Chamonix- TDS 75 mile Ultramarathon Race

Hayden’s TDS race and UTMB weekend

What is TDS?

We were able to get things worked out with a Visa  and get back to Chamonix for the race Hayden had been training for, TDS. TDS is a 120km, 75 mile race with 24,000ft of elevation gain in the Alps that starts in Courmeyer, Italy and goes throughout the Alps in Italy and France and ends in Chamonix, France. It is known for being the hardest and most technical race in the UTMB series. The UTMB series contains four races. OCC (50k), CCC(100k, the one Hayden won last year), TDS(120km. 75 miles), and UTMB (100 miles). 

Who came

Checking out the Ice Caves at Mer de Glace

Levi (Hayden's brother) ended up being able to be there along with a lot of our other friends that we have met throughout the years that are involved in ultra running. My parents came to watch the race and help crew which was super fun!

Crosby and his cousins!

This time we left Crosby home because we would only be there 10 days and last time, having a time change of 8 hrs took him about a week to get used to. So we’d get there, and by the time Crosby would adjust to the time change, it would be time to go home. Luckily, my wonderful older sister and mother-in-law jumped in and offered their help. It was probably a good thing he was home because he ended up getting sick and had a tooth come in. He had a good time with his cousins and Grandma and we were able to have a nice time out there as well. We were sure excited to see him though!

The line kept going!!

Update:  Oh, the travel Woes!!! There was super bad thunderstorms in Chicago where our last layover was and our flight

got canceled, so we had to fly out the next morning. There were tons of people stranded in the airport, so it was a bit crazy. We grabbed a hotel in Chicago for the night. The silver lining was that it would have really been awful for a teething baby to deal with that long of a delay, so it was a blessing he was home with his Grandma. We also have beaten a bunch of levels on Candy Crush with all of the extra time we had.

The Atmosphere

Imagine going to Disneyland on a holiday weekend and that is what Chamonix is like during the whole UTMB weekend. Quite a drastic change from when we lived there earlier in the summer. You would get onto the trails and there would be 100s of runners just training and enjoying the trails. You would go into downtown and the streets were so packed that it was hard to get through. Not to mention, Hayden is too popular over in Europe, and being the winner of CCC last year, so many people wanted his picture and wanted to talk to him. Walking down the street took twice as long haha!! It was pretty cool to see that though! There were a lot of signings, dinners, and media interviews that Hayden was involved in with his sponsors HOKA ONE ONE, NATHAN, UNIVED, and others. Not only is this one of the biggest races in the world, but it is one of the best races for exposure with brands. 

Now what you've all been waiting for.....The Race Recap!

               TDS!!

This was the first race I have crewed for Hayden since Crosby was born and I was excited to be a big part of it again. Crewing is fun because you feel like you are a big part of their success and you get to see parts of the course no one else gets to. It can be a bit long sometimes as you are spending lots of time waiting around. My parents, Levi, and I were the ones crewing this day. Things got started in Courmeyeur with a very intense start. My mom said that it made her feel like she wanted to jump in and race even though she isn't a long distance runner haha! In Europe, the races including the start and finish line are pretty intense and hyped up. It is cool to see so many people get excited about a race.

Bourg St Maurice

 Hayden left and then we left to go drive through the mountains in Courmeyeur, Italy to the next aid station in  Bourg St. Maurice, France, which was about 50k into the race. Hayden was in great shape, but deep down in my gut I felt something might go wrong. He had been dealing with some gluteus medius pain off and on for the last 2 months. I was hoping that he would be ok and he told me he hadn't felt it in a week. We kept track of him and he was sitting in top 3 running with Dylan Bowman and Dmitry Mityaev from Russia. Good! He's ok and feeling good!

We were waiting at Bourg St. Maurice for Hayden and the 1st place guy came in, then the 2nd, 3rd....15th. I knew something was wrong. Finally, Hayden came hobbling in around 16th place. He was clearly hurting and he said he had to walk the steep downhill (5,000ft drop) into Bourg St. Maurice because his gluteus medius locked up on him. He was trying to decide whether to continue the remaining 45 miles of the race or not. Hayden had never DNF'd (did not finish) and he didn't want to. He talked to me, Robbie, and Levi and we all decided it would be better to stop because clearly he was really hurt.
In races we never fail but we learn and become better athletes! This was one of those learning races where Hayden learned to not race when injured and to maybe do less 100k+ races a year. It all comes down to choosing how we react. We can get down on ourselves or we patch up an injury, learn and move on to the next race. He could've been really upset because we flew all the way back out to Europe to run, but instead he decided to learn from the race and then enjoy the time that him and I could spend alone up in the beautiful mountains of Chamonix.

Tune in next Monday for a recap of my first road half marathon, Cedar City Half. 

Sweden and Norway

            NORWAY





                 and


            SWEDEN






 Our last stop on our trip through Europe ended up being Norway and Sweden. Visiting Sweden has always been a dream of mine. I told Hayden that Sweden was in my top 5 countries that I dreamed about visiting. So, Hayden being the amazing husband he is, made it happen. He got invited to the Fjall Marathon race and we decided to go! Hayden's parents also decided to join us and we were so happy and excited to see them as it had been a few months since we had seen family. We are pretty close with both his family and my family, so having them come was great!

Trondheim, Norway

We flew from Geneva to Trodheim, Norway and spent our first day in Trondheim. Trondheim was probably my favorite city that we visited in our travels. It was what I pictured it to be with the colored houses and the beautiful fjords. It reminded me a lot of Anchorage, Alaska. It was a nice city and had some cool things, but it wasn't super touristy and had a nice, laid-back feel.

A nice surprise was the Nidros Cathedral which was originally built in 1000 A.D.
We also enjoyed watching people try to take the bike lift up to the top of the hill.

Trillevalen, Sweden
After a day in Trondheim we picked Hayden's parents up at the airport and we were very excited to see them!
We then drove to Trillevalan, Sweden which was a 2 hour drive.
The race put us up in a place that was near the start line and close to trails and fed us all meals. It was nice because Sweden is actually really expensive. We really enjoyed the lodging because a lot of the other racers and volunteers were staying there and we got to make friends with some amazing Swedish people. We really loved the people there, they were very nice and spoke great English which made communicating a lot easier.
Some of the activities we did were:
1. going to the lake- Sweden is know for it's beautiful lakes and we were able to go enjoy a few of them.

2. Trail running with Hayden. We had someone to babysit Crosby, so that was fantasitc! It was nice to go run together and Hayden's parents hadn't seen Crosby for a long time, so the tradeoff was good!

3. The adventure park in Norway- this was about a 1hr drive and one of our favorite things. It big and small zip lines, climbing, a ropes course, and canoeing. It was beautiful and something I would definitely recommend. I also overcame my fear of rock climbing and heights!

4. The Fjall Half marathon, VK, and 7k.

Hayden and I raced all 3 races and Hayden's mom and dad and Crosby(carried in a pack) did just the 7k.  Hayden won the VK and took 3rd in the Half marathon and I was 5th in the VK and 6th in the half marathon. The half marathon course was so beautiful, but way different than anything that Hayden or I had ever run. A lot of the race goes through a swamp area and the ground was very spongy and muddy. They even said this was a dry year!! We enjoyed it and had a good time. 

 

This was my first VK (3 mile race with 3000ft+ elevation gain) and I really loved it. 

The true hero and champ for the weekend was Hayden's dad. He had never done a race before and we talked him into doing this one. This one was probably a little bit intense to start on, but he made it and did well! He was not liking us at all the first half which was climbing over 1500ft  for 3 miles. After we hit the top and started going downhill, Hayden's dad took off and left us all chasing after him. He ran the last 1.5 miles and finished his first race ever. We are so proud of dad Hawks for doing it with only 4 days of training! Hopefully we didn't ruin him forever on trail races. (haha)

We loved our time in Sweden and Norway and want to thank everyone that made it possible for us to go there!

Headed Home....a little early

I haven't posted in a while because things got crazy and we have been in and out of Wifi the last few weeks. We have been traveling and enjoying Europe for the past 3 months with Hayden’s running. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to travel like we’ve always wanted to. When Hayden and I first got married, we talked about this dream of ours but weren’t sure if it was really possible. But luckily, running is Hayden’s job and we do some online work as well while we are away!

Visa Problems
However, recently we hit a bump in the road. Being from the US, Europe doesn't require anything but a passport to stay in the country. We had heard that we had 90 days, but we thought we had 90 in France, 90 in Slovakia, 90 in Sweden, or in other words, 90 days in each European country. It turns out that we only have 90 days in the whole Schengen area altogether which is almost every country in the European Union except for a few countries. We tried to file for a tourist extension for 30 days so that Hayden could run the UTMB weekend and me the Jungfrau marathon but the process is rather arduous and we have to go back to the states to complete it. It would require traveling to the Embassy in the US in Los Angeles, waiting for an appointment and then only having a 50 percent chance of getting a tourist visa extension because we already stayed in Europe for 90 days. We are not allowed back in until November. If we overstayed, we could get fined or possibly banned from Europe, so it's not worth risking it.

Update: Hayden’s sponsor HOKA ONE ONE is trying to help Hayden get a short work visa to get back for UTMB weekend, so it looks like we will be back there! I still have about a week before my 90 days is up so I can go back with him!

Needless to say, we are coming home and now home It's been a long time so we are excited to be back but also a little sad because Europe has been fun!

Delayed Flights

On our travels back home, we had quite an adventure, but what is travel without a few airplane delays.  We were flying out of Trondheim, Norway to come home and we got there with plenty of time to check in and also to figure out our stroller and car seat that the airline lost the week prior. They are going to compensate us, so that’s good! If dealing with no stroller wasn’t enough, our flight got delayed by 5.5 hours. They said the plane had a very small dent in the nose and that they had to fly in their engineer from Amsterdam. He got there about 5pm (5 hours later), looked at the plane for 2 minutes and said that they were good to go. So we flew into Amsterdam, Netherlands, but we missed our connecting flight to the United States. The airline didn't have any more flights going out until the next day to the U.S. so they put us up in a pretty nice hotel and gave us meal vouchers. It was inconvenient and hard to travel two days, especially with an almost 1 year old, but we did get to CHECK ANOTHER COUNTRY OFF OUR LIST!! Amsterdam was busy but really nice near the outskirts. We finally made it home late the next night and in time for my dad's birthday the night before and Crosby's birthday the next day!











Crosby's Birthday
Crosby turned 1 and we had a fun time with family! He got a new swing which he wants to go in all the time from Grandma and Grandpa, a walker from my sister and some other fun presents. We went to the lake and played in the sand (his favorite thing) with cousins and had some birthday cupcakes!

What did we gain from our travels:

1. Europe is a nice place with great people and we have made great friends.

Our favorite "step-Grandma" Fran!

2. There are so many beautiful countries and places in the world with so much to offer. We saw so many diverse places from






the Swiss and French Alps

to the cities of Budapest and Vienna,















to the rolling hills of Sweden,














the Fjords of Norway,











the majestic Dolamites in Italy

and the high Tatra mountains of Slovakia.













3. European racing is full of passionate people that love their endurance sports and it is so fun to be a part of it. We were in France during the Tour de France and although we didn’t watch it, there was a lot of excitement about it. The ultra marathon races are these huge events as well and very serious and professional.

4. Training for the Ultras is great out here, but the best training happens in your own home in a stable environment. It is easier to recover, not over-race, and feel at peace in your own environment and in your own bed. We did learn how to run technical European trails and really enjoyed the European style of racing! Hayden came home with all wins and one 3rd place! Pretty successful summer for him!

5.  I have the best husband in the world. He is so supportive, loving, and a great dad. Our little boy absolutely loves his dad and I do to! I don't know what life would be like without Hayden.

6. Living abroad with a baby was a great, rewarding, and sometimes difficult experience. It will be so fun to show Crosby the countries he’s visited when he’s older and understands. With a baby people like to tell you how cute your baby is and are nicer to you.







It’s led to some conversations with strangers as well. We would always try to find an activity for Crosby to do and we found the local park or a big open grass field was his favorite. We also met some great friends, the Hawkers who

have a little one as well. They showed us the ropes on how to travel with a little one. The hardest part was moving around and flying back with a baby. It would take Crosby a few days to settle into each new place, but we were blessed with a champion sleeper!












7. We are part of the LDS religion and would always try to find a church to go to. The closest was usually 1+ hour away, but it was amazing how the church is the same in Europe as it is in our hometown!


8. Last of all, Europe doesn't have any Mexican food and their attempt at it isn't great! That was our first stop on the way home and oh it was soooo good!!


Keep looking for more posts because we aren't done traveling yet and there is some great stuff in our own backyard in Utah!

Tata and Budapest Hungary

As part of the throwback thursday to past places, I am talking about our day in Tata and Budapest. We decided to break up the drive to Slovakia and take a slight detour to the country of Hungary. Breaking up the trip is always better for Crosby anyway.


Tata

On our way to Budapest, I fell asleep with Crosby in the back. We were still both severely jet-lagged after only having been off of the plane to Europe for one full day. Suddenly, I woke up to the slight jerk of the car as we were getting off the highway. I thought, "Wow! What a short drive!" But as I looked at the signs, we were going into a town called Tata.

I asked Hayden why we were stopping here and he told me that this little small town was where our friend Szogi Istvan Daniel grew up and that he wanted to see it. We met him at Southern Utah University where both my husband and I ran track and field. Unfortunately he was still in the United States when we were here, but we sent him lots of videos and pictures! It was such a charming town and we really got the experience of being in the culture. We stopped and ate lunch and let Crosby move around at a park by the lake. It was a really nice place and is worth a visit!






Budapest

This was one city on our bucket list of places to see. After our lunch break at Tata, we headed to Budapest. Like any big city, it was full of one way streets, tourists, and crazy drivers. However, it was such a breathtaking city! It was clean, had a big river in the center, and all the sites you see in the pictures. I went on a run along the river and then ran up Gellert Hill to see the view of the city. It was amazing and a great way to see a better view of Budapest. We then went to a restaurant with Persian food and it was really good. Persian food has a lot of lamb, rice, and spices.











We watched the sun set over the bridge and
then set off to bed ready to finish the drive to Slovakia the next day!

Haut Jura Saint Claude and the Lac Blanc trail in Chamonix

Haut Jura Saint Claude, France

Last Friday we went to a small place called Haut Jura Saint Claude, France. It was about a 2 hour drive from Chamonix, so not too long of a drive. We went there for Hayden to run a race called UTTJ to get the 5 points he needed for UTMB. It was a 2 day stage race (110km and 6500+m elevation gain). The race was very well done, had a nice laid back atmosphere and the mountains were very beautiful!










While Hayden raced, Crosby and I waited for him to finish and went to check out the town. While exploring, we bumped into this beautiful church. Across from the church, there was a park that we spent a lot of time at. We played, walked around, played some more, got some lunch, and slept while we waited for dad to finish the UTTJ race. Such is the life of an ultra runners wife!












The town was an old diamond mining town and was famous for their handmade pipes. It was very hot during the day as well and the town had a backcountry hometown feel to it.

As is tradition in the Hawks family, we ran into our share of travel problems. We decided to book a hotel online before we left so that we didn't have to worry about it when we got there. After searching for about an hour to find the place and finally finding a person that somewhat understood English, we found our hotel. But, the windows were dark an. We tried calling them, no answer. Knocking, no answer. Waiting, nothing! So 200 euros gone and we were searching for another hotel, which luckily we found just in time for Crosby's bedtime. Quick tip: In a small town in other countries, it's a better idea to wait until you are there to book a hotel.

Lac Blanc 

The views!

Now to the Trails part of the travel. Chamonix is known for its amazing running and hiking trails. This week I'm going to highlight the trail up to Lac Blanc. I ran there from the Plan Praz lift, then to La Flagere, and finally to Lac Blanc and back for a long run totaling 14 miles with 6,000 ft of elevation gain.






The other way to get up there is to take the La Flagere lift and then hike about 2 pretty steep miles. Even the hike from the lift is not for the faint of heart. It was probably the most stunning place I've seen in Chamonix so far and my favorite. The lake is so clear and beautiful and the run to the top was well worth it.

The La Flagere Cross