Mont Blanc Ultra and Nick Kaiser

As you may know the Mont Blanc Ultra's start Friday. What I didn't know about these races is that there are actually 4 races going on. You can learn about these races here. The distances for these four races run from 98K up to 220K.

The most well known of these races at least by me was the UTMB at 166K. This is the race that several American ultra runners have participated in. You can see a good visual of the UTMB here.  There is really good YouTube flyover of the UTMB route here.

Nick has chosen to the CCC race which has the following stats:

CCC®

    * 98 km distance
    * 5.600 metres elevation gain
    * 26 hours: maximum complete time
    * Individual competition in semi-autonomy
    * 2008 statistics: 2,033 runners at the start – 1,318 finishers

It is amazing to me how many people do these races. There are over 5000 participants in the four races! In the last few years, like many ultra races, just getting a spot into the race became a challenge and the organizers decided to have qualifying events. The H.U.R.T. 100 is a qualifying event for the UTMB races.

Good luck Nick. Save some energy for the races you have back home here. If I recall you have a couple of triathlons coming up. There is this race over in Kona I heard you got a spot for and I heard you also have a race over on Maui in late October. Both are considered World Championships. 🙂

Aloha,
Bob