Day 8 Max: 15.7 miles, 27km event Sarah: 14km race, 9.1 miles Marmottes: hiding from trail runners We were up at 5.15 to get ready for our race, have breakfast, meet up with our friend Becks who is also in Chamonix, and drive along the valley to Argentière. Having checked in and picked up our…
Author: Sarah & Max
Sarah & Max love running and cycling in inspiring places around world
Ch’ambling around
Day 7 8 miles With apologies for the first of probably several Chamonix-related puns… today we took it easy before an actual race that Sarah had managed to enter us into tomorrow just down the valley in Argentière. We decided to run easy along the river towards Les Houches, naïvely thinking it would be nice…
Swiss Train Mythology
Day 6 90 miles, 4 hours – by train No marmottes seen We’ve been avidly following the Tour de France of course, and today for us was a ‘transition stage’ as they would say, getting ourselves over to Chamonix. We had a peaceful morning of some yoga and stretching, much needed after our 60 miles…
Glaciers & Gorges
Day 5 14 miles Marmotte sightings: 1 Today we decided to start on a high by going up the Matterhorn Glacier cable car to the Trockener Steg at 2,939m. It was amazing to think we’d run up this high on the other days as it seemed a long way up, and it was quite amusing…
Cloud Nein
Day 4 13 miles Marmotte sightings: 2 Vulture /eagle sightings: 1 false alarm (was a helicopter!) Another day, another VK to get up and out of Zermatt! This time following a beautiful river gorge to Trift on the Northern side of the valley. We’d been chuckling at a translation we’d seen somewhere in a leaflet…
Ultra Trail to Ultra Chic
Day 3 6.5 miles Marmotte sightings: 2 wooden marmotte sculptures We needed a pseudo-rest day today so we took the famous Sunnegga funicular for the first leg up the mountain, had a pricelessly scenic coffee, and then set off. We followed a spectacular contour path, with the Blauherd and Rothorn above left of us, and…
Escher Etch
Day 2 14 miles Marmotte sightings: 1 The weather had closed in last night and we woke up to drizzle and a chilly 8 degrees. We decided to see if Zermatt had some yoga on offer and managed to find a little studio with a combined Pilates and TRX class. It was more 80s Germanic…
All About the Matterhorn
Day 1 13.1 miles Marmotte sightings: 0 Arriving in Zermatt, it’s impossible not to keep looking at the mesmerising sight of the Matterhorn, so our first run had to be heading straight for it, to the highest point you can get to before ropes etc are required. We decided our only possible option was to…
Running in the Alps 2019
The mountains are calling and I must go — John Muir A daily update of trail running round the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, summer 2019.
Running in the Alps, Summer 2019 