Olav: “Hey Tim, that does not look elegant anymore”!
And he was right. Damn right. We were around 30 hours into our small ultra running restart session last weekend and I was feeling the usual side effects of being that long on my feet. But let’s start the story from the beginning.
We (7 funny persons from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) started at 0758 on Saturday 4th of July in Sart-lez-Spa to conquer the Ultra Tour des Sources track. The UTDS is not only a 157k race but also a way-marked path to challenge interested people. As it covers some nice and for most of us well-known areas of the Ardennes we thought it may be fun to try this with a self-support social run. Maarten was so kind to carefully check and revise the official GPS-track. We discussed some parts of the track and somehow concluded on a few “improvements” around the nice city Coo. Somehow the original track avoids a few interesting passages. For whatever reason. No one knows. Really. Believe us.
The first 67k of our little adventure were quite enjoyable yet not too difficult. Unfortunately we lost our first colleague quite early in the game. The remaining six of us run/walked through Spa, visited the nice stream Le Ninglinspo and crossed the river L´ Amblève for the first time. In between we stopped from time to time to refill water and empty some bottles of sweet drinks and were then confronted with the fact that this group would not work until the end. Different reasons made 50% of us to use the track-back option on their watches to head straight back to the car. This still summed up to almost 100k for them.
Ultra running starts when the comfort zone is gone. And to lose half of our friends while running should be a clear sign for this. Maarten, Olav and me as the remaining three directly ran into our first problem. Water. It was a warm and sweaty Saturday and our supply was depleted. The next planned water pickup (cemetery) was still 13k away and we were already out of water. We got away by knocking on friendly peoples door to fill-up and made use of an outside water tap in the next village (we asked before). Refilled we entered the interesting part of the adventure. With the dark the slight rain came and the wind was suddenly present on the heights. Perfect. This is the setting you want to enter the self-improved most difficult part of the whole journey in the middle of the Ardennes. Finally the feeling of the Legends Trail adventure back in February was creeping back into our heads. I realized that I was accompanied by two LT500 finishers who survived a whole week in far worse conditions by watching Maarten and Olav speeding into this as if it was nothing. Impressive. We had a beautiful night. It was wet, cold and warm at the same time, we paused on a cold but dry planked backyard on a hill and we were surprised with a fixed rope route climb we didn’t knew before. Easy. Not.
As it is with all good things – this night ended. So did the rain. We were still in and somehow moving. I have to apologize guys from preventing you to do some proper running. We decided to have our first proper stop in a bakery in Malmedy at km 121 Sunday morning. Interesting strategy of us to wait 24h with this. Coffee, Fanta, Ham and Eggs. Nice breakfast. Although strange to sit dirty and smelling within the midst of all the Sunday morning people.
The setting of the last quarter of the track were the Hautes Fagnes. This meant an endless long climb up to Signal de Botrange. Always amazing to reach this highest point. We directly started with our second and last longer indoor break. Soup and Fanta.
Up! 
Soup@143k 
Soup+Fanta
Running downhill from that spot means always some beautiful but technical trails. Hard to manage with a stiff and painful body. But these are the moments of ultra running you have to be thankful for. Because beyond these moments the finish tastes even sweeter. We arrived after 33h38m and 162k with 4500 D+ m at the cars. Done. Thanks for this amazing weekend all of you.
At the end we may have not been the most elegant people out there but elegance may also not be the prime reason why we do kind of things.
