It was, just, cool enough to wear 3/4s which meant less faffing when it got to evening and the temperature dropped - in the end I wore the same 3/4s for the whole race! Despite a fair bit of experience I am still easily awed by other runners. I knew Nicky S would be there somewhere too. Once in the start pen I spotted Brian Melia and Tim Laney. All the Brits seemed to be in the 10am which suited me with more hours of daylight on the first day and less time to faff that morning. Sunday's weather was better and we were to start in waves at 10am and noon. Matt Neale was by now off and running on the Tor des Glaciers and I had missed his evening start due to the rain. The weather predictably for September was changeable and I worried about the rain. I guess if the weather had been worse I might have used more of it. Having only one drop bag that would follow me did make life easier but I still packed far too much. I think they might have been but in all honesty they were plenty big enough even with the extra sleeping bag we were asked to take to negate the need to share blankets. Then I failed at one hurdle- they wanted 50 Euros for the tracker (OK) but it had to be a single note! Luckily another runner was happy to exchange my two 20s and a 10 for a single 50! Rules!! There had been rumours that the drop bags were smaller this year. It was time consuming queuing but eventually I was in. Armed with my Tous Anti-Covid French App I went to registration.

We knew where we could park the van at the sports centre for a week and had some idea of the registration process. Going back to a race is always easier than the first time. In the end we drove from Briancon to Courmayeur without being stopped by any official for any purpose! We decided not to risk it and so paid for an antigen test at a French pharmacy - so easy, and filled in an Italian locator form - not so easy. Strictly speaking having been away from the UK for so long we should have just been able to enter Italy but the rules were unclear, written for those UK citizens going direct to Italy.

There wasn't even 3 weeks recovery from the GRP but I felt that my legs were working well. Our 'route' across France climbing and doing Via Feratta was determined by this race but that mostly worked out OK. The rules did change and it was all actions go. We decided to enjoy France and just wait and see. I thought Covid might have put paid to this and even having paid up in April I was almost resigned to the fact that I had lost the money and we would not get there - Italy had a 5 day quarantine plus all sorts of extra rules quite late into the summer. It's beautiful- we were so lucky it went ahead It is beautiful, brutal but somehow you dig deep and get it done! There is, for me, more power walking than real running, especially after day 1. I completed this race in 2019 and it was my plan to return and try to claim FV60.

This is a long race, even for me so it could end up being a long post - you might want to get a brew ready.

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