Trail des Aiguilles Rouges 2011... the summer has ended

Trail des Aiguilles Rouges 2011... the summer has ended!!!

This last weekend I raced the last competition of the 2011 summer. The amazing and always beautiful (and very hard too) Trail des Aiguilles Rouges. 50km and 4000m+ in the Chamonix Valley, facing the Mont Blanc.

The race went well and finally I can say that I finished a race with a 'smile' in my face over this last year. After the 6000D and the UTMB deceptions, I wanted to end this summer season feeling ok during a race and being happy with my performance.

Like I said, i had the smile during the 8h18m that took me to finish the Trail des Aiguilles Rouges 2011. But in terms of performance, i think I was too precautious... I feel that I should have done better, that I should have pushed harder from the beggining, and not wait till the 17km to attack.

At the end I finished 37th with the same time as my friend Christophe Rousset.

If I look back to this summer season, it's hard to see where I've made some mistakes. This was probably the summer that I've trainned the most (110.000m+ & 260 hours), but also the one where I respected exaclty my "resting" periods. I never trainned so much downhill running like this year, but this is still my handicap.

All these things have to be considered for next year....

Now the summer is finished and it's time to start preparing the skis..... because a very interesting ski mountaineering season is approching fast :-) !!!!!!

Finally a special thanks to Amaury for all the trainning advices and to Corinne & Icebraker for the clothes ;-)