![]() I still say that finishing TDG would be the pinnacle of my ultrarunning career. That was a deeply disappointing DNF and a long recovery. But I encountered a bad storm on the most technical part of the course - also near mile 120 - and fell ten feet down a wet boulder, wrenching my left knee and tearing my LCL. For the first three days, Tor was going well for me and I was actually having a great time. You think I would have learned, but no, I went back the following year for the “nice” race, the Tor des Geants. PTL is the hardest thing I’ve done, by far, even if it was a miserable failure. The dissociation was so complete that I was pleading with myself - out loud - to stop running as my body violently tore through thick brush in the woods and then sprinted down dark road tunnels. After 120 miles of relentless trauma (over four entire days!) I had a total nervous breakdown/panic attack. ) The truncated version of the story is that I was a mountaineering novice who had no idea what I was getting into, joined an international team with a severe language barrier, was made defacto leader and navigator despite my inexperience, didn’t sleep for four days, became so stressed and strained my eyes so much that I tore the extraocular muscles and had to wear glasses for the next six months. There’s a very long story about it up on my old blog ( Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. I still haven’t forgiven Beat for not talking me out of this folly. ![]() It started with a race that was even more difficult than the Tor des Geants - La Petite Trotte à Léon - in 2013. It was the Alps - these beautiful, fearsome mountains - that did the most to knock me down to the mire of reality. I look back on 2012-2014 with nostalgia as Salad Days, when my health, endurance, and youthful idealism were all at their peak and I could do anything I set my mind to. I attempted the Tor des Geants myself, once, in 2014. ![]() I have joined Beat in Courmayeur for all of his subsequent Tors, from my first trip to Europe in 2011 to his early DNF with a prior injury in 2017. And it was the gift of an Italian rock that solidified our relationship. It was his impossible-seeming finish that inspired me to chase him down the Bear 100 course the following week. I followed his progress over the course of the week with awe. TDG was Beat’s first “Ultra” ultramarathon. It was the first year for that 200-mile, 80,000-feet-of-climbing monster around Italy’s Aosta Valley. I’ve written about our first date at the 2010 Bear 100, but in many ways, that year’s Tor des Geants was even more meaningful. The Tor des Geants is a well-worn chapter in my and Beat’s history. But I spent the first half of September exploring gorgeous mountains in Switzerland and Italy and thought I’d share a few of my favorite hikes over the next few posts.īeat and I at the start of the 2023 Tor des Geants in Courmayeur, Italy. It’s been difficult to decide what to write next since I don’t want this to become Jill’s Latest Outdoor Exercise Blog 2.0. It means a lot that the piece resonated with others. Human connections are difficult for me, and my main motivation for writing is to connect with people. My Substack has logged 107 new subscribers since I posted the essay on Mount Raymond, so thank you to those who read and shared it. I’m grateful that I received no mean comments or even worse, silence. Still, it proved surprisingly tough to write about because of the intimacy of the experience, the complicated emotions it might spur in family members, and judgments from those who don’t understand. Visiting Mount Raymond felt like a natural thing to do - roadside memorials and ghost bikes prove that others feel similarly. Thank you for the comments and responses to my last post about locating the place where my father died in June 2021. The mighty Monte Bianco looms over Ghiacciaio Toula.
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