Sunday, 10 a.m.: when my world becomes simple again

In January, the Tor des Géants surprised me. Newsletter #04/2026, right at the top: the 2025 start in Courmayeur, with me in the middle, wearing bib 4. The kind of expression you only have when you do not yet know what the next 78 hours have in store.

The TORX newsletter of 29 January 2026: bib 4, right at the top of the cover photo.

At work, everything was falling apart. Then I saw this photograph, and the fire was back immediately. Back to the Aosta Valley, and this time properly: train more than ever.

Optimist that I am, I always believe in the best. Anyone who has spent three days on the move knows that every low is followed by another high. That applies beyond the mountains.

That was the plan in January.

From eight to three

My company shrank from eight people to three this year. In stages rather than overnight, and everyone had good reasons. What remained were the projects, customers and responsibility. Most of that responsibility now rests with me. Customer projects by day; everything else at night.

The watch does not lie. Since mid-March, my average bedtime has been 1:22 a.m., with 5:55 hours of sleep a night. For half a year. Not a number to boast about before a 330-kilometre race. But it is the number.

I kept running, just not as planned in January. Often early, before opening the laptop, because I have learned that a 6 a.m. session happens and a 6 p.m. session probably does not.

At the end of June, I cancelled a start at Val d’Aran, a race I had looked forward to. I had become dizzy on an easy Tuesday run. Fitness was not the problem; recovery was. This time, I needed the red STOP sign from my talks to challenge my own plan rather than a negative thought spiral.

If only I had one more day

Remember the night before a school exam? One more day to study and you would be ready. That is exactly how this week feels. Except in your mid-forties, you know one more day would not have been enough anyway. Life is what it is.

#lifeworktrailbalance has been my hashtag for years. This year it has been very unbalanced. Now I work with what I have.

What I can control

Last year, as I later put it, I brought a knife to a gunfight: carried everything myself, mixed everything myself, support at six points while others had crews at every hut. This year, I have the right weapon. My father, whose birthday fell during last year’s race, will meet me at 15 points instead of six. The packages have been calculated and recalculated. I know where I will sleep, and where I will not. This year, my pack only needs to get me to the next stop, not the next Life Base. Whether I can use that weapon well, I will only know at the finish.

What I lack is the training weeks I had planned, and sleep. I cannot catch up by Sunday. What I do have is desire. Real desire. More than I have had time for this year.

Sunday, 10 a.m.

Front row, Sunday, 10 a.m. That is how 2025 began, and how this year begins again.

Sunday, 13 September, 10 a.m., Courmayeur. Something I have looked forward to for weeks will happen: my world becomes simple.

No Claude, no Codex, no company to-do lists. No Teams chat, no midnight merge. Just running, eating and little sleep. And the little-sleep part, well, I am used to that this year.

It sounds absurd: three days with nothing to worry about except the next aid station, the next pass and Dad’s next package. 330 kilometres, 24,000 metres of climbing, yet the simplest task I have had in six months. The route is marked, the destination is Courmayeur, and nobody calls in between.

I want to enjoy it. Without pressure. Yes, I have goals, but on Sunday I will run them rather than calculate them.

I still take it seriously. I will give my best — the best available this year, with these legs and this sleep balance. I know fairly well what has been missing this year: above all, sleep and less stress. But I have gained one race and another year of experience, and I am honestly looking forward to simply running. Let’s see whether that counts for more than an uninterrupted block of training.

If you want to follow along, live tracking starts on Sunday. If all goes well, I will be back in Courmayeur on Wednesday, three days and three nights later. Then my world becomes complicated again. But that is Wednesday’s problem.