When: Sunday, 17th August 2015
Where: Châteauvieux, Haute-Alpes (05), France
Another Challenge Trails 05 race – this time south of Gap in the hills around the lovely village of Châteauvieux. I didn’t see many old castles, but then I was too busy running up and down steep hills to pay much attention.
There’s a writeup from the race organisers (in French) on the official website. 135 runners started the 22km course with the usual selection of mountain-bred speedgoats. It was a warm, but not too hot day and there were no enormous climbs, just constant, undulating trails which made it hard to get into a rhythm but made for some punchy racing.
After the start, and a loop around the village which helped thin out the ranks before we hit the trails, the race climbed up into the rocky, lunar landscape you can see in the pictures above and below. The gravel was loose and quite often there were large ruts to jump down, over or climb up which made for some interesting running.
Out of the Coté de Grosse Pierres (hill of big rocks – the early Provencale settlers had more pressing concerns than imaginative place names), we got onto more traditional terrain – plenty of forest single track and rutted trails – shade from the sun and plenty of technical descending.
Again, as I’m becoming used to racing in France – this was another faultlessly marked trail. No navigation was needed, I just had to follow the markers hanging from trees or on rocks which meant I could concentrate on the running.
After a few meandering loops of the balcons, the race came back to the rocky landscape we saw at the start, and more or less retraced it’s steps. It was here I noticed there were a few nasty hills to contend with, which helped me pull back a couple of places as other runners who had gone out ahead started to tire.
I managed to get home in 31st place in a time of 2h12’26” – pretty much as expected and fairly happy with the result.
