Transgrancanaria Ultra Trail (123 Km, 8000 m D+)

Posted on January 15th, 2011

Words & Photos: Filippo Canetta

It's 11 pm and a strange feeling comes over me.

It's an hour before the start, and I have to leave the hotel room where my family is sleeping. It feels so strange to abandon them and not stay to watch over them. Just as I'm about to leave, little Cecilia wakes up crying, and it's even harder to override that primal instinct to protect. It's probably the fear of what's waiting for me: 123 kilometers and an unknown number of meters of elevation gain to cross the island of Gran Canaria, from south to north, over its highest mountains.

As I wonder whether any of this makes sense, I arrive, half-asleep, at the start, it's almost midnight. I watch this peculiar world from the outside for a bit longer, then dive into it, with a smile on my face. The cheerful, smiling crowd of trail runners on the brightly lit beach pulls me out of my thoughts. I switch on the little blinking red LED on my backpack too, which will turn out to be very useful, and I'm ready.

The collective excitement builds, three, two, one, and we're off on a new adventure. We leave behind the light and comfort of the spectators for the silent darkness of the dunes at Maspalomas beach.

The sea to our left is black in the direction of the African continent, the sky above us is dark, heavy with dense clouds, and the mountain silhouette to our right looms menacingly. After the first 5 kilometers of beach, we head quickly straight toward them.

I really love moving through the darkness of the night with just my headlamp's light, I can completely relax and feel my body moving forward, despite its weight, almost as if gravity didn't exist. Sometimes I keep my headlamp off or dimmed to the minimum and follow the lights of other competitors instead. I run alongside another trail runner for a while, trying to check whether my pace matches his. This kind of ritual will play out many more times over the course of the race. I'm probably going too fast, but I feel really good and have a strong urge to run, so, recklessly, I don't worry about it, and I pass my companion as the climb starts getting steeper. I look back and can't help but stop, moved, to take in the sight beneath me. The road, winding upward like a snake, is completely flooded with the flickering lights of the competitors.

The deeper we push into the volcanic belly of the island, the thicker the humidity and fog become. By now we've forgotten we ever started at the sea, it feels like we're in a rainforest, but we keep climbing toward the mountains. Every so often it rains, and the night seems like it'll never end. Only around 7 am does it start to brighten, and I'm glad to see the dawn over the area of the island's inland lakes. They're green, magnificent, it feels like being high in the mountains. These are the images that'll come back to me the most in the days after the race.

Emerging from the fog of the night, a different race begins, the more competitive one.

I always wait until at least the halfway point to ask about my position, and when I find out I'm ninth, a fresh burst of energy runs through me.

I climb, using ropes at points, the island's two highest peaks, at 1,750 and 1,950 m. As I reach the top, the wind coming from the north chills my wet clothes, and while I stop to put my jacket on, English champion Lizzy Hawker catches up to me. Excited, I try to keep pace with her and learn as much as I can. I'm amazed at how, light as a feather, she holds a steady, even pace, whether downhill, on the flat, or uphill!

From here on it should be almost all downhill, the part I dread most, since I haven't managed to train much for it. The descents, broken up by a few uphill bursts, are fairly technical, or at least that's how they feel to me at this point in the race.

Just before the 100th km checkpoint, catching us off guard, a competitor blows past us very quickly. But the race is still long, so I try to hold the gap, stretching it out on Lizzy, who's managing her lead over the second-place woman. After the checkpoint, the runner ahead of us seems to have paid for that lightning-fast sprint, and both Lizzy and I pass him.

I can still run decently and, staying focused, try to open up as much of a gap as I can between him and me. I'm willing to skip even the 116th km aid station if I have to. But as I make my way, struggling, through a riverbed of round, slick pebbles, my Canarian pursuer reappears, menacing, behind me. I try to pick up the pace for a while, but he's faster and passes me right as the rain starts up again. Under a fresh downpour, I reach the finish line on the seafront of Las Palmas, satisfied.