Nightshift

Racing le SaintéLyon

So a couple weeks back, I’m on a nice, easy Sunday jog and I get a call from Laurent, the Asics team manager. He’s checking on my recovery after the Diagonal and invites me to Lyon to spend the week with the team for the 70th edition of the Asics Saintélyon an important race in France and big event for the brand.

Laurent is also a fisherman and whether he intended to or not, had placed a baited hook before me. Attending a race and not racing is out of the question and if you are going to race, running anything besides the queen race is cheating.

So I begin a line of questioning about this SaintéLyon. The route starts in Saint Etienne and traverses the hilly countryside on the way to Lyon. 80km (50m) with 2300m (7500ft) of runnable vert. Night, cold, mud, snow, ice, fast, tough, competition. I will sleep on it.

It took about 10 minutes for me to bite and I sketched out a 4 week preparation, envisaging a series of carefully crafted doubles with doses of speed and race specific vert:distance tempo runs and hill drills and descent practice. But screw utopian visions.

• Week 1 = a mess, birthday + sick

• Week 2 = recovering from week 1 + half marathon

• Week 3 = recovering from HM

• Week 4 = in Lyon, easy runs on course + race

Not what I would call an optimal system, but hey — I managed to log some hard efforts and arrive ready to throw down.

Photo by Guillaume Salem

The Race

11:40pm

We came out of the gates hot, set the freezing pavement on fire. I didn’t bother looking at the watch, rather focused my attention on making a good stride and synching my breath to this rhythm.

Kilometer splits to the first aid station

We were 10 runners deep going over the hills and it was impressive to be around so much accumulated fitness. I positioned myself just behind the leaders and focused on the feet in front.

There were little moments where I questioned whether I could survive this pace, but I grit my teeth and hung in there.

As we often see in long races, the tempo does slow down but the price-to-play was already more than most could afford. I found myself relatively intact and soon feeling good and Thomas Cardin and I went to work.

Despite the speed we chatted about racing and Thomas shared a lot about the course and how the race typically plays out (this being his 4th participation and eventual 3rd victory).

Coming into the second aid station in Saint Catherine (33k) we had a small gap to the chase group and Thomas encouraged me to be fast through the aid station so we might extend the lead.

We kept pushing and Thomas remarked that despite the course being longer than last year we were faster. He is an interesting guy. An athlete who knows how to win, orchestrates his victories with meticulous preparation, intelligent tactics and copious talent.

I was aware that I might be a pawn in his game and told him so. Encountering the steepest climb of the night (8min effort on a 26% slope) he took the reins. I sat on his heels but could not hold on. At the top he had 30 seconds but in plain sight.

At every turn and crest I saw his headlamp and pursued it with vigor. The legs were starting to feel tight and slow and I was not sure if I was going to be able to keep running a respectable pace.

I worked to lengthen my stride, which hurt, but was necessary to keep up. At Saint Genou (48k) he was 40s ahead. I ate gels and chased them with water. I threw myself down the descents, repeating various phrases, “No regrets come winter,” “Pain is arbitrary,” “Don’t give up the fight.”

Although the pace was fairly steady, the perceived effort climbed and I had to constantly rally myself to work. The night is dark, the fog thick, the ravines are covered in frost. I no longer see Cardin but I crack the whip and hustle. Now the fear of being caught is greater than the hunger to catch him.

Seeing my crew in Soucieu (61k) they tell me he is still less than 2 mins ahead. A camera runner tags along and it’s assuring to hear his labored breathing. I was making every effort to torch my legs. At this point they are spent and need to be forced to move with any speed.

I find this frustrating and remember Thomas telling me that the last section you do at 13kph if you are cooked and 15kph if you are cooking. And here we diverge.

We pass each other on the long out-and-back to the last aid station in Chaponost (69k). His lead is 4.5’. He would go on to double that over the last 13km. Julien encourages me to keep pushing, you never know what might happen. In third place is my Asics teammate Andrzej Witek (Poland) 6’ behind.

I’m not going to lie, the last 13k was brutal. No fun. Pure torture. Where once I was galloping, now I hobble. Ok still at 4:30min/km but it feels helpless and slow. My headlamp dies and I refuse to stop and change the battery. I pass hundreds of runners from the shorter race formats and borrow their collective lumens.

On the descents I find it very hard to run at pace, mechanically things are not working. I do my best. I run the last climb like my life depends on it, breathing foolishly hard but there is nothing I can do except work, work, work — the end is near.

Then it’s over and the wave of pain which has been threatening to crash, dumps over me in a thunderous splash.

Photos By Albin Durand

Running is nothing noble, provides no utility or public good. But I think, at the very least, practicing then refining the tradition of bipedal movement, especially over great distances, say between cities like this race, does merit something.

And so my soreness today is well-earned.

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