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Transvulcania 2014
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Their website isn't great, when I sign in I don't get any details either but if I click on the online entry - ultramarathon link it says I'm already registered. That + confirmation email is good enough for me.
Hmmm thanks Shawk. I don't get anything to say that I am already registered if I try and register again. Seems a bit rubbish and they are very slow to respond to enquiries. Will have to wait and see what they come back with. Certainly not going to risk booking travel until i'm happy with the entry!
Has dampened my excitement for the moment but hopefully it will sort itself out.
Hi. Just looking at getting accommodation organised and wondered if anyone could reccomend best place to stay for registration and picking up the bus to the start?
Does anyone know why I can't open the web page for this please?
i fancy a crack at this but it depends when it is, ie children's holidays etc.
thanks
it was working for me a moment ago ? - I am just a little worried though as I have registered and then realised that the race briefing start at 18:00 but I dont actually arrive at las palmas until 18:45 - do you think it will matter that I am not there for it as long as I get there in time to get my race number? I plan to go straight from the airport to get it and then go to the hotel.
My hotel is where the finish is so a bit of a treck for the registration but worht it judt to chill at the end
I am sure race briefing wont be counting people in and out... just hope they dont announce that the course has been reversed at the last minute and you go to the wrong end in the morning
The site isn't working properly for me either. Trying to register the other half and it just crashed. Now when i go back in it says his user name is registered, but when I try and log in get an error. Hm.
Any shoe recommendations from anyone who has done this? Terrain looks interesting!
I have the sort of cold which leaves one too limp to do anything, but too well to sleep, and so am in bed with cats and ipad, surfing aimlessly. This sounds very tempting... 2014 entrants, please post race reports when you're done so I can suck your brains prior to 2015.
Digging this one out becuase it's only a couple of weeks away now. Website regulations mention having valid insurance:
"Participants of Transvulcania 2014 must be licensed members of a sport federation which covers physical injuries or damages during mountain races like Transvulcania in Spain. Being the participant not a holder of such a license, he/she must purchase a one-day federation insurance (see the official Transvulcania’s website) which will be internationally recognized and valid as the license from a sports federation."
Does anybody know anything about this? Communications with the organisers seem to come up against a brick wall and the website is pretty useless so I don't know if it even applies this year. Would hate to arrive and not be allowed to race because of something dumb like this.
Edit: Panic over, just heard back any they assure me it's not required.
Must admit that I hadn't even spotted that before shawk!
Wouldn't have made much difference to me anyway as injury means that I will now be cheering you on from the side. Looking forward to making it a nice holiday instead. Hoping that I might at least be capable of a little light hiking or maybe even jogging by then to make the most f it.
That sucks, but at least it's a nice place to visit. I reckon my chances of completion are low, only been over 15m twice so far this year and I've still got loads of issues with my knee muscles. Assuming I make the start line I'll be taking it very carefully and probably using quite a few of the 18 hours offered!
Good luck and just enjoy the sights and sounds
Pesky knees....
Sorry to jump in on this thread but how did you get on shawk? I fancy this race at some point in the future so would be interesting to hear about your experience.
Just been talking to Mark B . Sounds like if you don,t have trouble with your knees before the race you will by the end!
Ace event, great support, but very tough. 8500m of vertical change (4400 up, 4100 down) will give your legs a good thrashing, especially as first section from sea level to 2200m (over c18km) is on volcanic sand, which must make it one of worlds biggest sand dunes
... It was very hot, apparently gorgeous, but due to heat stroke, I just looked at my feet the whole way around. I'll definitely go back. Bit of a logistical pain to get to though so if you look at it for next year, make a trip of it and stay a few days.
It's definitely one worth doing. Probably a bit harder in reality than it is on paper, it's not very often you climb 2k straight or decend 2400m without much break. That said it's definitely manageable because of the relatively short distance. Heat was the biggest factor for me, when that really kicked in early afternoon concentration was difficult and the battle with nausea began. Mentally the slog up to Muchachos was tougher than I expected, it was visible for quite a while and even once you arrived at the telescopes there was a chunk left to go.
The downhill is a bit of a beast, quite technical and surrounded by dark rocks which are remarkably good at radiating the heat they've soaked up all day. Once down the bottom there is a decent climb up to Los Llanos for the finish, but after 3 hours of downhill this was a welcome change. Support throughout was excellent but the finish was something else, really made you feel special running through town and down the final straight.
As with UTMB races there are inevatable conga lines so if you're after a time you need to make an effort to get away at the start. I was unsure of my knee so held back early on and as a result was often stuck in a line. I'd probably not have gone much faster anyway but it's worth bearing in mind.
Aid stations felt like a long way apart because of the heat, water in bottles quickly became very warm. I wasn't hugely impressed with aid stations, very little in the way of savoury but the fresh fruit was excellent. Coke didn't seem to appear until Muchachos. Getting head dunked with cold water at each one was a life saver.
All in all excellent race and a very pleasant, unspoiled island. I'll post some pics up once I've been through them all.
Ok, ended up doing the race and it deserves a decent write up so here goes....
Pre-race:
1, I was traveling with no intention of running the race. 2, To ensure that I was not drawn into running the race, I did not take my kit with me. 3, I was planning to use the trip to gently ease back in with a couple of short runs after 6 weeks out with injury. This meant that I did have a pair of running shorts, a running top and a pair of trainers (NB 110's) that I had previously used for a muddy park run and figured may be ok for the trails. 4, In my normal abject injury phase, I had managed to pile on a stone in weight through a combination of dodgy food ad too much beer. The night before we were to fly, we stayed the night with my brother as he is closer to the airport and we could then share a taxi in the morning. There was to be 8 of us in the group sharing an apartment and 6 of us had actually entered the race some time before. As we sat around and enjoyed an evening meal, it became apparent that I might be the only one not taking part in the race.... It didn't take long for me to buckle and I was now seriously considering how best to tackle the race. 1, Shorts and shirt - Check 2, Trainers - Check (not exactly ideal but they are designed for trail running so how bad could they be right) 3, Hydration - Hmmmm I was using an Omm 20 pack as my hand luggage, added to which a couple of empty powerade bottles would complete my high-tech hydration solution. - Check 4, Head torch - Oh bugger.... thankfully my brother who was not running said I could borrow his - check 5, Insurance - Someone mentioned specific race insurance but I always travel with insurance that covers me for stupid things so I figured this would cover it - Check 6, Race disclaimer - I only found out about this on the flight due to having no race prep due to no plans to actually run it. Hopefully they would have copies at registration for me to complete. 7, Race nutrition - Hmmmm I figured I'd just pick up a big bag of haribo and peanut m&m's at the airport - Check So as hard as I tried I couldn't find a reason to not run the race. Just take it nice and easy and keep a comfortable effort level and as long as my knee didn't get too painful... I'd still be able to pick up my medal. After a grueling 3 flight journey, we landed at La Palma in the fading evening light. This was my first wake up call. This was definitely a mountain race, a fact that was confirmed as our hire car slowly edged up and up and up and up, heading towards our apartment on the other side of the island. Lots of wide eyes and talk of how long it might take to run to the top given that it had taken about half an hour to drive it!! The next day was the vertical kilometre so a good opportunity to check out the event and I even managed to get photo with Kilian(no idea what happened to the formatting in last post)
on to....
Race Day:
Thanks to not having changed the time on my phone, my alarm woke me at 1:30 so there I was sitting the worst prepared for any race had ever been, wondering what the hell I was doing.
We arrived at the start with plenty of time which was in hindsight a bad idea, it was blowing a hooley and freezing cold. We had a couple of hours to kill and it really was cold with people huddled in any available shelter desperately trying to stay warm. Everyone was putting on every single thing that they could find in their drop bag to stay warm. We ended up taking shelter in a spiky bush which was actually welcome relief from the wind.
A couple of nervous hours passed as we joked and tried to make light of the situation. Eventually someone noticed that we were now alone and the refugee camp had disappeared.
As we headed to the start line we were looking forward to actually warming up.
The start of the race was carnage and I have to admit that I hated the first couple of hours, not because of the steep sandy incline but rather the crowds and sitting in a big dust cloud. It wasn't until it started getting light and the crowds started easing a little around me that I started to appreciate the draw of the event. As I looked back towards the start, I could see that we were now above the clouds and it was a very special feeling.
For a while I really started to enjoy the race and as I hadn't been running for several weeks, it was fantastic to be able to enjoy running in such fantastic surroundings. My enjoyment continued for several hours and I didn't care about my time or my position... I was just happy to be running and hiking whilst looking around at the scenery.
Eventually my bubble burst and my lack of preparation caught up with me.
The downhill section is tough, really tough! You spend so long climbing and looking forward to the downhill section only to find that when it arrives, the climbs weren't actually that bad after all. My trainers were the worst choice ever (not really a choice) and on the long decent they really started to hamper me. After a while, every single footstrike was agony. To be honest, I have never known so much pain in an ultra but I carried on gingerly towards my medal.
Post Race thoughts:
1, This really is a tough race but the length makes it manageable.
2, The terrain is unlike anything you will see back home and difficult to train for.
3, Your feet will hurt (even more so if you wear stupid trainers)
4, The crowd support is great but the crowds within the race are frustrating.
5, It could be hot.
This race seems to keep coming up as a bucket list race and it's easy to forget that it has only been run since 2009, however I will take special memories and views from the race.... just maybe I would like to forget the pain over the last 15 miles.
Would I run it again? The resounding opinion within our group was 100% never again straight afterwards but I am starting to think that maybe doing it properly prepared and fit would be good
Congrats on the finish WR. I pondered if I'd run it again too and am currently in the no camp. I think I'd get more from taking a training week there and hitting the trails at leisure without all the crowds. I'm not sure what time you'd need to aim for to lose the in-race crowding, but I reckon it would be pretty sharp. Dunno where you finished but I was 14:08 and was bumping into lines all the way to the beach - I reckon 60-90 mins quicker would have been just as busy as that would be peak marathon time and I can't see me ever getting much quicker than that.
I think mid-packers in these big field international races have to accept it's a nice day out and forget about position and time as much as possible.
Well done to you too shawk. I fumbled through in 15:31 but I think around 11-12 hours may be a good time for me if properly prepared. Not sure I would want to try and go any quicker than that as am always trying to protect my weak ankle on such technical terrain. (normally I run anything technical with a fairly rigid ankle brace that prevents me from turning it but had to do without it on the day)
The congestion really was a big downer for me and I doubt it would have been much different unless running towards the front end of the race.
I found some of the organisation a little odd and in particular I felt sorry for those at the front of the shorter races having to try and fight their way through the massive ultra field!
The bag collection was also a complete mystery and I had to ask several people before I was pointed in the right direction. I was however very grateful to the lady who tended to my badly blistered feet.
I would definitely return for a training week to enjoy some amazing trail running without the crowds.
A few pics I took:
If you look for the very last head torch right at the back you can probably see me lol
Great pics... amazing views above the cloud line
Well done guys, sounds incredibly tough!
WR, well pleased you managed it - I was gutted when I heard from one of your club mates (last week!) you were injured and not running it!
Thanks Ultra Shaz. Was half expecting to see you as you normally appear somewhere in most of my races
Enjoyed the experience but not sure it was my best idea as need to get my knee sorted out properly. NDW100 is next but probably won't run it unless I can get back to some kind of sensible training as don't fancy struggling on that one.
What have you got on this year?
Ha ha, yeah I'm afraid that one isn't on my bucket list - as you know I don't really do hot and steep!
Next up SDW100, hoping my knees will cope as they were a bit stroppy on SDW50 last month... then back to my normal habitat for a road marathon (Chester) in Oct.
Will see how the 100 goes before deciding on any more long 'uns
Great, glad to hear you are having another crack at the 100.
We are moving down just off the South Downs soon so if you are heading down for recce runs or racing, let me know. Will be too late for this time round but give me a shout if you plan on heading that way in the future.
Best of luck and looking forward to following your progress.