Trail du Petit Ballon: a wonderful trail race in Alsace, France
Let's see how my first trail of 2023 went!
Race Profile
- Length: 53 kms
- Creation date: 2004 (20th edition)
- Elevation:
- Positive: 2200m
- Negative: 2200m
- Aid Stations: 4
- Cut-off time: 10h00
"Seeing it is believing it", so here we go:
- GPX trace:
- Elevation:
The "Team"
We were 6 folks to run this trail, in different categories:
- 24 kms:
- Cyril - who I knew from a mailing list for a long time, but had never met!
- Laetitia - a friend from Julien
- 42 kms:
- Guido - Laetitia's boyfriend
- Pierre - a friend from Julien
- 53 kms:
- Julien (aka Eole)
- myself
Day before
Arriving in Strasbourg
I took a train from Paris to Strasbourg, and once arrived I met Pierre, who travelled in the same TGV but in a different coach.
We then took a tramway to Laetitia's, where we had a nice lunch (pasta of course!) with the rest of the team.
Then we headed to Rouffach, with Guido driving.
Picking up the bib
Getting our bib was super easy: showing our QR code to a member of the staff, who then picked our bib for us, and gave it to us.
The giveaways were nice: a tank top, as well as a bottle of "crémant d'Alsace":
I brought it home to enjoy it with my wife, but we saw some folks drinking it the evening before the trail - not a bad idea, although I tend to avoid drinking the day before a race :)
We walked towards the vineyards, as Julien wanted to use his drone to take some videos - it was quite hilly, and we saw some pink arrows, which made us think one of the races must be passing there - which was confirmed a bit more uphill, when we saw a sign "arrival in 2 kms".
We then headed to our Airbnb, were we ate (once again) pasta in the evening, prepared our running gear, and went to sleep.
D-Day
Waking up and breakfast
With the race starting at 8am, and being barely 5 min away, we woke up "late", around 6:30am - which gave us time to shower and take a breakfast: cereals and "gatosport" (a cake easy to digest, with plenty of glucides, and with an OK taste and consistency).
Start line
Laetita and Cyril's 24km was starting at 9am, so Julien, Guido, Pierre and I headed to the stadium where the race started.
We just waited for 10 minutes, but Julien found himself at the front of the queue, whereas Guido, Pierre and I were chatting so without even noticing we ended up in the middle of the queue - not a big deal, since we just wanted to enjoy.
The speaker also confirmed what we were thinking the day before: the race's markup was using... pink arrows! So what we saw the day before was indeed the end of the race - which would prove interesting, as it would be a pretty steep downhill descent!
Right picture: from left to right: Pierre, Guido and me
The Race
Aid Station strategy
Even though most of the time I mostly use food from aid stations, I decided to be more "focused" this time, and eat regularly (every 45 minutes), and not taking "unknown/not tested" food at aid stations, and sticking to bananas, fruits compote and a bit of cheese.
First kilometers
As I usually do, I started "easy" (i.e. not too fast, which is the classical "trap" that a lot of runners fall into when they see other runners running faster than them).
I ran the first km with Guido and Pierre, but because it was crowded, I lost them.
The speaker told us that there would be a bottleneck at km 4, as we would enter a single - which proved true, so we had to wait a few minutes before being able to walk downhill, and run again.
Aid Station 1 - Gauchmatt (KM 10.5)
- Arrived at 9h25
- Refilled water (water-only aid station)
- Stayed ~3 minutes - left at 9h28
- Mood/shape: good
Aid Station 2 - Col du Boenlesgrab (KM 20.5, cut-off time: 11h30)
- Arrived at 10h39, so ~50 min ahead of the cut-off time.
- Refilled water, took mainly salty food (cheese and delicatessen) as well as some banana.
- Stayed ~8 minutes - left at 10h47
- Mood/shape: good
Around km 24, we arrived at the "petit ballon", which is a summit and also the highest altitude (~1250 meters) of the race:
It was super windy and cold, so I had to put back my jacket.
The organisers found fun to then have us go down to the other side, where a small aid station was serving soup, only to go uphill again, and keep running. Not the funniest part, but hey, this is trail! :)
Aid Station 3 - Ferme Gollentz, Osenbach (KM 37.5, cut-off time: 14h45)
- Arrived at 14h04, so ~45 min ahead of the cut-off time.
- Refilled water (water-only aid station)
- Stayed ~5 minutes - left at 14h09
- Mood/shape: good, but getting hard to run down hill.
- Because I was tired, I was running heel-strike, instead of forefoot, and this showed as I was having again iliotibial band syndrome
- I was glad that I had running poles, as using them downhill helped a lot reducing the pain
- Misc: just after the aid station, I stopped for a few minutes on the side of the road to remove some dirt from my shoes. One trailer stopped and asked if I was OK, taking the time to discuss with me. I told him I was fine.
Aid Station 4 - Schauenberg (KM 46, cut-off time: 16h30)
- Arrived at 15h31, so ~1 hour ahead of the cut-off time.
- Refilled water, took mainly salty food (cheese and delicatessen) as well as some banana.
- Stayed ~2 minutes - left at 15h33
- Mood/shape: tough
- knee pain was still there, but I kept running with my poles.
- obviously i was slower as there was a bit more walk, but because my goal was now to run under 9h, I used the poles a lot downhill, which made a difference in terms of pace.
- Misc: in between aid stations 3 and 4, I met again the same trailer who asked
if I was OK, and was also struggling with his knee. We started talking a bit more
- his name was Greg. We decided to finish together, and to push ourselves to avoid walking too much :)
Arrival - Rouffach (KM 53, cut-off time: 18h)
We (Greg and I) arrived at 16h52, so ~1h08 ahead of the cut-off time, and below 9 hours!!!
Those last 7 kms really felt good, we talked non stop and this is really what trail is all about for me: enjoying the nature, go the extra mile, and meeting people!
As you can see from the above pictures, even tired, I was super happy and smiling - Greg is on the 2nd picture.
After the Finish line
"I'm famous!!"
200 meters before the finish line, I looked at Greg and told him "ok, let's run
to the finish line" - we did, and from afar we could see a group of people
cheering at us.
I thought it was Greg's friends, as after all he was more "local" than me - but
he said "no, they're cheering on you, I can hear 'Nico'" :)
And indeed, it was Laetitia, Pierre and Cyril, who came back from the Airbnb after their race, and saw that I was about to finish, and decided to come to welcome me - such a nice feeling :))
Enjoying
We discussed with Laetitia, and I introduced her to Greg - we talked about the food that was served nearby (see below), which was typical Alsatian food - and Greg told Laetitia "oh, you're pronouncing it correctly!" - to which I answered "yes, she's from Alsace ;)".
We then discovered that they had a lot of running friends in common, and are running in the same hills etc.
Food!!!
After 53 kms running, I was of course starving, and the organisers had the very good idea of providing a few food options.
I went for Spaetzle, Sauerkraut and Sausage Casserole 😋
Wrap Up
The race
I thoroughly enjoyed this race:
- distance/format was great
- start line 5 minutes from our Airbnb was fantastic
- the trail itself was gorgeous
- landscapes were great
- we had a good weather in the end - no snow, no rain!
- and the Alsatians! every single person I met was super nice, willing to help, pleasant to talk to
I am already considering running another trail race next year in Alsace, probably the Trail Alsace Grand Est by UTMB - which crosses the Haut-Koenigsbourg castle <3
Food strategy
No gastric issue at all, and I still felt energised at the end of the race (look at this smiling guy!), so I think eating regularly helped a lot.
Pains/muscles
My biggest takeaway is that I must train my hamstring muscles. I struggled starting at KM 35-40, and managed to keep going thanks to my poles, but my next trail race in June will be 75 kms, so if I want to avoid suffering for too long, I definitely must fix this!
Good news is, I have 2 months to prepare for this - I'm not too worried about the distance, as I did roughly that distance with the SaintéLyon, but I'll have a bit more elevation this time (3100 meters).