Eiger Ultra Trail 101 Race Report – Hopp, Hopp, Hopp-ing through the Berner Oberland

“Are you okay?” I heard a voice inquire. I opened my eyes and took hold of my situation – I was perched on the concrete side of a water bassin at the top of the long and traversing climb heading into Wengen, about 62 km into my Eiger Ultra Trail effort. The afternoon I had just spent on the other side of the valley had been scorchingly hot, the mid-day sun beating down relentlessly on the wide open and exposed trails. I thought I had been managing my heat decently well – staying up on hydration and electrolytes, and feeling pretty good at the 56 km aid station and “halfway point” where we had crossed the main road before launching into the southern half of the course. And yet, on the long and meandering climb up to Wengen, the train had fully come off the rails. I was marching at a ridiculously slow pace, breathing heavily and could sense that my heart rate was high. It was difficult for me to hold my focus and concentration, and I made it this far by latching on to other racers as they passed me and following for as long as I could. I had experienced something like this in a training run I had done weeks prior, when we had our first excruciating day of heat in the Alps. Then, I was able to solve the problem by submerging my head in icy cold water for a few minutes to bring my core temperature down. I kept telling myself on the climb up to Wengen that I just needed to find a cold water source and it would all get better. I glanced just to my right and remembered that I had finally found just what I was looking for.

“I think so…” I responded to the race volunteer, thankful that everyone seemed to speak English in this predominately German speaking part of the world. I stood up, took off my hat and sunglasses, and submerged my head under the remarkably fresh mountain spring water that was gushing from the spigot. I felt my core temperature return to normal levels with every second, literally feeling the life force rush back into my body. My head began to clear. I stayed put for a few more moments before standing up and looking around, feeling about eighty times better than I had 3 minutes ago. I was back.

I had grabbed a bib for the Eiger Ultra Trail 101 km race off the Facebook exchange group back in May on a bit of a whim. I wasn’t signed up for any races yet in the summer – my wife and I had considered doing the team multiday version of this race, the Eiger 250, but she unfortunately tore her ACL skiing in January and so that idea was quickly discarded. I still would like to take an honest go at the Gran Trail Courmayeur 100k race in Italy, but it sold out in record time this year as it seems to get more and more popular on a global scale. I liked the idea of the Eiger race – it would allow me to explore a new area of the Alps where I had never been, it could be my Western States qualifier were I to finish it in less than 22 hours, and as a notoriously hard race to get into I felt kind of lucky that I had actually found a bib with a very easy and clear transfer process. I emailed the friendly guy getting rid of his bib and we set up the exchange. What could possibly go wrong?

The Eiger race starts in Grindewald, a town in the heart of the Swiss German Berner Oberland country. It’s got a bit of a mythical reputation around the Alps – literally every runner or hiker that I mentioned it to would get a twinkle in their eye and tell me that I absolutely had to go check it out. With this ridiculous popularity also comes horrendous crowds (think Chamonix during UTMB week) and ludicrous prices (the only lodging I could find for the race weekend was a 600 Swiss Franc dorm bed in a hostel – no thanks, I’ll sleep in the trunk of my car in the parking garage). I admit I was a bit skeptical heading in, but la vache!, this place more than delivered in the scenery department.

It’s anchored by the Eiger, of course, and its headwall that rises straight up from the valley, a sheer face of granite topping out at nearly 4000 meters. But the crazy thing is that this place would be nuts even without the Eiger. At one point in the race as we descended into Wengen we got our first view of the Lauterbrunne Valley – it looked like ten Yosemite Valleys combined with dramatic waterfalls dropping off sheer walls and massive glaciers perched above. And with this impressive natural beauty comes tourism and infrastructure – the Swiss have built out pretty much every summit and route that they could, with téléphériques running from the valleys to the peaks like spider webs and even an under-mountain train that will take you above the Eiger glacer if you have enough Swiss francs.

I rolled into Grindewald on Friday afternoon blissfully ignorant and naive – I didn’t have a place to stay, because the lodging options were all so exorbitantly pricey, but I had seen a few camping options on the map and was relatively certain I could find a place to at least lay down a sleeping mat and crash for a few hours. The scene in the center of town when I arrived caught me by surprise – it really did feel like Chamonix on the Friday of UTMB race day. Not only were there runners and supporters everywhere, but there were layers and layers of other tourists from all over the world here to soak in the peaks and the glaciers as well. I managed to find a quiet spot in a cafe with decent wifi and finished up my coaching schedules for the following week before striking out on the hunt for a camping spot. This place was literally filled to the brim with no camping available at all – except apparently for the massive 1000+ space Terminal parking structure, where I found a spot in the corner with a view of the Eiger and the main valley torrent and arranged my sleeping pads so that I could hopefully get a few good hours of rest in the trunk of the rental car before the 4 AM start.

I slept surprisingly well, all things considered, and woke up a few minutes before my 2:30 AM alarm to get ready and walk up to the start line. Funny enough there was another Frenchman from 74 sleeping in his car next to me, although for some reason he had gotten up at 1:00 AM so that he could have a tranquil morning before the race. I packed up and brought my drop bag up to the start, where nearly 700 runners were milling about, ready to head into these big mountains on what was looking like a clear and hot sunny day. I positioned myself toward the front of the large group (it’s always better to be passed than to have to pass during a mass start!), the gun went off, and we headed up the road for about 2 kilometers of slightly uphill road running until the first section of trail.

No matter how much I try to psych myself up, I’m never quite prepared for these fast Euro starts. The front half of the pack was running up the road at a pretty good pace – I was huffing and puffing, wishing I had actually done some warm-up sprints near the start line despite that feeling entirely unnecessary for a 100 km race. I managed to settle into a bit of a groove eventually, and was grateful that when we got to the initial singletrack the bottleneck wasn’t too bad, and I could finally dial back the effort a bit. I started climbing in the darkness, the conga line working its way up into the mountains as the sun was beginning to think about peaking over the ridge on the opposite side of the valley.

One of my main goals for this race was to reboot my mountain 100k systems a bit and make sure I still knew how to race and execute the distance. With my 2022 and 2023 seasons consumed by training and focusing on the 300 km PTL, I hadn’t given the 100k distance a legitimate effort in a long time. I had signed up for the 2023 GTC 100k, but showed up at the start line slightly injured and fairly sick, setting a goal for myself that I would run through the night as good training and then abandon at the 35 km mark in La Thuile. I ran a great 100k at Canyons in 2021, in my build to running UTMB that year, but I don’t really consider the Canyons course a “mountain 100k” as the trails are so smooth and non-technical and it never gets up to any sort of appreciable altitude. The last real mountain 100k I had probably run was Castle Peak in 2018, which I remembered as being a ridiculously tough and fun day in the high mountains of Tahoe.

My secondary goal for this race was to get a Western States qualifier for the year, which would require a sub-22 hour finish, even though the race cutoff was a full 25 hours. This might seem like plenty of time to finish a 100k, especially considering my slowest time in four years of running Canyons was a bit over 14 hours, but you have to understand that the running and terrain just works differently over here in the Alps. 22 hours would put me somewhere around a 13 minute per kilometer average pace, which was definitely doable if I could stay engaged and keep my systems rolling the entire day. For the first time in a very long while I made a pace chart, creating splits after looking at the 2023 results from several runners that had similar race results and index numbers to me. As a coach I know well the danger of a pace chart – one Italian runner I work with has always argued that pace charts are essentially worthless, because what are you going to do, start running faster? He’s not wrong, but at the same time I wanted some numbers to know if my goal was within reach and to keep tabs on my progress as the day unfolded.

As the sun rose and began to illuminate the Eiger and the other massive peaks surrounding it, I began to get a real sense of just how special the topography and geology of this area was. Of course I am used to the jaw-dropping views of Chamonix and the Mont-Blanc region, but this area hit a bit differently – rather than one central peak and massif stealing the show, this area felt like the mountainous wealth was spread out across the whole area, with each valley having something to showcase of its own. I tried to keep moving smoothly on the first 30km of the course, running way more than I was used to on the technical and steep trails near my home in Mont-Saxonnex, and was very happy to see that I was about 15 minutes ahead of my proposed 22 hour splits coming into the skyway aid station at First. Not much, but way better than being behind!

We descended a bit and then eventually turned a corner and got a clear view of a massive hotel structure perched on top of a mountain peak – The Faulhorn. A woman climbing behind me calmly said “Oh good morning Faulhorn, we see you up there….” which made me laugh and lowered the anxiety level a bit as we settled into a nice climbing rhythm. This would be far from the longest climb on the course, but would take us to the high point in altitude at nearly 2700m. I had settled in with a nice pocket of folks climbing my pace and so we silently clicked away, working our way up as my legs started to feel the effects of altitude more and more with every step. Along the way eager spectators would cheer us along by yelling “Hopp, hopp, hopp!!!” which is apparently the Swiss-German counterpart to “Allez!!” For much of the day I thought they were yelling at me to keep going “Up”, which still worked very well to keep me motivated on the climbs.

I reflected on the fact that I knew literally nothing about this course before taking off from Grindewald, which is a rarity for me for sure. Most races I run I have the chance to do a bit of scouting or more realistically they are on trails that I know well from years of training runs and practice, even here in the French Alps. Even with both years we did PTL I was able to scout the course a bit after they released the draft routes, which helped massively when we were struggling through the later nights of the week. It was actually a cool feeling to “onsight” a route, and was a bit exciting as I had no idea what lay around the corner. I was happily meeting my goal of discovering a new area by entering this race, and it certainly didn’t hurt that we were doing a giant loop around one of the prettiest places on earth.

Toward the end of the climb I paired up with a Frenchman from Paris that had just spent two years in Los Angeles, and we swapped stories about our two years of experience in foreign countries for a bit. He told me about his failed attempt at the 101k the previous year (it was also brutally hot that day) and gave me some beta about where to grab the best picture from the summit of Faulhorn (before you get to the refuge, not after!) I appreciated the casual conversation and also appreciated the fact that people were more chatty than I was used to in this race so far. This was a theme that would continue, and even though the majority of the people were native German speakers, they all spoke English and were very eager to talk as well along the trail. I often find the races in France to be stoic and serious affairs – runners so focused on their effort that they don’t really want to talk (especially when my French admittedly suffers at my lactate threshold), so it was refreshing to be able to talk to folks along the way and have some of the camaraderie that I was used to in US races here in the big mountains of Europe.

As we descended from the Faulhorn, we got to probably the most technical section of the entire course, which had some fun glissading down snowfields and lots of broken and serrated limestone lapiaz. The two female leaders of the 50k race flew by me on one of the snowfields, already apparently locked in a heated duel with many more kilometers to go ahead of them. I tried to patiently descend and keep moving down to the valley that marked a figurative halfway point where we would cross the road and I would see my buddy Dan at the aid station. My best mantras are made up on the spot, and this race was no exception, as I started repeating the advice “Stay humble and focused” to myself, making sure that I did not get ahead of myself in being happy that I was making my splits, and reminding myself that mountain runs like this really do demand the entirety of your focus for the whole time you are out there.

The sun was baking the trails at this point as it was around noon, but I was doing a reasonable job of staying on top of hydration and electrolytes, and felt pretty good overall despite the heat. In what was perhaps an episode of foreshadowing, two runners asked me on the descent if I had any more sunscreen, because I was looking quite cooked. I had some in my drop bag, and so just focused on getting down to the road so that I could get a quick reset and keep going again.

My buddy Dan was at the 56 km mark cheering me in, and it reminded me how wonderful it always is to see a familiar face out on a course like this. We know each other from running in Berkeley, but like us his family moved to Basel, Switzerland two years ago and thus this was a bit of a local race for him. He was supporting other runners from his running club, and we were very happy to have an excuse to get together for a bit. He helped me take care of my tasks in a very quick and efficient manner – I changed clothes, reloaded some food in my vest, happily ate a bunch of his paprika potato chips, and I was on the way to Wengen.

As I left the aid station and started up the trail I realized that this was going to be a long and meandering climb up and across the forest, taking about 8-9 km to get to the next town. I tried to settle in and find my climbing groove, but it was getting exceedingly tough. My heart rate was high, I couldn’t catch my breath, and I just felt really hot even though I was in the coolest shade of the day. I stopped for multiple times on the climb, sitting on a log while other runners passed me, knowing that this wasn’t helping me make my goal split times but also knowing that there wasn’t really anything else I could do. Finally I was able to rally and soldier on, latching on to small groups of runners that would eventually tow me up to the aforementioned water bassin at the top of the climb, where I would find icy cold relief.

I confirmed with the volunteer that I was indeed okay after my ice water head bath and set down the trail toward Wengen, turning my phone on for the first time of the day to leave a message with my wife. I was very impressed with the safety precautions taken by the organizers in this event, especially in light of recent tragedies in the mountains near my home in France. Every runner in the 101k had a GPS tracker that was not only tracking their location but had an SOS button in case of emergency. These were provided free of charge to each entrant, no deposit necessary. We also received a bright yellow reflective band that everyone wore on their packs, which seemed a bit overkill but I guess would be helpful in case of a night time rescue. There were hundreds of course monitors out on the course, such as the one that checked on me at the water bassin – not only in normal spots along the trail, but there were people stationed in the more technical and inaccessible areas with full packs of emergency gear and radios that could be used to get help quickly if needed. Finally, there were ubiquitous “DANGER” signs posted on the course marking more technical terrain or passages with exposed or steep drop-offs. These signs were a bit overkill in my mind, but it’s better to have too many safety precautions than not enough, and I suppose these signs would be very helpful to a runner that had become disoriented or was zombie-walking through the night.

By the time I arrived in Wengen proper I was feeling like a new man – my body temperature was back to normal, I was in good spirits, could think clearly, and was fed and hydrated. It was a perfect reminder that often what makes these ultra events so transformative is exactly this – the need to keep on going, even when you feel absolutely terrible, knowing that you will be able to eventually problem solve and start to feel better. At its essence it’s the art of perseverance, and as a coach I find that it’s one of the hardest things to describe or try to teach someone, because you can’t really learn it until you’re in the thick of it and you actually come out the other side. Many coaches tell their runners to keep going until they get cutoff, unless they are acutely injured, and while I feel like this is a slightly aggressive approach it might be a good way to really enforce this lesson that so often things will turn around if you just keep moving forward. When I was sitting on that log overheating I was totally scheming how I could quit and drop out of the race, but thankfully by the time I got to Wengen I was making jokes with the volunteers and just trying to keep moving down the trail.

I was elated that I had come back from the brink of defeat and was feeling as good as I was, and while I was still ahead of my projected splits I also knew I didn’t have time for another complete system failure like the one I had just experienced on the climb. In typical euro race fashion, the 4.9 kilometers out of Wengen took us up over 1000m to Mannlichen, the high point on this half of the course and the site of a huge téléphérique station to get tourists up high for the incredible views. I was actually looking forward to a steep and sustained climb, as these are more in my wheelhouse than the long gradual or rolling passages we had been covering for most of the morning.

The VK up to Mannlichen went smoothly and I was happy with my progress and a bit anxious for the sun to finally go down so I could start running in the cool night air again. The views from the top were as ridiculous as promised, and I teamed up with an Austrian living in Germany for much of the gradual descent down the other side, as we talked bucket list races (Hardrock, Western, and UTMB for him!) and training for European races. As the heat of the day finally started to dissipate a bit we wound our away down, up, and around, eventually reaching the last high point of the course at the Eigerglestscher, a small col that sat literally directly under the soaring Eiger headwall above. I sat down to take a break for a minute and changed into my night time kit, pausing to reflect on that fact that with about 15 km to go and plenty of time to make it happen, I was going to finish this thing.

I started seriously coaching other runners at the start of 2022, after my memorable 2021 season and UTMB finish. Unfortunately I was injured for much of 2023, and then really only focused on two editions of the Petite Trotte à Léon for my big races in 23 and 24. In short, I hadn’t really felt like I had been in a “competitive” race since beginning my journey into coaching. While there was certainly pressure for Sam and I to do our best to finish our two PTLs, it is also such a fringe and unique event that you can never fully blame someone for not completing an off-trail circuit like that. However, this Eiger 101k felt a bit different to me now, especially when I am working with many athletes coming over to run a similar event at CCC this year. In short, I had put a bit of pressure on myself to finish this thing – and not only finish, but to execute well and run a good race, in the same way that I encouraged my athletes to do. It certainly didn’t manifest itself in a bad way, but rather became a motivating factor as I worked my way around the loop – in essence, I had to keep going because I wanted to set a good example for the runners that I work with on a regular basis.

The descent was fun and flowy, rolling singletrack on decomposed granite with the Eiger seemingly getting taller and taller as I worked my way down. The final loop took us up one nasty final climb, even though we could see the lights of Grindewald and were so close to the finish it felt like we could touch it. I moved well and tried to stay as smooth as I could, coming across the finish line in 21 hours and 15 minutes, 45 minutes ahead of my 22 hour goal. I was thrilled – both with my effort and execution, but also with the transcendent experience I had just had wondering through the Berner Oberland. This really is a special place and I am highly motivated to figure out how to come back and visit it as a family without spending 500 CHF a day.

Before I got tied up in the multiday madness of PTL, I would often say that the 100k distance was my favorite distance, because it allowed you to still go deep and have a full experience, while still getting to sleep in your own bed at night. While I’m not sure I’m ready to put a label on my favorite distance right now, I will admit that there’s something pretty attractive about things around the 100k mark. They are long enough to provide a considerable challenge and demand full attention and a meditative mindset, which is often what I’m trying to pull out of these long endurance runs. There’s time to go deep and time for big problems to arise, but also time to have fun and solve those problems as they come up. And unlike a mountain 100 Miler or a multiday, you don’t have the added system of sleep management and the resulting deprivation, which makes the whole experience feel a bit more relaxed. So yeah, I’m a fan, and am already thinking that I’d really like to finish the Gran Trail Coumayeur 100k at some point… although when I picked up my drop bag at the finish the volunteer enthusiastically told me that the only logical next step was to come back for the 250k multiday version of the Eiger, which I admit might have been a dangerous seed to plant….

Strava Link: Eiger Ultra Trail 101k

Mat is currently enjoying his final week living in the French Alps near Chamonix before moving back to Berkeley, California with his family for an indefinite amount of time. Even though he’s about to trade steep and techie all-day climbs for speedy running on California carpet, the big mountains of Europe will always be at the center of his heart. If you’d like to learn more about his philosophy or coaching, or talk about how to get ready for big mountain adventures like the Eiger Ultra Trail, head over to Flowstate Running and check it out.