If all our couple weekend are going to be like this I really have to start training.
The Great Escape was my first ever Legends Trail run in 2019. At the beginning I was shocked and impressed by the difficulty of the course on the one side and the helpful, relaxed and family-like atmosphere throughout the whole event on the other side. It kind of felt home from the very start. A good environment to extend what seemed possible. The rest is history. From the first full slam 2019/2020, all Legends Trails editions today – endless hours out there and yet never alone in spirit; always surrounded by like-minded folks. Right after the first slam the decision to leave it with that very slam was made – so it was the LTs alone which connected me year after year with this wonderful community. But as time passed by the organization decided to add a bit of extra to the existing runs. So I decided that it may be time to return to try to prove what I learned the last 6 years and to go for the new and longer slam.
The new course used the familiar hiking trail Escapardenne Eislek Trail as basis but the whole idea was quite different from the classic one-way direction 100 mile editions the previous years. The start was near the former end of the race following the trail backwards to roughly the middle of the trail in Clervaux in LUX. This sections was followed by a new designed loop to nearly the south end of the hiking trail and from there backwards on the trail itself. That meant that the start of the Great Escape 2025 was the end of the former editions backwards – with a larger section down at our beloved Ourthe – and the last km of the Great Escape 2025 were the ones at the beginning of the former editions. Quite interesting to me and probably all the former participants to get all those flashbacks of known course details in a completely strange order.
Race registration and kit check took place at the finish location with a lot of „Hallos“, „Jeetjes“ and „Saluts“ – good to be back at the LT family. Lots of friends both on the organization/supporter as well as on the runner end of things. After a 1.5 hour bus drive to the start we were finally allowed to set foot into an interesting race. My idea was to stay in the front half of the pack for the first kilometers as I was aiming for some room to run in the heart of the Ardennes on the most finest trails there are @#noourthenoparty. As Yvonne and I decided to stay together at the beginning of the race (Michael joined our group as well for a while) to understand if running together would do any good we tackled that part and the first night together somewhere in the middle of the pack. Several smaller inconsistencies slowed us down til the beginning of a rather warm Saturday – we ended up running the last third of the pack. Michael left us for good around dusk as he was faster at that time and decided to use this speed to buy himself more time for later in the race. The first big goal was to reach the first dropback at kilometer 85. We got there together and left after a 30 min break with around 2h spare on cutoff. My hope was a bigger gain on cutoff at that early stage in the race but it turned out that we were quite good in keeping that gain roughly until the very last part of the race.
The next big task was to survive the warm day without further damage and enjoy the new part of the course. It was less technical compared to the Escapardenne hiking trail (especially compared to the Ourthe stretch) but nevertheless there were quite some meters of D+ involved. Yet this part of the race (the 20k to the first dropback and the following 30k of new track) was the easiest of the whole race. Time to gain some time or at least don’t lose anything on the collected time before cutoff. That worked quite well. The legendary CPs every 20k certainly helped a lot to never run out of water or other essentials. Overall quite ok til the evening. We were eying the weather forecast throughout that first day as the sunshine was forecasted to end quite dramatically in a huge stretch of rain and potentially thunderstorm. This weather change combined with the dawning night two and the return of the rougher terrain made one thing quite clear: the real race was about to start at around 130/140 kilometers. With two hours on cutoff a somewhat optimistic setup.
And as expected – the race did start at the point of dusk. The second night brought the well-known ultra feeling back. A mix of a remote hopelessness, of silent, tired and endless motion – on one point we even decided to split as it seemed that we somehow limited ourselves with sticking together. In these hours everyone needs to be totally free in whatever pace/rhythm seems right and keeps a decent speed up. We were not able to find this sweet spot together so we tried to do so apart. All in all a decision we should have made a few hours earlier as it immediately payed off. We both sped-up quite significantly, I finally was able to listen to some music and to fully sink-in into the night two vibes. The well-known Legends Trail feeling was fully back and I braced myself to whatever may come across me and that finish line.
And then. Ultimately. The weather change came. Temperature dropped by some degree, wind started to do wind things and hours of cold rain would follow. On top of the above described night two vibes the conditions changed from that quite warm and sunny Saturday stroll to a rainy, windy and cold trail ultra night. I caught sight of Yvonne running a few hundred meters in front of me battling through and decided, after the first attempt to close the gap, to relentlessly follow her. The consequence was a nice speed in that given conditions and an easy focus point – good that the light on her backpack was not red but weird orange. A dancing, fading and re-appearing light in the distance. Not too soon after we reunited in our mission to stay moving and to get closer to the finish. After the time alone we started to function together in a helpful way.
The showdown of the Great Escape at the rivers Sauer, Wiltz and Clerve felt oddly familiar, somewhat frightening mixed with a good portion of full focus and flashbacks from 2019 when I was running that section in the very same direction together with Matthias. The light came slowly back – yet in the steep river valleys we used our headlamps til what felt like hours after dusk. The trails were back at full difficulty; wet, steep, muddy – just the way we like them. As I was not wearing my best rain jacket (mistake during drop back preparations – I was not expecting that much of rain) I was happy we stayed in motion and ultimately started to shorten the CP breaks to not give our bodies any vague ideas of: „oh – its over I can shut down“. We were able to maintain about an hour to the various cutoffs along the way so after the last CP with 24k to go I was able to believe that finishing was indeed a possible outcome of that journey. Nevertheless, we tried to remain speed until we suddenly hit it. The end. I always have a strange feeling of being sorry that it ends while being tremendously thankful that it is finally about to be over for good. Walking up that last meters on the main street after what felt like more than 43 hours felt like the right thing to do at that moment. Unbelievable that this will be time and distance-wise only roughly half of what awaits us in February…
Crossing that finish line together was a very good and satisfying feeling. Despite the moments of not finding the vibe together – or maybe I should say precisely because of these moments and the solution we found for it – we went on this adventure and came back from it #alonetogether.
Some numbers about the new Great Escape: 48.35k flat (<2%; 23%), 77.36k uphill (37%), 81.02k downhill (39%). Climbscore 9.1/10, 7569m D+ – all in all a pretty challenging course.
Climb Score view of the Great Escape 200 from @runalyze.
81/169 starter reached the finish line in time (47.9%); 16/21 previous finisher of a Legends Slam finished the new Great Escape (76.2%) – lets see how many of the 81 will proceed with running the races of the new and longer slam.
Next race of the Legends Slam 2.0 is the Bello Gallico in December. Not sure if I really look forward to that dark and probably wet/cold misery – but well: what needs to be done needs to be done. And I know I will have someone with me in that race specifically in love with all misery. That may make it either easier or hard – it certainly will be a moral support throughout.
25% done of the Legends Slam 2.0 2025/2026!
