I was sitting on a beach at the Jersey Shore, reading a magazine, thinking about what ice cream flavor I might order that night from Skipper Dipper. After loading up on bread, cheese, meats, and pastries in the Swiss Alps, I probably didn’t need to do an eating tour of the Jersey Shore too, but it’s kind of my family’s tradition on our annual beach vacation. I wasn’t going to argue with that!