La Grimpette de Bedjuis - Switzerland - 2020 - 36th

At the registration of Ovronnaz-Rambert two weekends ago (my race report is here) I picked up a flyer for a race that was coming up. I didn't really look at it at the time and didn't think about it again until I saw it on my desk on last Friday. The race being advertised was La Grimpette de Bedjuis and it was on Saturday morning. I had a hard session planned and thought that I may as well enter the race and use that as a hard run. Also, I was hoping to run much better than I did at Ovronnaz-Rambert.

This time around I kept a much more consistent pace and felt much stronger than I had the previous weekend. I was going well and managed to stay right in the heart rate zone I was aiming to achieve for about 35' until my legs just couldn't handle running the relentless incline any more. I pushed on to the finish, but that last 15' was tough! I'm happy with how the race went and I had a great time learning another climb and seeing another new route.

After two purely uphill races I've come away with a lot of respect for the athletes who are able to run these events well. I think I've spent too much time conserving my energy and approaching long ascents with the perspective of them being a part of a longer race. This means which means I don't have the pure running strength or aggression needed for these types of races. Fortunately there are a lot of these kinds of races at this time of year and they're easy to fit into the schedule so I can definitely work on this aspect of my running in the future.

The photos never look as steep as the trail feels.

I started off well and held a pretty consistent effort until about 35'.

The first aid station is visible at the end of the road in the bottom right of the picture. This is before Iserables.

A mixture of road, trail, single-track and steep mountain trail in this race. It had everything!

Race result:

12 September 2020
6.3km
960m
50:52
36th place