Tor des Géants 2025 Race Report – Hopping On For the Ride of a Lifetime

The Tor des Géants

My Tor des Géants story starts with my late friend Lucas Horan, a Bay Area runner and microbiology researcher that tragically passed away in December of 2020. Lucas was known for an undeniable sense of adventure combined with infinite stoke, and these two traits often led him on exciting journeys, from our local East Bay Regional Park trails to the trails of the Sierra Nevada, China, Nicaragua, and the Aosta Valley in Italy.

Lucas came home from his first Tor des Géants in 2018 with stars in his eyes and endless stories about the magic of a small valley in Italy just on the other side of Mont Blanc from Chamonix. We knew of the valley, having spent so much time on the French side, but had yet to really explore it or spend time there other than passing through on the mainstream Tour du Mont Blanc. Lucas’s stories about the race made me wonder what it would even be like to run that far, and I was fascinated as he described waking up on his house boat from nightlong dreams where the gentle rocking of the waves from the Bay would become inseparably melded with the same metronomic rhythm of walking up and down the trails of Aosta. Lucas finished during his first attempt in 2018, but was thoroughly worked and barely hanging on by the end. He returned in 2019 to complete the loop in a very quick time of 127 hours, enough to earn him a Tor des Glaciers qualifying spot. Listening to Lucas describe his journeys around Aosta, while wearing his bright yellow finisher shirt, was enough to convince anyone that they too could do something as wild and crazy as this.

And in fact, that’s exactly what happened. In 2021 I was selected in the UTMB lottery, a race that was in many ways then the pinnacle of my running career. My wife Maureen had somewhat secretly put her name in the Tor des Géants lottery after Lucas’s passing, and she was also selected for the 2021 race. While she had decades of mountain and climbing experience, she was new to the ultrarunning scene, and ran her first 50 Miler and 100k race in preparation for the 2021 TOR. Without even trying, she was of course embodying the Lucas Horan spirit of adventure and stoke, and in 2021 was the first official recipient of the Tor de Lucas scholarship, a then nascent idea floated by Lucas’s mom Jan. She didn’t quite complete the loop that first year, succumbing to swelling and tired knees in Bosses just 30 kilometers shy of the finish. She had caught the bug, however, and returned with me crewing her in 2022 to execute a flawless run only to be stopped by a freak snow storm at Rifugio Frassati, where she was deemed an official finisher without having completed the entire loop. She of course returned in 2023, where I was lucky enough to crew her again; the odds were in her favor this time and she got all the way around the valley in a single push.

During this same time I was obsessing with the French side of the massif, running UTMB in 2021 and then two rounds of PTL, the Petite Trotte à Léon, in 2022 and 2023. These big PTL loops took us on some gnarly routes through Aosta that had me wondering about a future TOR attempt. After we moved back to Berkeley from our time in the Alps in 2024, I put my name in the TOR lottery (perhaps hoping to hang on to those mountains a little bit longer) and was lucky enough to get chosen on my first attempt. We returned for a summer of training where I logged big miles and lots of vert, running the GTC 100k race before heading back to start teaching for the school year, and then coming back in September to run TOR.

The Valle d’Aosta

The Aosta Valley is a unique topographic phenomenon, unknown to many tourists as it stays neatly tucked behind the Italian side of Mont Blanc. Many people know Courmayeur, just on the other side of the tunnel from Chamonix and a major stop on the TMB, but very few have ever ventured downvalley at all, or explored any of the rich side canyons that line the perimeter. The valley itself is a giant drainage for all the glacial melt from the Mont Blanc massif, and the Dora Baltea river splits it neatly into two halves, roughly north and south. The interesting part is that along the circumference of this oval valley lie 13 side tributary valleys, massive in their own right, and all draining into the Dora Baltea as well. They sit like bicycle spokes, running laterally out from the central point of Aosta. To complete the TOR circle means crossing 25 of the cols between these tributary valleys as you traverse in a counterclockwise fashion.

The TOR route exists because it has always existed since the beginning of civilization in this region. When faced with the proposition of going from point A to point B, human beings will almost always take the shorter route – even if that shorter route involves hiking up and over a gigantic col and scrambling down the other side. So for millennia, people in Aosta have been choosing to go “up and over” rather than “down and around” as they traveled between neighboring valleys – moving sheep, visiting friends, transporting contraband or avoiding the taxman.

Take for example a journey between neighboring Rhême-Notre-Dames and Eaux-Rousses, two lower elevation valley villages on the south-western portion of the course. These two villages are about 7 kilometers apart as the crow flies, but are in reality separated by the 3000 meter tall Col Entrelor. To go all the way down the valley, around the corner and back up would be 30 kilometers in distance. However, to hike up and over Entrelor, and then descend to Eaux-Rousses, is only 15 kilometers – about half the distance of a trip down the valley and back up. And so, despite having to haul yourself up and over a 1300 meter climb, since the dawn of time folks have been taking the “shortcut” and going up and over the col rather than walking the longer and more boring route.

There’s the same logic between every two valleys and every col as you go around the loop, and thus, after 350 kilometers, 25 cols, and 25,000 meters of vertical gain and loss, you end up with a circuit that impeccably goes – no special gear or equipment needed, just the same determination and stamina that the early Aosta Valley inhabitants had, and the will to not stop walking until you reach your destination.

Dragons, Dragons, Everywhere…

There is a myth about the TOR that is perpetuated each year that I would be a fool to dismiss. The mythology says that at the start of the event there is as large of a group of dragons at the start line as there are runners leaving from Courmayeur – when the starting gun goes off, and the runners begin their counterclockwise journey around the Aosta Valley, these dragons also begin a journey of their own, however heading in a clockwise direction around the loop. Every runner out there has a dragon, a bit of doubt that will slowly get larger and larger as they make progress; unprocessed emotional baggage from life trauma that they have spent their career trying to out-run, or the memories of a loved one that they have lost and will never see again. Just like the runners, the dragons move at different paces and speeds over the severe terrain – the only known thing is that you will meet your dragon, you just don’t know exactly where or when. And so the TOR runners head out bravely from the start knowing one thing – it will all be moving smoothly, until it’s not, and it’s then they will have to look up and face the eyes of whatever is really haunting them.

Having some experience with TOR in the past, I had fully bought into the dragon mythology, and was in some ways even looking forward to meeting my beast out there on the trails. What no one bothered to tell me is that the few days leading up to the start in Courmayeur, when the dragons and the runners are all hanging out together, are just as stressful and dicey as meeting these big silly things out on the trail. And thus, I arrived to Courmayeur jet-lagged, exhausted, scared, and excited, and had to deal with some of my dragons right away, before I even started running.

My entire goal was to escape my job as a public high school teacher in Berkeley, California, without getting sick before the trip. In the five weeks that I taught before leaving for Italy, my students were getting knocked down left and right by virus after virus – not just Covid, but the routine upper respiratory infections as well. I was doing pretty well, all things considered, but the week of my departure I noticed that my chest was getting a bit tight and constricted after some of my runs. I know that one of the dragons in my life is my weak respiratory system – it has bothered me since I was a kid, possibly the results of being born prematurely, and I have struggled and fought exercise-induced asthma and generally weak lungs my entire life. And so, as I walked around Courmayeur putting the finishing touches on my race attempt, my chest was tightening up for sure. I had a bit of a cough, although didn’t feel sick at all…. and so I chugged Hélicidine, the French snail cough syrup that had worked in the past, crossed my fingers, and hoped I could make it healthy to the start. If I could get this dragon off my back before the race that would be a win – then he and I could head our separate ways and meet out on the course in due time.

On Sunday I ambled over to the start line about an hour ahead of the 10 AM first wave start. The start line was a predictable hectic mix of classic Italian overstimulation – the announcer Ivan’s penchant for classic American Rock had combined with a new speaker system, and U2’s The Streets Have No Name was blaring impossibly loud and resonating off the mountain peaks in the distance. I somehow found a quiet seat under a tree near the start and settled in for a bit of peaceful meditation. These starts were always intense – I had a flashback of my first GTC 100k start in 2017, which was my first European race, and how overwhelmed I was by the loud music and intimidating Italians in spandex, dressed as if they were walking into war. But these starts were intense for more reasons than the environment – this would be the third week-long multiday race I had lined up for, after PTL in 2022 and 2023. It’s a feeling like no other, to prepare yourself to head out for a week in these giant imposing mountains. Unlike a 50k, or even a 100k or 100 Miler, where you know you will be out soon, the only thing you know about heading out for a race like TOR is that you could potentially be out there for a very long time. Long enough that the mountains will have their way with you eventually and you’ll meet your dragon for sure; there’s no simple way around that. The motto on a t-shirt that I bought at Rifugio Deffeyes on the 2022 PTL says it best, translated from Italian: “At first I tried to conquer the mountains, and now I let the mountains conquer me”.

I choked up and started bawling at the start line, full of so many different emotions running through my body and brain. I was thinking about Lucas, of course, starting his two TOR journeys from this exact same spot when he was still alive. I was thinking about how lucky and excited I was to be heading out into these mountains that I loved and respected so much. And I was preparing to give myself over to them for the next week, to allow myself to be conquered by their tall and soaring peaks. It’s a feeling of submission that I rarely feel in my “normal” life, and yet to look around and feel any other way just feels inappropriate and even brash. I got myself together and said my version of a prayer to Monte Bianco, asking that she offered me safe passage around her foothills as she had so many times before, and that I returned safely to Courmayeur at the end of my adventure, wherever that may be. Because there would be dragons out there, waiting for me… and who knows what you’ll do or what will happen when you meet yours for the first time.

As smooth as I can for as long as I can

I charged out the chute and through the streets of Courmayeur, trying to get a bit of a fast start while watching out for the perilous drainage curb that runs down the middle of the cobblestone streets. I knew that if I could push it a bit out of town I would be well positioned for the initial bottleneck, so my plan was to go as fast as my lungs would allow me to for the first few kilometers. It worked – I didn’t have to wait too long at the singletrack and settled into a nicely paced climbing group for the first climb up to Col d’Arp

I was feeling surprisingly good, all things considered, so I let myself find a rhythm and settled in for the first of many long climbs. I resisted getting ahead of myself and thinking about how long I had to go in the loop, instead focusing on getting to La Thuile, which would be the first refreshment point, my first chance to check my planned splits, and the start of one of the sections of the course that I knew so well I could likely do it with my eyes closed. A mantra that would hang around for the first few days materialized out of nowhere – I started repeating to myself “As smooth as I can for as long as I can”, leaning into the ultra mentality that you had to make progress while everything felt good, because eventually everything would stop feeling good.

I felt good descending and was working my way down the long road into La Thuile when another American runner named Ely caught up to me for a bit. We chatted for a while – his elite level wife (and new mom!) was already far ahead up in the field, and Ely seemed to be in a good head space, happy to be out running in the mountains again. He had tried TOR previously and introduced me to the “carousel” metaphor that would really stick with me during my lap in the valley this year. As we were descending smoothly, trying to grab some easier kilometers, he mentioned that TOR was like a big giant carousel ride, and once you hopped on you didn’t want to hop off until the end.

It didn’t really make sense to me at the time, but luckily I had an entire week out there in the mountains to think about his analogy. I spent a lot of my week comparing my TOR experience to my two PTL experiences in 2022 and 2023, two other multiday adventures that I had thoroughly “enjoyed” and quite literally changed my life. While TOR and PTL share many characteristics – the distance, the topography and terrain, the time limits, etc. – they probably have less in common than similarities. PTL is in its essence a semi-autonomous, team based event. There aren’t really any aid stations along the way, the course is unmarked and often off-trail, and you only see your drop bag twice, at around 100k and 200k into the 300k loop. Despite the organization basically leaving you alone in your adventure in the mountains (minus the amazing volunteers of course!, you also run the event as a team of two or three people, so you are guaranteed to always have at least one person by your side out there as you face the perils and hard moments of a mountain multiday. One way to look at it is that the race itself provides you no boosts of momentum along the way – whatever drive and determination you need to keep moving comes from deep inside you and from your teammates next to you. The number of times Sam and I grumbled to each other “keep walking” while problem solving on the go is uncountable. You’ll see dragons out there, for sure, but at least you know that you’ll be able to square up side-by-side with a comrade and face them together. And that, in itself, provides an extraordinary boost.

On the flip side, TOR is anything but autonomous. Sure, you need to be prepared and equipped for the mountains out there, but this race is laid out in a way where you really get a lot of support as you move around the loop. For starters there are SIX life bases where you get to see your drop bags, visit the amazing massaggiaTORs for muscle and footwork, eat as much food as you need and sleep for as long as you want (or can). You see these lifebases about every 50k as you work your way around the course, which in itself breaks up the long distance in a manageable way.

But the lifebases aren’t the only support you get – far from it! There are also 27 other refreshment and aid stations on the loop. These can be anything from a small table set up with cheering students and local pastries (looking at you Perloz!) to a full rifugio, set up for proper sleeping and eating (those beds at Magià came at exactly the right time). These points are staffed by the incredible, magical, and delightful VolonTORS – volunteers that dedicate themselves to this race year after year and are truly what make this event so special. They are the heart and soul of this event – often locals, they are happy and proud to welcome you to their location, greeting you with a sincere “Bravo” or “Brava” – because even if they haven’t done the loop themselves (and many of them have), they know what it takes to walk for a week in these mountains. They know what it means to meet your dragons out there, and they want to make sure that you at least head out with a belly full of hot soup before you try to tame the beast.

The system of support that organically forms in the Aosta Valley in the middle of September is exactly the carousel that Ely was describing. It was a ride that, if you were lucky, you could hop on to and not jump off – just needing to make it to the next refreshment point, up and over that next col, where they would fill you up with soup, take care of your aching muscles and bones, tape your feet, and send you back out the door to the next stop on the carousel. It took me basically the entire week to realize it, but this rotating carousel of support is, at its essence, what makes TOR so special.

It’s the World’s Hardest Trail Race, but it’s also incredibly doable at the same time.

Crux Number One: The Beast that is Loson

I was going as smooth as I could for as long as I could, working my way through the “three washboard” section in the southwest corner of the course. I have no idea if people in Italy actually refer to this section by this name, but when my wife Maureen first described the TOR route to her French mountain-man uncle Jean-Pierre, he immediately said “Oh, you go over the three washboards in Paradiso! That’s going to be super tough.” And, as with most French mountain men that make it to their eighties, he was totally right.

The three washboards are the three successive cols that you encounter on the AV2 as you traverse the Gran Paradiso National Park on the southern section of the loop. Each one is big in its own right, but to add insult to injury, they get bigger, taller, and tougher as you go. The first one is Colle Fenêtre, a nice challenge encountered immediately upon leaving the first lifebase in Valgrisenche. It’s got a long, meandering, gradual climb, with the real business hiding on the descent off the backside. I remembered this section from 2023 when we backpacked the southern section of the course with our boys as being full of super loose rock and overall pretty sketchy. Thankfully I think the trail has been redone since then, because the descent is currently steep but the trail is nice and smooth. There’s one technical equipped chain part on the side, but it’s not bad and is pretty short.

The second washboard gets a little more interesting, because after getting a decent refreshment stop at Rhêmes-Notre-Dame, you begin the journey that is Col Entrelor. There’s nothing meandering about the climb or the approach on this one – once you hit it and start going up you’re deep in the business for a very long time. I hooked up with a group of English speakers for this climb – they were part of a group of nine friends that were all trying to get Tor des Glaciers qualifiers so they could enter the race one year together. They were moving well, and the English certainly helped pass the time, but my climbing legs felt really good and I passed them near the top. I slogged through the impossibly steep headwall and climbed the iron steps to the summit, gazing down into the void of darkness below. The descent on the other side is the long and gradual part, and the trail eventually winds its way down to the tiny and charming hamlet of Eaux-Rousses.

We camped in the campground here for a rest day during our backpack in 2023, and so I’ve had plenty of time to sit there and stare up at the monstrosity that is Col Loson. I’ve climbed it with a reasonably heavy pack on, even motivating my then 11 year old up the final stretch… how hard could this thing really be? I fully knew and considered Col Loson the first real crux of the course, but honestly heading up the base of the initial climb I was looking forward to it. I had slept a bit and eaten well in Eaux-Rousses, but my lungs started really acting up on the walk out of the hamlet, the first sign of things to come. I got them reasonably clear with lots of hacking and prepared to climb the third washboard.

Col Loson is many things: it’s a 15 km long climb, one of the longest stretches on the course. Topping out at 3300m / 10,800 feet, it’s the highest point on the course by quite a bit. It’s also got quite a reputation and is widely regarded as the toughest part of the entire route. I can confirm that the approach feels like it goes on forever. The first section winds you up through a pleasant forest before spitting you out in the real valley. There’s a nice water stop here at some kind of Park Ranger office or hut, and then you work your way up more of the approach as the trail turns rockier and the vistas get more and more jaw-dropping. The sides of the valley feel like they soar up forever, but looming in the distance you can start to see Loson, a rocky saddle perched impossible high up above you. To the right of your view towers Gran Paradiso, showing off its snow covered glaciers and looking just plain glorious.

Once you get up to 2600m you take a final right turn and then start hitting it for real. The trail steepens up and starts switch-backing its way toward the col – taking enough time to put you at altitude for long enough where it starts to get uncomfortable. The mental math starts to not back sense, as you can’t quite figure out how this trail will get you all the way up there somehow, and then for the final 200 meters of vert you get the real business – a steep, rocky, and occasionally loose final ascent to the saddle. People are taking one or two steps at a time and then resting and grown Italian men are sitting on the side of the trail in tears. When you get to the top, you feel like you’ve won the race, relishing the view from the other side while simultaneously being terrified at where you are about to go.

You’ve just climbed Col Loson.

Musical Interlude I: Can’t get no food to eat /
Can’t get no money to spend, whoa

Cogne was a great stop – the relief of having Loson behind me was palpable, and I got some pizza and good food from Maureen and Laura, despite not being able to sleep well in the gymnasium. I headed out of the charming town on the long road to Donnas, not really remembering a ton of this section but remembering it involved a couple of climbs. I walked down the flat river road and started heading up the side trail just as the sun was setting, with a beautiful clear and starry sky unveiling itself slowly above. The climb started to feel like it would never end, and my chest was starting to get a bit more congested as well. I was coughing up stuff now, especially on the climbs. But I was still pretty smooth – as smooth as I can, for as long as I can.

I hadn’t listened to music yet on the run – I was thinking I would use some tunes to help me get over Loson, but I ended up just going for it au naturel. I had never listened to music during a race before, instead preferring the silent mediation of the woods or mountains, but I wanted to give myself a chance if it felt right during this trip around Aosta. Mo had mentioned that it had helped her out of a few tough spots, and without the comfort of my PTL partner Sam next to me at every step, I thought I might occasionally need something to lean on out there.

I plugged my headphones in my ears and went with Garvey’s Ghost, the fourth album and dub masterpiece by Burning Spear. The light and bouncy riddims felt like they were literally carrying my spirit and soul up to the heavens, lightening my feet and pulling me upward. The deep bass lines danced around the stars, which occasionally mixed with the headlights of other runners, creating a surreal trance-like state that I rode all the way up and over the Fenestre di Champorcher. It was Night 2, and I was starting to settle into the TOR groove. It felt good.

The night continued to roll on by, and I was extremely grateful for a decent 15 minute nap on the floor under a table at Rifugio Dondena (as well as the large bowls of cheesy polenta they were serving up, and a clean sit-down toilet in the bathroom!) Longer stretches of sleep had been hard for me thus far – I hadn’t slept at Valgrisenche, and I didn’t sleep very well at Cogne, unable to shut off the race adrenaline rushing through my brain. I was starting to string together 10 and 15 minute naps every few hours, and those were working fine for now, but I knew that I would need a longer stretch of uninterrupted sleep sometime soon.

The sun began to rise on Tuesday as I descended toward the river at Bard on the way to Donnas. I had made it to Day 3, and crossing the bridge over the Dora Baltea felt significant. While I wasn’t quite halfway distance or time-wise in the course, I was halfway geographically, crossing the lowest point on the course and about to blast off into what I considered the second crux, Donnas to Gressoney. The sun was beginning to beat down on the ancient roman road and the impossibly weathered and worn stones that led into Donnas, and Maureen met me a few kilometers from the aid station with a cold Sprite and warm spirits. It was great to see her, and I was ready for a good reset, shower, and rest at the lifebase.

It’s entirely possible to do TOR without a crew, but I imagine that it’s not nearly as fun. I had the opportunity to crew Maureen in 2022 and 2023, and to be quite honest I had an absolute blast out there. The TOR crew is as much a part of the carousel as anyone else in the valley, and it slowly spins and rotates in a counterclockwise direction along with the runners, usually covering much more distance as you have to take the long way driving down and up all of the side valleys along the way. It takes on a bit of a feel of a roving party, and as your runner starts to settle into a group with other runners, you start seeing the same partners, friends, and families crewing at each stop. It’s not just foreigners that indulge in crew on TOR either – oftentimes the local Italians are rolling 15-20 deep by the end of the loop, with their crew not exactly pacing them (which is prohibited according to the TOR regulations), but definitely starting to walk their runners in and out of aid stations with a bit of an increased range. It’s all in good fun, of course, and sometimes it takes a little extra nudge to keep your runner on the ride for one more stop until you can see them again.

Maureen and her sister Laura were an all star crew for me out there in Aosta, and I slowly began to learn that they actually weren’t just crewing me, but they were hanging around to crew Colleen also. Colleen was our 2025 Tor de Lucas Scholarship recipient, and a strong and gritty ultrarunner and coach from South Africa. She was making her way around the loop through strength and determination, and Maureen and Laura were proving invaluable at points to keeping her on the carousel ride as well. I know how hard it is to crew atvTOR, and so the thought of Mo and Laura crewing multiple runners out there makes my head spin a bit. But they did it flawlessly and with the utmost style.

Donnas was a bit of a trainwreck for me, as I was still struggling to sleep – this time there was a pack of yipping street dogs right under the window of the dorm that just wouldn’t shut up, and my normal pink noise through headphones trick was not working because I was hallucinating actual music whenever I heard an ambiguous drone in my ears. I rested in the bed for a bit before finally giving up and moving outside to a shady patch of grass, away from the dogs and chaos of the lifebase. I rested a bit more while Maureen massaged my legs, and then decided that if I wasn’t sleeping I should start climbing, as the sun was only getting higher and this next climb was no joke. Mo checked and re-taped my feet, fed me as much as I would eat, helped me change into my hot weather kit and then sent me on my way.

Crux Number Two: Donnas to Gressoney

I am as guilty as the next ultrarunner of spending too much time studying routes, maps, and making spreadsheets of projects and races that I am interested in one day completing. When I’m not actually running something big and long, I’m thinking about it – obsessing in my mind about what it will look like, how I will keep moving down the trail and through the terrain, and where the difficult sections will be. I have a photographic memory for trails and terrain, too, so if I have been on the route I can add a visual dimension to this obsession and really dive deep into a world of daydreaming. In short, I had analyzed the TOR course to death over the past few years, both in helping Maureen prepare for it and crewing her, and this year in getting ready for my own attempt (and coaching two athletes running it also!)

I intend to write a more focused article on the challenges and secrets to finishing the TOR 330 in the near future, but if I could synthesize it into one point, it would be that you have to get to Gressoney with enough time to leave before cutoff. The course cutoffs are established in such a way that there is a significant “pinch point” between Donnas and Gressoney – the race gives you 21 hours to finish a section that takes most middle to back of the pack runners at least 24 hours to complete (I took almost 27!) So, if you leave Donnas even a little bit ahead of the cutoff, chances are you aren’t making it to Gressoney before the cutoff there, and if you do make it, you’ll only have the minimum 2 hours in the lifebase to recharge and reset.

On top of the time constraints of this section, it’s arguably one of the hardest and most sustained portions of the course. I ran this section with my buddy Ian in July, on fresh legs, and it took us 17 hours to do a slightly abbreviated version of the route. The terrain is rocky, at high elevation, and just technical enough that it’s hard to get any momentum going, especially when your legs already have 160 kilometers in them and you’re starting to really feel the fatigue. All that being said, my goal was to hit this section with enough time to not feel rushed, and be able to get into Gressoney well before cutoff so I could leave with plenty of time to finish the loop.

I set off from Donnas walking the flat road in the blazing hot sun, both excited for the task at hand and a bit scared of what was coming. My coughing was growing increasingly disruptive, and I now had to stop to really cough up and clear phlegm whenever my heart rate and breathing increased. It wasn’t pretty, but I also wasn’t the only one out there developing the dreaded TOR cough. I crossed the ancient Pont-Saint-Martin, a beautifully crafted bridge dating from the 1st century BCE, and headed up the trail to Perloz. Unfortunately this was the section that Ian and I had skipped, parking slightly up the main road and at the beginning the climb to Sassa straight away, and unfortunately this section was steep and steppy in the hot mid-day sun. Moments before I got to the quaint hamlet of Perloz, I turned the corner on the trail, and sure enough a medium size but feisty-looking red dragon was sitting there in ambush, waiting specifically for me.

Sam and I finished PTL in 2023, which will forever be known as the snow year, after marching through the first two nights in some of the most inclimate weather you can imagine for the sport of trail running. The short of it is that my feet, and specifically my pinkie toes, were absolutely massacred by the end of that long week. I was at a 10/10 on the pain scale for the final four days of that trip, mentally willing myself to keep moving, mainly because I didn’t want to let my teammate down while he was moving so well. I knew that I could walk through blister pain because I had done it before, but I sure didn’t want to have to do it again here at TOR. And yet, as soon as I turned that corner, that wily dragon lashed out at me and my right pinky toe experienced some of the most extreme pain it had ever known. Something was suddenly very wrong with my feet, and if I didn’t fix it soon it was going to be absolute hell to keep going.

I descended the final part of the trail, dragon firmly in tow, nipping at my heels behind me, until I got to the village of Perloz – a wonderful refreshment point complete with cheering elementary school children and delicious local pastries that mimicked fried fluffy donuts in just the right way. I busted out my blister kit and tried to figure out what was going on, applying tape and Compeed liberally, basically wrapping up my toe with padding and hoping for the best. I called Mo to tell her about the dragon, and also that the climbing felt okay on my toe right now, so I could at least make it up to the high altitude traverse part of the section and then I could keep problem solving from there. I was sleepy, coughing, and hurting… but I was still climbing well and left the aid station with a group of Italians (and one Frenchman who was very nervous about my cough so never stayed too close). We began the slog up to Sassa, the halfway point up to Coda – this climb all together took us from 300m at Donnas to 2300m at Rifugio Coda. It was a long one, for sure.

I took a beautiful 15 minute grass nap at Sassa in the sunshine and kept leapfrogging the Italians all the way up the climb. They finally invited me to sit down and watch the sunset with them, just a tad shy of the top of the climb and Coda, but I politely declined, explaining that if I stopped now I didn’t know if I would be able to keep going. I crested the final ridge with another Italian from the area, who spent a few minutes pointing out all of the landmarks and distant peaks from the epic 360 degree view from the summit. It was reminiscent of an experience during our first PTL, where the local Italians pointed out the five Géants from a vista high above Morgex, and we all cheered when we spun around and could still see Monte Bianco. The locals have so much love for this valley and this countryside, and I just felt so grateful that they were willing to share it with us. This valley is one of the most magical places in the world, and the opportunity to keep doing big loops through it every few years will surely go down as one of the defining highlights of my entire life.

Rifugio Coda was minimal as Maureen described, but I knew that we were getting close to Barma, where I could hopefully get a really good meal and finally get some really good sleep. I suited up in a full weather kit before leaving Coda, following the lead of the other runners heading out into the night, only to discover that it was actually quite balmy once we left the ridge and I was stripping off my layers soon after. So far we had been completely blessed by the weather – it was about as ideal as we could have gotten, so much so that most folks weren’t even really talking about it, as if we were witnessing a perfect game being pitched in baseball. I decided that I had slogged through enough terrible weather in the mountains that I would gladly accept a week of high pressure goodness, no questions asked.

Barma took seemingly forever to get to in the darkness of the night, but once I arrived it did prove to be a bit of the promised land that I was expecting. They would only give us one hour in a bed, but I think they slightly forgot about me, because I slept deeply for about 75 minutes before they rustled me awake. I had already planned on moving directly under a table just outside the dorm rooms to continue my nap if I had been sleeping well, and I did just that, adding another 45 minutes of very good sleep on the floor using my pack as a pillow. This was the best sleep I had gotten thus far, and I really needed it. I was feeling a bit behind and overall fatigued and was still fighting this persistent cough. I went upstairs where the food was and scarfed down two large bowls of cheesy polenta – just as I was starting to feel behind on sleep, I was also starting to feel behind on calories, although I was eating lots of food every chance I got. Feeling as refreshed as I had thus far on the loop, I headed out of Barma with the goal of pushing on toward Niel and arriving around sunrise and enjoying breakfast at the generally agreed-upon best polenta stop of the loop.

I had done this section with my friend Ian from France this summer, and I was prepared for slow going terrain, which seemed appropriate for the darkness of this mild, clear night. I rolled into the Lago Chiaro aid station after sharing some miles with a couple of Americans, only to be greeted with an enormous bear hug by Bruno the incredible VolonTOR. We had met Bruno early in our figurative TOR journey when Maureen was attempting her first lap in 2021. She has always said that if Bruno were pretty much any other Italian than the lovable person that he is, I should be really concerned. After Maureen’s first effort, Bruno persistently sent her Italian poems and love messages for the entire year – notes translated something like “Dearest Maureen, my TOR queen, I still have images of you floating through my aid station like a beautiful butterfly flying through the mountains……” 🤣 It turns out Bruno is nothing more than a teddy bear that splits his time between Torino and Aosta, and he was even more excited to see me than I was to see him at the aid station, immediately sitting me down to make me some “special sandwiches” which were both delicious and filling. It was here that I also completely devoured their plate of delicious mayonnaise sandwiches as well, probably shoveling in a couple of thousand calories before taking back off into the stillness of the night. Grazie, Bruno!!!

It’s these personal connections around the valley that provided a special boost to my carousel this year, and I knew I had another one coming up soon in the Loo Valley on the final descent to Gressoney. Maureen and I have spent a lot of time in Aosta, having based our summers just through the tunnel on the French side for years, and then living over there too. Along with plenty of training and recce runs, we’ve crossed this valley on one UTMB, 2 PTLs, 4 combined TORs, an AV2 backpack with our kids in 2023, an AV1 fastpack in 2021, and the Perloz to Gressoney recce section I did with Ian. We’ve met so many amazing people during these trips – from the incredible VolonTORS, to the benevolés on PTL, to other PTL teams, to the staff at the rifugios along the way. Despite never having lived here we feel a very personal connection to this valley, and it makes all the additional time we spend here that much more special.

I was eagerly greeted by Tsao at the Loo Valley agrotourism refreshment stop, which was a great pick-me-up, and it was fun to see him after running into him at midnight on me and Ian’s recce run here. He gave me some amazing tasting fruit salad (who thought fruit salad could ever taste so good!?!?!) and sent me on the way, down the hill and the ancient rocky Roman road leading into Gressoney. I was tired, hungry, cooked, and coughing… but I was going to come into Gressoney well ahead of cutoff, having put what I considered the hardest section of the course behind me. I needed another recharge before turning the corner and beginning the journey west back to Courmayeur.

The stop at the Gressoney life base was good and relatively efficient, as I did a good job with everything again, except sleep. I ate some food, showered, and tried to sleep, but my chest cold was at its peak at this point and weird stuff was happening in my lungs and nose. I laid down on a cot in a corner far away from anyone else, trying to minimize my disruptions to others, but I couldn’t fall sleep, as mucus and sometimes blood was just pouring out of my head. I rested but then eventually got up to meet Mo outside in the assistance tent, where she and Laura pumped me full of calories, help me refresh the contents of my pack, and taped up my feet to keep me moving in minimal discomfort. Again, they were five star crew – I know that they were just as focused as I was on getting me out of Gressoney well before the cutoff, as this was the hardest point to make, and if I cleared this and could keep my systems online and moving I would surely make it around the loop.

The Return of the Dragon

Maureen walked out with me a bit from the lifebase and we met up with an Italian guy named Fausto, who Maureen had met previously in one of her runnings of the GTC 100k. He doesn’t speak much English, but is honestly the nicest guy, and I even got to meet his family and super cute daughters on our way out of town. He pointed to one of the ubiquitous yellow flags that marked the route (seriously, there must be thousands of these, the course is marked ridiculously well) and said in broken English: “Mat, we’ve got a very easy job this week. We have to walk to that next yellow flag, and then when we get to that one, we will walk to the next one. And then the next one, and the next one. And if we can do that all week long, we will arrive as Giants in Courmayeur.”

It seemed so simple when Fausto explained it, and yet this pleasant middle-aged Italian man was dropping some deep ultrarunning wisdom on the path out of town. This really is the key to a race of any length – you have to stay present and focus on the attainable goal ahead of you if you want a chance of finishing. Once you get caught up in the bigger picture (How am I going to go another 120 kilometers when I’ve only slept about 4 hours so far this week?) you’re too far gone. It seems hopeless, because in many ways it is. But if I could do what Fausto explained – walk to the next yellow flag, 20 meters up the path – and then walk to the next one, and then the next one, I could finish this thing just as easily as anyone else.

My coughing was at its low (high?) point as I walked out of town, and I was honestly embarrassed to be seen in the company of anyone else. I told Mo that I just needed some time to myself to get into my rhythm again, told Fausto to head up the trail and I would see him soon, and sat there feeling sorry for myself for a few minutes as I hacked up tons of phlegm and snot. I finally looked up, saw the next little yellow flag, and started walking.

Remember that cute little dragon that I ran into after leaving Donnas, on my way up to Perloz? Yeah, well he came back with a vengeance on the way out of Gressoney. I’m not sure if it was that I was decently sick at this point and feeling really crappy, or if it was that I had been so focused on getting in and out of Gressoney that I hadn’t really locked in on what was next, but the wheels started to come off the tracks on the climb up to Rifugio Alpenzu, and as I turned the corner of one of the switchbacks, the dragon was waiting for me, and this time he was kind of pissed off.

I stopped right in front of him, bent over in two, and started hacking – because that was what I had been doing since leaving Gressoney, trying desperately to get out a little bit of phlegm that was impossibly stuck deep in my lungs somewhere. I had barely made any progress on this climb – how in the world was I going to keep going up and over Col Pinter like this? The sun was setting, I was insatiably hungry despite eating three meals in Gressoney, and I was done. I’d walk up to the life base and gorge on the food they had (Fausto had mentioned they had delicious tarts and pies at this location), turn myself around, and keep going up.

I got to Alpenzu and started looking for the tarts and pies – and yet, this was a pleasant but very basic refreshment stop, with nothing more than the usual chocolate filled waffles and milk chocolate chunks. No homemade tarts, no pies, nothing really interesting or filling to be honest. They had hot tea, so I made an extra sugary cup and sat down next to my dragon on a bench to ponder my life choices and figure out what was going to happen next.

On one hand I could easily start walking back down the trail to Gressoney – Maureen and Laura would still be there, waiting for Colleen. I could grab a nap in the campervan and eat as much food as I wanted until I passed out. I could sleep for as long as I wanted – when my alarm went off, I wouldn’t have to get up and start walking again. I could cheer for people as they entered the lifebase, maybe even help some other runners like Colleen get their gear together and make a quick transition. I could tell them not to get excited about pies and tarts at Alpenzu, because there were actually none, but that they had some very nice hot sugary tea and a comfortable bench to sit on. I looked next to me, at the huffing, now steaming dragon for a bit, and poured myself another cup.

I should at least head up a bit more and keep walking until sunset, I told myself. If there was ever a time for some motivational music, this was it. I texted Maureen on WhatsApp: “Tell me not to drop”, and off course she immediately responded with a message telling me not to drop. I put in my headphones and left Alpenzu, heading the right direction (UP!), medium sized somewhat pissed-off red dragon awkwardly following me about 5 meters behind.

Musical Interlude II: So when you run make sure you run /
To something and not away from /
Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere

All spring and summer I had trained for TOR harder than any race since UTMB in 2021. I did weekly VO2 Max hill repeats on the very steep section of the local firetrail, where 2 minutes from the bottom to the top would kick my ass and leave me doubled over and panting each time. During those reps I listened to lots of hip-hop, but eventually settled on the Wu-Tang Clan as the music that really got me hyped and fired up. But to plug into Wu-Tang right now felt like a drastic mismatch of my energy. I didn’t need to get hyped, I needed to get centered, present, and calm.

For some reason the Avett Brothers Emotionalism album popped into my head as the tunes that I needed right then and there. I didn’t even have it downloaded in my Spotify offline queue, but luckily I had service, and I grabbed the album over 4G. I let the emo bluegrass take my mind away for a bit as I kept climbing – this album always brings back great memories, as I associate it with a pre-kid trip to Joshua Tree with Mo, where we somehow stumbled across a very early Joshua Tree Music Festival and saw the Avett Brothers perform before anyone knew who they were. It was a blast, and most importantly I felt happy and free in the desert then – right now, that was the feeling I needed most.

I took care of basics as I kept working my way up, singing along, Italians looking at me, wondering what the heck I was doing while knowing exactly what I was doing at the same time. I had been slipping on those ultrarunning fundamentals – I hadn’t been eating, I didn’t have the right clothes on, and I had become overwhelmed with the task ahead while not staying present on the forward progress right in front of me. I stopped as the sun was going down, taking in the epic views all around – I was essentially at the base of Cervino / the Matterhorn right now, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I ate as many calories as I could manage from my pack – some sliders (would I ever get those filet mignon ones again that I got early on in the loop?) – put a warmer shirt on, and kept climbing up to the next yellow flag. As the sunset morphed into complete darkness I realized I was moving better, but growing incredibly sleepy, the lack of good rest in Gressoney (and the entire trip so far, really) catching up to me. I got to an abandoned alpage building that had a pleasant looking stone porch on it, with an Italian eating some snacks. I laid down about 5 meters away from him on the ground to take a nap, and he graciously got up and gestured to me to lay down where he was – a nice flat, level stretch of stone. It looked perfect. My dragon settled down where I was going to initially, I put my extra layers on, pulled my buff down over my eyes, and passed out cold for 15 minutes, sleeping the most soundly that I had so far in the entire loop.

The alarm on my Coros went off, buzzing my wrist and waking me up, and I knew that meant only one thing – it was time to start walking again. I put on my headlight and slung my pack on my back again, glancing to my right where my dragon had tucked in just before I passed out. He was nowhere to be seen. Sweet, I thought to myself…. this seems like a great time to sneak away. Maybe he won’t know which way I went!

As I climbed up the trail I recalled doing this climb with Maureen during our “TOR Tour” in 2021, when we took five days and fast-packed the Gressonney to Courmayeur section of the trail. I have a photographic memory for trails and topography, so even though I was crossing this section at night, it still felt familiar to me. I knew this was a long and winding climb up to Col Pinter, and then a long descent that started steep and then mellowed out as it approached Champoluc. Somehow I was lost in my thoughts (or the music) and I missed a left turn on the trail, quickly realizing it before turning around and seeing another light just behind me. “Gauche!” I shouted at them, so they didn’t miss the same turn, to which an American-sounding voice said “Thanks!” and we started climbing up together.

Derek was a dude from Missoula, Montana, that I had met before in the shower room at Donnas. Despite feeling like I was mainly on a solo vision quest around the valley this year, I was incredibly grateful to have the company of an English speaking American at that point in time. To make things even better, Derek was incredibly positive, in a good headspace, and really fun to talk to. We started chatting, the normal ultrarunning stuff – work, family, origin story, etc. – and moved on to level 2 topics – the Tor de Lucas scholarship, other races we’ve done, thoughts on the Aosta Valley and its wonderful people. Meeting Derek could honestly not have come at a better time, and it wasn’t until days later that I gave Lucas a little “thanks”, because the timing of this encounter was a bit uncanny to be honest. With Derek’s company we cruised over Col Pinter, down the steep side, and into Champoluc, medium sized, slightly pissed-off red dragon nowhere in sight.

Musical Interlude III: Freak out and give in / Doesn’t matter what you believe in

Derek scooted down the trail as we approached Champoluc, and I immediately fell into my sleep and calorie hole pity party again. Maureen and Laura met me at an unplanned crew stop with a giant pizza, because I was so behind on calories, exemplifying how the best crew improvises the plan sometimes instead of always sticking to what’s on the spreadsheet. Finally feeling a bit full, I grabbed a decent nap, but when my alarm went off at 2:00 AM the last thing I wanted to do was to get up and keep walking. And yet that’s exactly what I needed to do. And so, desperately hoping for some inspiration and distraction, I turned to one of my favorite albums of all time, The Smashing Pumpkin’s Siamese Dream. This was the album of my adolescence, the album of my first live concert at Louisville Gardens in 1993, and the album that first made me feel the power of a wall of sonic chaos hitting your brain. I popped my headphones in and cranked up the volume for the opening drum roll and chords of Cherub Rock, allowing myself to be taken away by the shoe-gaze magic that was about to come. I clicked-clicked-clicked my way up the road to Saint-Jacques-des-Allemands, the boring road kilometers quickly disappearing into the surreal star- and sound-scape. I was coming back, and I could do this… another rally, another chance to rise from the ashes and just keep walking. This is TOR.

The Why of it All

People often talk about the “Why?” of doing these big mountain runs and multidays, and it’s a question that I sometimes ask myself, but also one that I don’t perseverate on. For me, I know that when I head into these big mountains they will at some point completely break me down to my most basic elemental self. It comes from a mixture of feeling both incredibly safe and pushed to my limits at the exact same time. It comes from days and days of moving through them, of establishing a rhythm with them, of watching the sun rise, and then the sun set, and then the moon rise, and then the moon set, and walking through it all the entire time. It’s here when my emotions are at their rawest, freed from any filters from the outside world. It creates a primal moment that taps into my very DNA as a human and answers the question of my mere existence.

With Billy Corgan and the crew emo-whining into my ears as I climbed up to the rifugio at Grand Touralin, I slowly clicked off the kilometers beneath the impossibly bright stars and things started to turn around. I refueled at the rifugio, downing a couple of bowls of soup and grabbing a brilliant 20 minute nap on their wonderfully comfortable padded bench seating before heading out to climb to the col just before sunrise. My coughing was still violently bad, but a kind French runner gave me the advice to roll as tranquil et doucement as I could, in an effort to not aggravate my lungs more. I was able to eventually settle into a pattern where if I made sure that I moved slowly on the first one to two hours of a climb, my lungs would clear out and warm up enough that I could resume a more normal pace toward the top.

I arrived at the Col de Nannaz right as the sun was coming up around the mountains and paused, literally spinning in slow circles, taking in the 360 degree view all around me. I am not a specifically religious man, but I was clearly in the presence of God and Creation at the top of that col, whatever that mystical force may be. I broke down and started bawling out of sheer happiness – happiness that the sun was coming up and the dark night was leaving me, happiness that I had survived another day of walking and made it to Day 5, happiness for all the other runners on course experiencing the same sunrise that I was. I bawled even more when I thought of Lucas, and the sunrises that he would describe from TOR, realizing that I was catching one of those right then in the moment, and that he was standing right there beside me soaking it all in as well. Each new day is not a guarantee in TOR, just as it is not a guarantee in life – however with the hustle and bustle of modern living, we usually assume that it is and easily take it for granted. Out there in the mountains of Aosta one must work for every new day, and the passing of time slows so much that you bear witness to the turning of the planet. The life-giving star was back in view now, and I was still out there walking. I wiped the tears from my eyes, took a few photos that didn’t do the scene any justice, and kept walking toward Courmayeur, thankful that I was still moving through the magic of TOR for one more day.

I descended in pure bliss to Valtournenche, working my way down the long and windy road with some friendly Italians, who were enthusiastically speaking to me in Italian, riding the Day 5 high just as much as I was. Despite not sharing a language we were totally able to communicate – they were excitedly telling me how the Aosta Valley was the most magical place in the world. It was a sentiment shared by many of us out on the course, and the reason runners from all over the world kept coming back to that race. I told them that I had come all the way from the United States to spend a week in this valley and their eyes lit up even brighter. Out there, in the middle of nowhere in the Italian Alps, we didn’t share a common tongue, but we did share an immense love for the mountains that we had just spent five days walking through, and that was perhaps even more special and unique.

Crux Number Three: The Final Stretch

My crewing experience and armchair analysis of the TOR course had always pointed me toward two major cruxes; the aforementioned Col Loson and the wild stretch from Donnas to Gressoney. Mo had always described a third crux, however, as she usually had difficulty between Valtournenche and Oyace, specifically in the big and deep valley that contained the Rifugio Magià. As usual, and as you might imagine, Mo was correct.

I got a great reset at Valtournenche, probably the best of all the lifebases on the course. I was somewhat shocked that my feet had survived the first dragon attack at Perloz so well, but I also knew that I still had a long way to go and it might be wise to seek some professional attention. Mo had messaged Thierry, one of the lead MassaggiaTORS and a true foot guru, telling him to keep his eye out for me and Colleen when we rolled through. As I walked into the auditorium at Valtournenche, Thierry immediately recognized me and called me out, putting me in line (possibly ahead of a couple of other folks waiting). He quickly got me up on the table and I realized I was next to my comrade Yuki, the Japanese crusher that Sam and I had met on PTL in 2023. Yuki was a fountain of positivity, and the Quadbanger / Fun Hog alliance in 2023 got us through some tough days together out on that course, even though we didn’t share a word of a common language. Yuki had spent the last 10 minutes trying to talk to one of the Massaggiators using Google Translate, and was doubled over laughing when he realized that the Italian guy had been writing in Chinese instead of Japanese, which is why Yuki couldn’t make any sense of the characters on his phone. “I look Chinese but am really Japanese!” Yuki exclaimed in very broken English, but once they got that sorted Google correctly took over and Yuki was on the table getting patched up.

Thierry patched and taped my feet up, assuring me that they weren’t bad at all, they just needed a little bit of attention. He scolded me for using a Compeed in Perloz, scaring me quite a bit by describing some of the gore he had seen as a result of those pads stripping off entire skin on a toe down to the bone. Mental note: don’t use Compeeds in ultra races, apparently. He said it was more for “blisters you get when walking around at the mall, not walking around Aosta Valley”. 😂

Different life bases have different vibes out there on course, and general fun was certainly the vibe of Valtourenche. With only one more lifebase to go in Ollomont, runners are starting to think about the end a bit, also understanding that they still have a long way to get there. The pull of Malatrà starts to get a bit stronger here, and I started to allow myself quick visualizations of me heading over the final col. In my mind that was still somehow going to be sunset on Friday night, but of course I also had yet to travel through Crux #3.

Maureen, Laura, and now Nate took great care of me after I got a solid hour nap in the large hot gymnasium at the lifebase, stuffing me full of calories and then making me eat even more. This is one of your primary jobs as crew on something like TOR – feed your runner, and then feed them even more, until they’re literally turning away food. Then feed them another bite and push them down the trail, telling them they’re doing awesome even when they look like hell, and telling them you’ll see them again at the next stop. It’s a delicate balance of tough love, empathy, and compassion, and I had somehow stumbled into an all-female crew team of highly experienced badasses that was seemingly doing it with ease.

I blasted off from Valtournenche, entering the final crux of the course, which I somewhat remembered from our 2021 TOR Tour, but also had some doubts about because on our fastpack we didn’t actually descend all the way to Magià. The climbing was tough out of Valtournenche, but Mo joined me for a portion of it, embracing the Italian not-actually-pacing vibe that was becoming more and more common as we got closer to the end. We parted ways before the Rifugio Barmasse, and it was there that I bought my first on-course Cornetto, spurred by an ingenious South African woman that discovered they had a refrigerator full of goodies inside and they would sell them à la carte. About a dozen people went inside to fetch novel snacks and many sat down at the outdoor picnic tables, enjoying a spontaneous refined snack time in the middle of this crazy, hallucinogenic week-long walk. It was a delightfully fun moment and I left wishing I had bought more from the fridge.

I was hurting a bit here, still coughing, getting sleepy even though it was mid-afternoon, and generally slowing down. I took a quick trail nap on the Fenetre d’Ersaz, before running into Yuki and an Italian Luca again at the next refreshment point. Luca was one of the guys I had initially climbed out of Donnas with, which seemed like ages ago, and it was strangely good to see him again, for nothing else then to know there was somebody out there going about the same pace that I was. This was how the groupings at TOR often worked – you wouldn’t see someone for days, and then all the sudden they would pop up out of nowhere, having been running from their dragons too. It always felt great to get a visual on them and at least know that they were still out there rolling along, Courmayeur-bound.

I descended into Magià at sunset, getting caught by another Japanese team that was somehow running the descent, and rolled into the rifugio sleepy and in dire need of a nap. I scored the top bunk in a tiny room with just two other people and slept decently well for an hour or so, finally woken up by just how freaking hot it was in the room. These small sleep rooms provided peace and quiet, which was great, but also turned into saunas once you put a few metabolically overactive multiday runners inside. It’s a crazy phenomenon of the multiday, but once your body stops and you get to sleep, it instantly kicks into repair mode. In my mind your metabolism is literally like “Hey this idiot finally stopped for a second, let’s get this mess repaired, all hands on deck, let’s go LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO!!!!!” Your temperature spikes and you start sweating like crazy, as all temperature regulation has gone down the drain at this point in the week. I finally crawled out of bed, ate two bowls of soup, and deflected some conversation from a kind Swiss man that wanted to talk about my teaching job in Berkeley (“Sorry man, I’m on vacation, I don’t want to talk about work right now” to which he responded “Wow, this is a really hard vacation.”).

Musical Interlude IV: I’m on a mission that [fellas] say is impossible / But when I swing my swords, they all choppable

Anticipation is funny, sometimes, because I had been fearing the climb up to Rifugio Cuney out of Magià for the past couple of days, and yet when I got to it I was in a great headspace and ready to roll. I had gotten just enough sleep at Magià, my belly was full, and Night 5 was proving to be an absolutely gorgeous and clear experience. I had been saving one album for when I really needed it the most out here – Liquid Swords, by GZA and the Wu-Tang crew, because it was the album I did my steep VO2 Max interval workouts in the Berkeley Hills to. It was the music that got me pumped up and feeling unstoppable, like all the cols were choppable…. and even though I didn’t feel like I needed it right now, I had an irresistible urge to put it on. My earbuds were dead, but since I was climbing completely solo in the now very strung-out field I just played it out of my phone speakers, something that I would never do in my real life. The audiophile grade Google Pixel 5 completely suppressed all the bass and treble, but somehow allowed the mid-range vocals to come through nice and clear, and I was instantly dancing under the stars to GZA, RZA, Ghostface, Raekwon, and the rest of the squad.

If the sunrise on Day 5 was the moment where I felt most embraced by God and the spiritual magic of TOR, the Wu-Tang dance sesh on the way up to Cuney was the place I finally just cut loose and had fun. There was something about the rhythmic climbing with my poles that I had been doing for the past 100+ hours that synced up with the rhythmic lyricists, and I felt like I was being propelled up the trail with a swarm of (friendly) killer bees at my back. I climbed, I danced, I rapped out loud, and I rolled into Cuney wondering where the time had gone, even becoming a bit disappointed when I had reached the top.

Despite the dope beats, I was sleepy again soon after Cuney and I was starting to think that I was going to need a trail nap before the long descent to Oyace. The problem was we were traversing through a high altitude barren landscape, and the dark and clear night was also kind of cold. I finally found a suitable flat patch of ground sheltered from the wind by a large boulder, and threw my pack down on the ground ready to crash out. Just then the Frenchman I was following hollered back at me “Non! Non! Allez, allez…. à la bivouac! C’est très proche…” and so I slung my vest back and soldiered on.

I wasn’t sure when I had first linked up with Jean, but he was extremely kind and had somewhat taken me under my wing. I’m pretty sure it was he who counseled me on my breathing out of Tournalin, and now he was directing me to the next good food stop on the trail. We had crossed paths and talked at some point earlier, and once he figured out that I spoke good enough French for some trail conversation he made a point of being friendly, which I very much appreciated. We walked into the Bivacco Rosaire and Clermont together and sat down at the table for a proper French meal. The amazing lady chefs served us heaping bowls of al dente pasta, sautéed with copious amounts of olive oil and fresh herbs, and we ate like kings, talking to the other Frenchmen that were also somehow at that dinner seating. One of them had just bought a house in Sallanches, near Mont-Saxonnex where we lived for two years, and we compared notes of our favorite running routes off the beaten path in the Arve Valley. After the meal I tucked into one of the ridiculously comfy beds and grabbed a 20 minute nap before profusely thanking the women and giving them bises on the cheek as I headed out into the cold night again. It was another stark oasis of civility during this brutal week of endurance, and I was thankful that Jean made me keep going when he did, and that I wasn’t still napping next to a giant boulder in the cold wind outside.

I descended into Oyace just before sunrise, even beating Mo and Laura there as by this time they were also fully crewing Colleen who was a few hours behind me on course. I did a little bit of all the aid station things, grabbing a nominal amount of sleep, a nominal amount of food, and a nominal amount of motivation to continue on. Mo made sure I got some extra calories, sending me off with some more sliders (dang! Still no filet mignon…) and advice that this next section was also not to be underestimated (by the way this is solid advice that you can reasonably give to anyone on any single section of TOR). I started the climb, stopping for the now requisite lung clearing hacking sessions along the way, and slowly made progress up to the Col de Brison.

It was on the col where that pesky little red dragon decided to pay me one more visit before I finished this loop. I started to look at the splits that I had written for myself to ensure a finish before the final cutoff, and despite doing the math in my mind and knowing that everything was fine, I somehow became convinced that I was way behind and that I was in danger of missing the cutoff in Ollomont. I did the math again, got the same results that I had plenty of time, and yet came to the same mental conclusion that I had completely messed up and I was screwed. I began to run for the first time in days down the trail from the Col de Brison, hoping that if I descended fast enough (sore feet be damned!) I could make up some time and make the cutoff at the final life base. I looked up to the sky and that pesky little red guy was still flying along, ducking in and out of trees the whole way down, keeping his beady green eyes firmly focused directly on me. I finally stopped at an alpage and called Mo, telling her the situation, and explaining that she needed to explain to me that I wasn’t actually going to miss my splits. She did, of course, even telling me that the splits I had written for myself (which I was still precisely on) were for a 144 hour finish, still six hours before the actual cutoff. This managed to calm me down enough, and I told her I would see her soon in Ollomont.

This right here is the essence of a crew, both in life and in TOR. Since first meeting each other in 2001, Mo has been my absolute ride-or-die companion in life. She’s the Aquarius to my Gemini, and has always brought a healthy dose of dreams and adventurous ambition to my practical and methodical nature. We’re an inseparable duo just like Big Boi and André 3000, and the sum of us is most certainly greater than our two parts. I tend to identify a handful of people in my world whom I trust and hold them very close, and Maureen is and will always be at the top of this list. I am beyond grateful that I have someone in my life like this – in my times of need, I know that I can just listen to her, and I will do whatever she tells me to do because I trust her 100%. So in that moment, I kept moving to Ollomont, now believing that I was okay on cutoffs (and again, as you can predict, she was right).

I finally came into Ollomont and Mo bought me my second Cornetto, which I devoured before taking care of all the necessities at what was the sixth and final lifebase on TOR. If Valtournenche has a chill and jovial vibe, Ollomont has the vibe of the start of a celebration. 50 kilometers is still a long way to go, as I was about to see, but once you blast off from Ollomont there’s no more lifebases between you and Courmayeur, and that suddenly feels like a big deal. No more places to get your feet taped, no more large crowded gymnasiums to sleep in, no more unpacking and re-stuffing your yellow TOR drop bag. I took care of my business, got taped up again by Thierry, enjoying a great nap on the massage table, and took off with only two cols between me and the finish line, little red dragon now once again nowhere in sight.

Col Malatrà, the Queen of the Loop

Mo left Ollomont with me and walked a bit of the way up to Champillon, us reliving our TOR Tour experience, reminiscing on how little we knew about this valley then and how much more we know about it now. Champillon kept the celebratory vibe going with a rousing welcome for each runner – cowbells, barking dogs, vuvuzela noise makers going nuts for every single person that walked in. The second to last col of Champillon was symbolically covered in yellow TOR flags, and we all took pictures at the top, now knowing that there was only one col left between us and the finish, and her name was Malatrà.

There was still one more refreshment stop I was looking forward to, though, and that was Ponteille. I rolled in to this large alpage with a giant hole in my stomach, and they did not disappoint! I was so happy to see the large table of amazing looking food that I just burst out laughing, asking for as large of a bowl as they would give me. Fresh creamy polenta topped with local Fontana cheese, a beet forward vegetable mixture, hot juicy sausage that a voluntor was slicing open by hand and drizzling over the top of the bowl. It was the best meal I had eaten on the entire course, and I made sure they knew this upon leaving, showering them with a barrage of “Ciao’s” and “Grazie’s” on my way out.

Mo and Laura once again saved my race by meeting me in Bosses, another unplanned crew stop, but somehow the chaffing on my inner thigh that hadn’t bothered me for days had quickly escalated on the pain scale to a 10/10. This is one of the technical challenges I still need to figure out for these multidays – I think it’s as simple as finding some supportive spandex shorts that I could run in, but it’s now clear that my Patagonia Nine Trails have a time limit for comfort out there. Mo delivered my XOSKin underwear that I had thankfully ordered the day before leaving and I was able to put those on under my shorts and solve the problem well enough. She pushed me out of Bosses (after informing me that the Campervan had a flat tire and she might or might not make it to Courma for the finish) and I was officially on the final stretch.

The climb up to Malatrà was long and a bit of a grind, but there was no stopping us now, and the trail was a steady stream of tired but persistent walkers with no dragons thankfully in sight. I knew this part of the course well, having overlapped on it many times, and was eager to get to (and get through!) Frassati, where me and Sam ended our 2022 PTL bid because he was so sick with Covid, and where Mo ended her 2022 TOR when the race was canceled due to snow. I rolled into Frassati around 2:30 AM on Saturday morning, finally sure that I would comfortably make the final cutoff in town. I was still super sleepy, so I let myself take two 15 minute naps on the floor under the table, and left the rifugio with a Tor des Glaciers runner that was about to finish the epic loop of his own. We pushed up and over Malatrà, which was somewhat anticlimactic in the dark of night, and I descended slowly and steadily all the way down the new TOR finish that went past Bonnati and Bertone on its way back into town.

I left Bonnati as elated as all the other runners, now content to efficiently walk it in on the flat balcon trail just as we had been doing for the previous six days. The sun was coming up and Monte Bianco was illuminated in a majestic pink and purple light, a perfect looking lenticular cloud perched on top of the summit, welcoming the final day of finishers back to Courmayeur. I stopped walking to really be able to take the whole scene in, and at that moment the summit lit up in an almost neon display of alpenglow. It was the most beautiful light show I had ever seen on Mont Blanc and I could overwhelmingly feel the spirit of Lucas all around me. Despite the new course ending not going by his memorial plaque just on the other side of the Col Entre-Deux-Sauts, he had still come out to watch me finish. I texted Mo a picture to which she replied “It’s a beautiful morning to finish TOR” (and also informed me that they had somehow pulled an all-nighter, gotten the tire fixed, and were waiting for me in Courmayeur.) Did I mention they were a badass crew?!?!!

I paused one more time at the final view from Bertone, where you could see the initial climb we did on the previous Sunday morning up to Col d’Arp, the first of twenty five cols that we would eventually cross on our journey. To see the start of the loop from the end was absolutely stunning – that circle was by far the most aesthetic loop I had ever completed on foot. The fact that one can circumnavigate this entire valley on foot, with relatively few technical passages, is completely mind-blowing. I soaked it all in, knowing the carousel ride was about to end, but also somewhat eager to stop the spinning for a bit.

On the way down I saw two trail runners in Dick Collins Firetrail 50 race shirts, and as they cheered for me I exclaimed “Hey, I’m from Berkeley” to which they yelled “SEND IT!!!” as I tried to gingerly run down the trail. I made good progress on the downhill, my legs feeling pretty fresh all things considered, partly because my speed had been governed by my lungs for most of the loop. I picked up Mo and Nate in the park right before the finish line and we ran into down through the final stretch, me feeling like I was hauling ass, but in reality probably just shuffling along.

I walked up the finishing ramp and under the banner, overcome by my emotions and what had just happened that previous week. I gave a hug to Ivan, the announcer, and of course to Jan, Lucas’s mom, who was waiting for me at the finish line. The whole crew was there, and we took the requisite photos before they got me to a hotel where I could collapse and start catching up on the sleep that I had missed that week.

I was a Géant, and this was TOR. And now, after a week of a magical carousel ride, it was over.

“Réaliser un rêve, c’est le tuer en fait.” – Bigflo et Oli

This year marked the fourth year that either Maureen or I were in the Aosta Valley for TOR, and to say it’s been a huge part of our life since 2021 would be an understatement. Yes, we’ve also balanced work and our amazing kids, but along with UTMB and PTL, being in Chamonix in August and Aosta in September has been an anchor to our calendar years. We’ve been incredibly blessed to meet so many amazing people along the way – to list our friends and chosen international family here would literally be impossible.

In the wise words of the French rappers Big Flo and Oli, as written above, “to realize a dream is also to kill the dream”. These words come at the end of their surprisingly good Netflix documentary, where essentially Bigflo and Oli work their entire lives on performing a stadium show for their hometown of Toulouse. In the end, after coming out of nowhere to become mainstream French music stars, they finally realize their dream. They play two shows at the Stade de Toulouse – the first one is a bit of a flop, a DNF if you will, with sound and weather problems – but they go full send on the second show and blow the place out of the water. At the end of the night they collapse on the stage crying, and one of them utters these suddenly sage words. Because in the moment after the elation of realizing that you have made your dream a reality, you are also struck with the reality that you have realized your dream.

Our TOR dreams are not dead, but I think they are changing a bit in how they look. I’m not sure either of us will run a TOR again – it’s certainly more likely than the average person, but as of right now I don’t think either of us is obsessively being pulled in that direction. I had what I consider to be a phenomenal TOR – yes, my coughing and lungs slowed me down and I didn’t get a Tor des Glaciers qualifying time, but I also had no major problems out there and had a blast during a week where the weather was about as perfect as you can get in those mountains. If I went back to do it again, I’m not sure how it would be any better – sure, I could stay healthy for the whole week and maybe run it faster, but surely something else would go wrong, and at this point in my running career faster is not necessarily better. My goal was to run smartly out there and send the loop on the first try, and I walked away doing that, an accomplishment of which I am very proud.

In all honesty the biggest pull I have to Aosta Valley right now is in the people and the growing Tor de Lucas Scholarship. What started as a small idea in the wake of Lucas’s death feels like it is slowly growing into something more. This year was the first time we heard people on the course talk about it, and the TOR organization was generous enough to even give us a bib for entry so the recipient could bypass the lottery. Colleen was our second non-US international runner, coming from South Africa, and she could not have embodied the spirit of Lucas and the scholarship more. She delivered an incredibly gritty performance out there, digging deeper than she ever has on multiple occasions, and became the first scholarship recipient to finish the loop on her first try (although most of them have come back later and completed the circuit!). More importantly she ran with a freedom and vulnerability that Lucas would have been so impressed by, because that is why he headed into the mountains. Not to see how fast he could go, or how long he could survive, but to head out until the mountains stripped him down and showed him what really existed underneath all the layers that we protect ourselves with in normal society.

Because, at its essence, that’s what TOR is, and that’s what makes it so special. It’s an entire valley of people coming together for one week in September to spin the carousel of life and provide some 1,200 starters with a chance for a truly transcendental and spiritual experience. It takes a village to do this, and while this village at times feels more like one you’d find on the Burning Man Playa then the streets of Milan, it does the job with so much love and enthusiasm that you really don’t want to hop off the ride unless you have to. That’s the feeling I would go back for, and that’s the feeling that so many people fall in love with. An experience of a lifetime in some of the biggest, most brutal, and most beautiful mountains in the world.

This is TOR.

Mat is back to teaching high school Physics in Northern California, often spending prep periods dreaming of the big mountains in Aosta. He is also an experienced trail running coach that loves preparing athletes for big mountain pushes like UTMB and the Tor des Géants. Head over to Flowstate Running to learn more about his coaching services.

If you read this and can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to walk around Aosta Valley for a full week in September, please head over to the Tor de Lucas Scholarship and check it out. Applications open in January of every year and we are always looking for adventurous souls that know no limit of pasta with red sauce that they can consume. Head here if you’d like to donate to the scholarship and help get the carousel turning for the recipient next year!