CCC 2026 — The Fall Line
Courmayeur, Italy → Martigny, Switzerland. 70.6 km, 3,696 m of climbing, 16 hours 39 minutes, and a DNF.
Here's the short version, so you can stop reading whenever you like: I didn't finish. I fell at about 35 km, ran another 35 on a bad ankle, got to Martigny fifteen minutes inside the cut-off with a 1,000-metre climb in front of me, and stopped. I'm fine. The ankle is less fine.
Here's the longer version.
What the race actually is
The CCC is one of the races that runs during UTMB week in Chamonix. It starts in Courmayeur on the Italian side of Mont Blanc, goes counter-clockwise through Switzerland, and finishes in Chamonix. On paper it was 101 km with about 6,000 m of climbing — roughly the height of Everest from sea level, done sideways, in a day.
Except it wasn't, because on Thursday night the organisers looked at the forecast and changed the course. They pulled the Bovine climb and sent everyone down into Martigny instead, which added seven kilometres and four hundred metres of climbing. New total: 108 km, 6,400 m. Then, during the race, they changed it again to remove a climb near the end. So nobody ran the race they'd planned for. This will become relevant.
The start
It was raining. I lined up late because it was raining, which meant I started at the very back of a field of 1,974 people, which meant that when we hit the singletrack about four kilometres in, I stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. My watch recorded twenty-two minutes of standing still on a mountainside at 1,680 m, in the rain, in a queue. It had rained all night, and two thousand pairs of shoes had already been through, so the trail had the consistency and grip of a chocolate fondue.
This went on for hours. I topped out on the Tête de la Tronche — the high point of the first climb, 1,418 m of gain in 9.4 km — after three hours and five minutes, then gave some of it back on the way down to Bertone, picking my way down the descent like I was carrying a full cup of tea. I didn't think much of it at the time.
After Bertone the field finally spread out enough to actually run, and for the next forty kilometres I felt good and was passing people at every checkpoint. Which felt great, and — as you'll see — cost me nothing at all, because the day had other plans.
The weather, briefly
Rain for about ten hours. Thunderstorms. Hail on the Grand Col Ferret, which at 2,530 m is the highest point of the race and not where you want weather to be creative.
The practical effect of this is that I spent the day operating a wardrobe. Jacket on for the stop, off for the climb, on for the summit, off for the valley. Repeat. All day. The Gore-Tex top and the wind layer earned every gram they cost me. I'd love to tell you a piece of expensive kit heroically failed so there'd be a villain in this story, but no — everything worked. I was just very busy with zips.
The fall
Coming off the Grand Col Ferret there's a long steep descent into La Fouly. In the rain the singletrack trails had become a clay slide. Everyone was picking their way down it carefully, and I got frustrated, and I took the fall line.
Literally.
I'd already lost time on a descent just like this one, hours earlier coming down from the Tête de la Tronche, and hadn't thought twice about it. I only connected the two afterwards, looking at the numbers. Six hours later, on almost identical terrain, it cost me the race.
I didn't think I'd done much at the time. You never do. I got up, kept going, and for the next while it was just a thing that had happened. Then the left ankle started talking. Then it started talking louder.
Here's the part I didn't know until afterwards: I kept passing people after I fell. Right through to La Fouly, and then all the way up the 510-metre climb to Champex-Lac. I covered thirty-four kilometres on that ankle and was still moving forward through the field the entire time.
I arrived at Champex-Lac at 21:41, twelve hours eleven minutes in, and I was done. Leg wrecked, head worse.
Champex-Lac, Liam
This is the part of the story that's actually worth telling.
I walked into that aid station and announced I was finished. Liam — my coach, and my friend — nodded and said "okay, let's get you some food," and ran off.
Then it was drinks. Then dry clothes. Then let's change your shoes. Then what's working for fuel and what isn't? Then let's just pack your bag. He never once argued with me. He just kept handing me the next thing.
Somewhere in the middle of all that he said, "You're doing amazing, you've moved up a ton of people," and "you're way ahead of any cutoffs." I assumed that was the standard thing you say to a man who has just told you he's quitting. It wasn't. From the refuge to leaving Champex-Lac I moved up 232 places — I only found that out afterwards, looking at the numbers, but Liam already knew it standing there in the rain. That's probably where the "I'm finished" started to crack, even though I didn't notice it happening.
And the whole time, Hannah, my eight-year-old daughter, and Maurine were right there. Maurine — Liam's partner, and one of Hannah's closest friends — has the kind of contagious warmth and humour that makes you like her within about thirty seconds. My daughter adores her. A good chunk of her delight that night was Maurine's doing as much as mine. She was thrilled — not politely, not because she'd been told to be, but genuinely delighted with the entire thing. Her dad was in a race in the mountains and she'd come to find him and here he was. Twelve hours of rain and a ruined ankle do not survive contact with an eight-year-old who thinks you're brilliant. Hannah, who has seen me at my worst and stayed anyway, just quietly got on with lifting me.
Before I entirely understood what was happening I was on my feet, running the first few metres out of Champex with the two of them alongside me, and then I was heading off into the dark on my own.
One hundred and fifty-five people quit at Champex-Lac that night. I'd fully intended to be one of them. Instead I got another seventeen kilometres, four and a half hours, and a much better story, because someone declined to take my resignation.
Martigny
The last five kilometres, the leg simply stopped cooperating. I was passed by a lot of people. I walked into Martigny at ten past two in the morning with fifteen minutes of cut-off buffer and a 1,000-metre climb between me and the next checkpoint.
Medical strongly suggested I stop. The maths agreed with them: there was no version of that climb where I made the next cut-off. The only real question was whether I destroyed the ankle before quitting or after. So — 70.6 km, 3,696 m, sixteen hours thirty-nine minutes and fifty-four seconds, DNF.
In fairness to the descents: I've been nursing a hamstring since late May, which meant I did almost none of the downhill training I'd planned. The mountain found that out before I did.
I'll be back. Same mountain, better descending, and more gels.
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