Italy, day six

On Tuesday I had a good block of daylight between my life base trips, so I decided to squeeze in my long hike for the week. I mapped a route following the Tor des Geants course backward to Col de Malatra, which is the last pass in the race, then crossing overland to complete a loop over two passes, for a total of three big climbs and a good chunk of distance. I slept late because, to be honest, sleep has been a rare commodity during this trip, as food has also been. The food is delicious when I can get it, but Italian culture is not conducive to an on-the-go lifestyle, with its mid-day store closures and complete lack of convenience stores and supermarkets. I often have a very difficult time acquiring food when I need it the most, and have taken to eating bread and jam sandwiches for more meals than I care to admit. At this point my stomach doesn't even really care about pizza and authentic pasta, it just wants calories. It's funny to come all the way to Italy and lose almost all interest in the quality of food in favor of quantity. My Americanism shines through.

But, yes, I at least got a more normal amount of sleep (read, more than four hours) and got going around 10 a.m. I passed the Tor des Geants course markers on my way out the Trail du Mont Blanc, preparing for the race finish. It was more than 48 hours into the 200-mile race and no one was even close to finishing. Ultimately the winner would come in at 6 p.m. Wednesday, a finishing time of 81 hours. Consider this against the 100-mile Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, which the top runners finish in just over 20 hours.

The climb to Col de Malatra was long, nearly 12 miles on a rolling traverse that included about 6,500 feet of climbing. But besides the TDG flags it was just me out there, lost in a massive Alpine moonscape.

The col itself was just a narrow notch in a veritable wall. At 2,925 meters, it's the third highest pass on the course.

Looking through the notch to the other side.

I saw mountain bike tracks on this trail. Six thousand feet of descending — must be a grunt to get the bikes up here but fully awesome to ride down. I was certainly jealous.

I left the trail and started my traverse, with two passes and lots more climbing still in front of me.

I crested Col Sapin at about 6 p.m., having walked nearly continuously for eight hours. I didn't make many stops because I didn't really have any food beyond a couple of jam sandwiches and some candy I scrounged out of Beat's rejected race food pile. I vowed to make a real effort to go grocery shopping the following day.

My legs were incredibly tired and feet sore on the final descent, which I spent contemplating the scale of the Tor des Geants, again. After all, I had only hiked three passes, and the second two were comparably small.

I finally tromped back to my apartment at 8 p.m. after 24 miles and 11,300 feet of climbing — a truly challenging and beautiful solo outing. It was too late to go to the now-closed grocery store and I was too tired and hungry to deal with the leisurely (read: drawn-out) waits and dainty portions of the local restaurants, so I scrounged some Barilla pasta and a can of crushed tomatoes for dinner. It was the most delicious dinner ever. As Beat has said about his own limited food choices in the Tor des Geants, there's no seasoning quite like hunger.

Italy, day five

My fifth day in Italy was a challenge of coordination, as Martina and I both wanted to meet our men at the second life base in the skiing town of Cogne and also do a bit of hiking ourselves. I made my second attempt at navigating the roads of northern Italy, which has only been remotely possible thanks to a GPS device that Beat purchased during his last race in France. If it wasn't for GPS, I'd probably be driving in circles down in Torino at this point. I'm still learning to read traffic signs, none of the roads are marked, and even if they were, and every street has a name at least sixteen syllables long, beginning with Strada and continuing on for several seconds in GPS's soothing female voice. The most amazing thing about driving here is the A5 highway, which is mostly routed directly through the mountains in a series of tunnels. The mountain roads are all incredibly winding and narrow and barely squeeze between centuries-old stone buildings. Even the driving here is treacherous, beautiful and exciting.

Martina and I hiked toward Col Loson, which at 3,200 meters is the highest pass on the course. I only made it five miles to 8,000 feet elevation before I caught up with Beat, who was coming down the pass two hours earlier than I expected. He was noticeably tired and limping a bit, and said that he felt more worked than he did after the 2009 Hardrock 100, just 100 kilometers into the Tor des Geants with 230 more to go.

But he did still look strong going down the steep trail toward Cogne. Col Loson looses more than 6,000 feet of pure elevation from the top of the pass to the valley. Although Col Loson has one of the more dramatic elevation changes, there are 24 similar passes in this race. Twenty four.

I was still able to catch Beat smiling on occasion.

Beat inside the life base, trying to fix his feet. My job at each of these life bases, which are generally spaced 35-50 kilometers apart, is to bring him things that he requests, massage his shoulders, fetch food, and nod sympathetically as he spews long stream-of-consciousness monologs about the why that last pass was the worst of the lot, so much worse than he remembered from last year.

But even amid the pain and fatigue, he was anxious to move on. This I can understand. It's not just about beautiful scenery and challenge — if it was, Beat would just do what I'm doing, hiking when I feel like hiking and sipping espressos at cafes while I wait for racers to come through town. The suffering is an important part of the experience, a way to draw deeper meaning and understanding from the barrage of sensory input and reduced inhibitions. I can appreciate what Beat is trying to do even as I struggle to fathom it.

Italy, day four

On paper, the Tor des Geants is a 200-mile foot race with 80,000 feet of climbing. But on its rugged surface, this loop around the Aosta Valley is so much more than its insufficient numbers. It's miles of boulder fields and crumbling shale and 40-percent grades. It's calf-shredding climbing followed my quad-crushing descents. It's 4,000 vertical feet of trail so steep that your heels never touch the ground, cresting on narrow cols before plunging off seemingly impossible cliffs. Exposure, leaping steps and knee agony are just a small battles in the grand scheme of this unfathomable physical and mental war.

The race started at a merciful 10 a.m. Sunday morning. A large crowd had gathered in downtown Courmayeur as church bells range through the cool air. It was cloudy and humid but the excitement was electric.

Beat, Harry and Steve at the start. There were more than 500 racers lining up for the Tor des Geants. Because he's a 2010 finisher, Beat received a special race number with his finishing position, 98.

After cheering the guys on, I wrapped up a few chores and then headed out for a quick trip up to Col Arp, which is the first pass in the race. It rained intermittently and even though the race started just hours earlier, the trail was completely deserted. The sweepers had even cleaned up the course markings, leaving no sign of the 500 people who passed through here.

I had to hurry in order to meet Beat at the first life base, so I veered onto an adjacent fire road so I could run (the trails here are much too steep for someone like me to even attempt more than a determined hike, both up or down.) I climbed to 8,500 feet, again, before rushing back down to town as fast as my legs could carry me while the sky grew darker and the air colder. It says something about the scale of the mountains here that you can't even run from town to a minor pass without logging 5,000 feet of climbing on the ol' GPS. Both runners and mountain bikers who live here and recreate on a regular basis must be in amazing shape. The sky opened up to a spectacular downpour just as I reached my front door.

Despite the rain and cold, Beat seemed in good spirits at the first life base, with 50 kilometers of difficulty behind him. He arrived with Anne Ver Hoef and said they spent a good deal of the miles traveling together and discussing the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile race in Alaska that both are registered for in 2012. Anne has competed in the ITI before and said the TDG is harder. Having seen small sections of the TDG, I have no doubt about this.