Cool Alsace morning, vineyards still in shadow. The first kilometre is a lie — flat, fast, everyone feeling like a hero. Your heart rate spikes to 160 before the real climbing even starts. It always does.
Five hundred metres of vert stacked into the first stretch, then a high, rolling traverse under the abbey. This is where a trail race sorts itself out — not on the steep pitches, but on the patience of the runnable climb.
Notice the heart rate settle into the 150s. That's the sound of someone who's done this before.
A long plunge back to the valley — nearly 450 metres down. Free speed, if your quads are willing to spend it. The cruel arithmetic of trail: everything you descend, you'll pay for. The roof of the race is still ahead.
The second big climb is the honest one — back up to the highest ground of the course, legs already 25 km deep. This is the section that doesn't show on a finish-line photo but decides the whole thing.
From the roof it's a long, rolling descent back toward the finish — legs against gravity for the better part of two hours. The pace lifts, the heart rate drifts, and somewhere in there the race stops being about climbing and starts being about holding on.