Back home in the Alps after a good Eurotrip, we face our altitude marathon training once more. On a Sunday morning at 6.30am, we set off in -10. In all honesty, we could not have been much less enthusiastic to go, but as always, we dragged each other out the door and started out.
Usually, as the sun starts rising, we get much warmer, but today there was thick cloud about so there was little chance to warm up!
Leaving out the back door of our building, we always start with a short steep downhill, before a brutal pull up to our first track. Today with the snow being much softer than normal, this was particularly tough! We did however see a winter fox which was fantastic.
We got to the top of the first lift in 40 mins with Tom giving consistent encouragement and being in charge of calling intervals between jogging and speed walking.
We were at least treated to some awesome views on the way up.
Eliza stopped to enjoy some views as we reached the top of next lift. We got to the eye of the needle (and climbed into it) 1hr in, just as cloud properly descended.
Piste basher came past us out the cloud, quite eerie! For once, we got a wave and cheery smile – unusual.
We then ran down a red run (in our one moment of sunshine!) and back up blue to top of Grand Huit lift.
From the top of this slope, we did an about face and ran back down, across the bottom of Grand Huit, round by the rope pull lift and down Palafour.
This ended up being around 11km in total.
As a final note here, we would say that running poles (ours are Leki) are absolutely worth it – not only do they help you climb up on super steep sections but also save you on way down!
Boondock Puffins 
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