Last November I ran my first Spartan Ultra Race in North Carolina, so when I heard about the Ultra World Championship in Morzine, France it looked like a cool destination race to do this year, especially as I planned to be in Europe around this time anyway. 

My preparation for this race was mixed, from one side, spending a week in the Dolomites got me better acclimatized for the altitude and some steep Trails Running refresher, from the other side I did not have a lot of options to spend on Obstacles technique or general strength for about 3 weeks before.

As I participated in the Spartan Trifecta Championship in Sparta, Greece last year, I expected the championship course to be harder than the one I did before, and indeed it was.

Spartan Ultra Race in Morzine takes place on a separate day, so there are no other runners at the course at this time, though unlike the US, where it often takes place on some private land that is dedicated to the race, it shares the course with other users in Morzine and there are mountain bikers, hikers and trail runners around. 

There are multiple aid stations on the route, some only having water, others stuff like bananas, oranges, chips, nuts, and dates. No cups were available – you were expected to bring your own.

Everyone was also given a plastic bag to store their supply – you could access it when you were about 60% through the race, though no external help was allowed.

To be allowed to run the race (any race, not just Ultra) you had to present the printout of the QR code from the “Health Prevention Course” which you got by completing 10min online training. There was also mandatory equipment – 1L hydration capacity, whistle, headlamp of the flashlight, emergency blanket, and blinking red light to attach to a backpack. Those were checked twice – before the start line, and after you exit the transition area for the second loop.

The course was laid down to maximize viewing possibilities, as much as it can be done for the Ultra. You do the long loop, the shortened version of the loop, and the very short part of the loop to get to the finish line, meaning you can pass through the same obstacles anywhere from 1 to 3 times. Each of these loops passes through “the village twice”. The first section, right after the start is rather flat 4km or so run by the river.

The race was stated to be a little shorter than 52 km and some 3100m elevation gain, though my GPS and those of other folks measured about 58 km and some 3500m elevation gain, some 37km for the first long loop, and 20km for the second.

The terrain was brutal with very long uphill sections, sometimes quite steep, and vary long downhill sections too – this is what more than 1000m of elevation difference between the lowest and highest point on the course allow. On the first loop, we visited two over 2000m peaks that dominate the region and had gorgeous views of surrounding mountains, including Mont Blanc.

We had sunny weather during the run so sunburn and overheating were the issue, whereas folks running Beast the next day, which goes through some of the same course had a rainy day and much more muddy and slippery terrain.

In general, that was a mountain trail runner/sky runner race as even with 70+ obstacles running is what you spent most time doing, and penalty loops were not significant. I’ve seen many folks not even trying to do harder obstacles but rather going straight to penalty loops. At least some of those penalty loops were weighted.

Being able to carry heavy shit uphill and downhill is another skill that was important to perform well on this race, as were several heavy carries, which you could not avoid by doing a penalty loop.

In particular, the “double carry” which I also saw on the Beast race in Spartan Trifecta Championship was soul-crushing – you take a 60lb sandbag uphill, trade it for the chain to do an uphill loop with, and then take the sandbag down. Each loop was more than 1km in length and you got to do it twice.

The other creative use of the chains was to have a chain carry to the sled and have extra heavy sled pull, which a lot of people struggled with.

Chains are mean – you can hardly carry them in a comfortable way (all my shoulders ended up bruised) and also you have to pay very close attention to how you grab them, or you can pinch or break your fingers.

I like how Spartan used Terrain for the obstacles – we had to carry a log around a lake and swim with it to cross the lake twice, cross the little pond formed by the waterfall climb out on the net, and climb a long steep net right there in the village to get on another level.

There was the obstacle to traverse the slack line, which was rather problematic for me, both because I am not great with balance, and because we do not have it in the US so I do not train for it.

There were also several differences in how obstacles were put together, in particular instead of monkey bars for Ultra and Beast we got 2 level monkey bars, requiring you to go up and down on them, being a much more than usual challenge to runners.

My first goal for the race was to finish it without injuries and be in a position to do the Super and Sprint runs on Sunday, to complete Trifecta Weekend. Things went reasonably well with Running, though about 6 hours in, still on the first loop, I started to get cramps in the inner tight. It would come in bouts and as I slowed down they would go away, so I could speed up again. Probably I need more training with long technical uphill and downhill runs.

Even though I did not tape my toes or use any kind of anti-friction cream on my feet and the fact I was running with wet feet through most of the race, I avoided losing any toenails or any significant blisters – just a couple of hot spots.

I ate a combination of aid station food (mostly bananas) and water, plus I carried my hydration solution, energy gels, and Spartan salt tablets. At the transitioning area, I also made myself a Kachava smoothie, as I knew it was something I could consume quickly and hold during the run.

Even though I did not have a lot of opportunities to train for grip strength and obstacle technique for some weeks before the race I think I did pretty well. Besides my lack of balance skills, I made silly mistakes – I missed 1 out of three spears – I hit the target but the spear fell out, made some silly mistakes on the ape hanger, multi-rig, and elevated monkey bars on one of the passes.

The obstacles which I had trouble with and which cost me a lot of time and energy were heavy carries – need to get better with that.

Overall this race was much harder than Spartan Ultra in North Carolina – It took me around 6 hours and 50 minutes to complete that, and 6 hours longer, or almost double to complete Spartan Ultra race in Morzine.

The cutoff time for this race was 22:30 at the finish line, which meant 14:30 to 15h to finish the race depending on your start time, which sounds like a lot for a “50k” race but which was quite real – quite a few runners could not finish the race in the allotted time. 

I ended up finishing in 12h:48m, 257 out of 415, and 46 out of 76 in my age group – one of my worst results, though the competitive field here was a lot stronger than your usual neighborhood Spartan Ultra. 

Overall this was a fantastic experience – with the gorgeous and very hard course, as well as a very nice French alpine village setting, which was converted to welcome Spartans over the weekend. We had AirBnB rented right in the village and walked to the Spartan activities as well as great French restaurants – quite a difference from many US Spartan events which often take place in the middle of nowhere.

If you have an opportunity I would surely recommend this race and this venue – I would encourage through to run some other easier Spartan Ultras before or at least some Trail/Skyrunning races with significant elevation gain over technical terrain. 

I surely would love to visit Morzine again sometime as schedule permits, might be also going to the Spartan Beast course I did not have a chance to explore this time around.

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