To Beat the Sun
Each year, a group of athletes from around the world assemble in the Alps to race 140K around the iconic Mont Blanc Massif. But their true adversary isn’t so much each other, or even the thousands of feet of elevation or knee-deep snow-capped mountain pea
Each year on the summer solst ice, teams from around the world comprised of recreational and elite runners descend upon t he French Alpine town of Chamonix. The eight teams representing every corner of the globe start at dawn, racing against each other around the iconic Mont Blanc. The 140-kilometre relay covers three countries through extraordinary mountain terrain. But the ultimate goal for every team is to finish before the sun sets.
Sitting near the back, I watched the heads of my colleagues swaying back and forth as our minibus struggled up the mountain road. Our group of international journalists were on our way to a lagoon on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc Massif in the Alps. Our day had started at 5:44 a.m. in Chamonix, France – sunrise on June 21, the summer solstice. The drive through the 11.6-kilometre tunnel beneath the mountain range had lulled many of the reporters to sleep.
We’d started the longest day of the year at Chamonix’s town square, watching the start of Asics Beat The Sun, a 12-leg, 140.1-kilometre relay race around the massif. They traverse the mountain range that straddles three countries: France, Italy and Switzerland, which includes 8,850 m of climbing. The course also covers much of the same terrain of another celebrated trail race, the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc ( utmb). It’s a life-changing day for eight teams from around the world, comprised of three amateur runners and three Asics sponsored pros. It’s a novel format, mixing mere mortals on teams with the likes of marathoning greats Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. The teams representing the Americas, Northern, Central and Southern Europe, East Asia and the Oceania-Pacific region race against each other, but their primary goal is to literally beat the falling sun, finishing where they started after circumnavigating the mountain range. They have 15 hours, 41 minutes and 35 seconds to complete the course and arrive in Chamonix by 9:27 p.m. In the two other incarnations of Beat The Sun only one team had ever accomplished that feat, and they did it by one second.
When we arrived at the edge of a lagoon, a local guide took us for a run through the large open valley, lorded over by the jagged Aiguille des Glaciers directly in front of us. Mussolini’s air force once attempted to use the long and straight dirt path cutting through the valley as a landing strip during the Second World War, but it was too difficult for planes to land. After zig-zagging up a steep incline we first reached the ruins of an outpost and prison used by the Italians during the war. On the meadow shelf 50 m above rests the Rifugio Elisabetta, a respite for hikers and climbers, sitting at 7,200 feet. Getting there was a slog. The mountain range was covered with deep snow. It made for a tough few hundred metres of running, but paled in comparison to what the racers had to battle on this, the eighth and longest stage of the relay – 19k with two steep climbs and thrilling descents. When we reached the rifugio, our guide turned to us and said nonchalantly, “about 10 years ago, an avalanche tore the roof right off this building.”
We waited for the racers, in particular Ryan Hall. The fastest American marathoner in history had recently retired. At the pre-race meeting, Hall, by nature relaxed and affable, chatted about how he’d shifted his focus from staying lean and running big mileage to putting on bulk and strength training. He admitted that he’d only really started running again recently after months off in preparation for this event. But because of his stature as one of the great distance runners of the last decade, he was assigned the meatiest legs. The once scrawny California kid now loped past us, thrusting his muscular arms forward as he attempted to maintain some modicum of grace up the snowy trail. He was in shorts and the bright orange race shirt that said “Americas 2” across his broad chest and his new, post-running-career signature trucker hat. After Hall crested the first portion of the climb and disappeared up the mountain, we saw a lean figure in the red “Americas 1” shirt closing in, moving fast. It was Canadian David Le Porho, no slouch himself with a 2:19 marathon PB. But unlike Hall, Le Porho trains around his day job in the plastics industry.
Last year at Beat The Sun Le Porho had a breakthrough, and was arguably the strongest runner at the event. “My training as a snowshoe racer helps on this terrain,” he would later tell me. Le Porho picked it up after emigrating from France to Montreal over a decade ago and has since become a two-time champion. Le Porho revealed before the race that he was excited to compete against Hall and had always been a fan. Somewhere deep in the mountains after Le Porho sailed by us, he caught up with Hall. They ran together for about two kilometres as the weather worsened. It began to rain and the wind blew so hard that both runners stopped to put on their jackets. They carried on together, exchanging few words. Le Porho realized Hall was fatigued, falling back, so he carried on alone. He would
beat the fastest North American marathoner in history to the next exchange by over 10 minutes.
The terrain around the Mont Blanc Massif varies wildly, from road, to gravel, to wide-open fields, then singletrack trails. Significant portions are run in the rugged alpine, above the tree line, where basic scrambling and climbing skills are needed. This year also saw the most remaining snow for the event on the mountains, meaning runners had to battle certain sections running knee-deep in the white stuff. The third leg even required mountaineering equipment, running with an ice axe in crampons. On the backside of the mountain, they clipped into to a safety line and slid down the snow-covered peak. Le Porho and Hall did battle on this leg as well, meaning the two faced off on the two toughest sections of the entire relay.
The other Canadian involved in the race was Barrie, Ont. amateur runner Bill Steinberg. He was training for the Boston Marathon last winter when he found himself watching a lot of trail videos online about utmb by filmmaker Billy Yang to snap himself out of the dog days of winter training. It was serendipitous, because the next day Facebook must have pulled that data and served up the callout for Beat The Sun on Steinberg’s feed. He decided to apply. Steinberg only got into running at age 38, but was now a veteran of many marathons. Each summer he’d go out and do a 50k trail race to get off the roads, but never thought he’d get the chance to race around Mont Blanc one day.
In April, Steinberg received the email from the Beat The Sun organizers just as he was crossing the border during his drive to Boston. Out of the over 30,000 worldwide applicants, he’d been selected for the vetting process to see if he could contribute to an Americas team. “It said that I had 48 hours to confirm that I could commit to the training and take the time off to come to the Alps.” He immediately made a phone call. “I tracked down my boss on the Saturday and said, “I know I’m just starting my vacation, but we need to talk about me
taking another vacation.” He sat in his hotel the night before the Boston Marathon filling out the Beat The Sun confirmation form, which required that he prove his fitness with past results, and fill out a profile to begin the 16-week training. “It was actually a good way to keep my head out of Boston,” he laughed. “Luckily, I didn’t think about Beat The Sun while running Boston; that could have been daunting.”
Andrew Kastor, head coach at Mammoth Track Club and husband/coach of Olympic silver medallist Deena Kastor, was brought on for training guidance leading up to Beat The Sun. “I was actually in contact with Andrew quite a bit after Boston,” says Steinberg. “I was trying to figure out how to properly train without injuring myself, and prepare for the mountains.” Kastor said that his endurance was fine and just needed to be maintained, but that he needed to figure out a way to work on his hill strength. Steinberg lives in Barrie in order to be close to his kids, but commutes four hours daily to Toronto, where he works in communications with the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. Somehow, he finds the time to tuck in significant runs, and thankfully his girlfriend lives in Hamilton, right next to the Niagara Escarpment, which was perfect for big trail sessions. “For my last training run two days before f lying to Europe, I ran the big hill on the Sulphur Springs course 14 times.” Steinberg was as ready as he could be.
The 48-year-old Steinberg showed up in Chamonix a week ahead of time for their mandatory training camp. There he was assigned leg five, a mostly gravel road 6k ascent on the Swiss side of the Alps, followed by an all-out rush down the hill for seven more kilometres. He also ran the second last leg of the race, a super-fast downhill singletrack course. “It’s mostly root and rock, which is a lot like the trails in southern Ontario, so I was used to that.” There was also a harsh 90-degree turn at a cliff. “It was about a 50-foot drop-off. I got to practice making the turn during our training camp. It is sort of like the Escarpment. We’re lucky to have some great trails in Ontario. Also, there was a spotter there to catch you, just in case,” Steinberg recalled after the race. “The toughest section for me was, by far, the very last section of my day,” Steinberg said. “The climb to Bellevue [during leg 11] included a singletrack trail that switch-backed up the mountain dozens of times through the forest.” Steinberg compares it to trail conditions in parts of the Bruce Trail or Killarney Provincial Park after a
good day of raining. “The sustained steep ascent was like nothing I had ever faced before; it was a really humbling part of the race for me.”
Weeks after the race, Steinberg looked back on the event, which clearly altered how he now approaches running. “Firstly, I have a sense of what it might be like to be a professional athlete,” he said after spending a long day immersed in an environment with Asics’s global elite stable. But it was his fellow amateur teammates who affected him most. “The feeling of camaraderie and community was truly affirming,” he said back at his day job in Toronto. “As is often the way, running brought together people from really different backgrounds, different countries, different interests and created a point of contact to bring us all together.” Inspired by the experience, Steinberg has increased his mileage and committed to a more disciplined strength training program. “Maybe there still are a few PBs in my aging legs,” he joked. That may indeed be the case, as he won the Creemore Vertical Challenge 50k a few weeks after returning to Canada. “Before I went to Chamonix, I really loved running. Coming home, I love running more because of the experience.”
“Whenthe rifugio,we reachedour guide turned to us and said nonchalantly, ‘about 10 years ago, an avalanche tore the roof right off this building.’”