 That was the hardest race I have ever, ever done. This is the first running of the Val d'Aran 100 by UTMB. In true UTMB style, the start finish line is right next to a little quaint village church. It's very small, everything is compacted into a few meters. So registration and bib collection are literally 50 meters that way beyond the start finish line. There is an information point just here and then we have the presentation area just in front of me here. So this is pretty much the hub of all the activity here in Valleja, which is where the 100 mile race begins in less than seven hours. We're in 20 minutes before race starts and I'm just going to hand my bag into this. This is a bag that gets picked up at about 100k I think into the race. Just spare stuff and food and things like that that I might need. It's really, really hot so we've got to keep cool. I'm very nervous, really nervous I have to say. By UTMB, 10,000 meters of a cent, we've got 48 hours in which to do it. I'm really nervous about this one, wish me luck. So this is what you find in UTMB races, we're only four and a half kilometers in. There are so many people that we basically just come to a standstill and this happens at every UTMB race anywhere in the world. First checkpoint, two hours and six minutes. 800 meters climb, nearly 11 kilometers done. What a view, eh? Look at that. 14 kilometers in and this is the top of the first climb. Absolutely amazing. Before the sun goes down. So this is the top of mainland Spain, this mountain up here. Annetto. Annetto, thank you. Right, six hours and 37 minutes in. So this aid station is the third aid station that closes in about 35 minutes. So we're not too far inside the cut-off. We've got a very big long climb now. It's a heart-plastic, not a 20 to 1 in the morning. So I've got some soup and I'm going to get some bread and I won't spend too long in here now. So we've done about 38 kilometers. Just come up a huge climb from the last aid station and then down again. You probably can see the lights behind me and then we're going up again. That's about another nine kilometers to the next aid station. It's five to three in the morning so we've been going eight hours, 55 minutes, 38 kilometers. You can see the morning is just starting to break. We've got 50 kilometers in 11 hours, 55 minutes. So we're well over a quarter of the way there, almost a third of the way there. We don't feel too bad. It's starting to get a bit tired with these climbs now. We've had some really tough climbs. But we're getting there. The next aid station is about 7k away. We're at nearly 57 kilometers in. I've got pasta in my bowl. I've got black coffee. I think my quads got a bit trashed on the downhill into this aid station. This is Bossort. I think it's 55 kilometers officially. I've been here a while now actually. I came in. I've almost been here half an hour maybe. 13 hours, 29 minutes on the climb. So I better get going shortly. So we are here at Canayan, 64 kilometers. Although I've got 66 on my watch and we have 5.8 kilometers to the next aid station which is Toran. Here we have the monster climb of the whole run. 17 hours 55. We are now on the biggest climb of the race. It's a 1500 meter climb up the side of this mountain. Beautiful blue lake down there. We are 75 kilometers in. We are still slogging our way up this 1500 meter climb. We're in the last 300 meters of the climb now. Every time we come across a little stream we're all throwing ourselves under it to keep cool because it's really hot. So we are 20 hours and 24 minutes in to the Val d'Aran 100. We've covered 80 kilometers so we are halfway. That seems amazing that it's only halfway. But there we are. It's more of a long slow hike than a run this event. That's pretty fantastic, isn't it? And that's what's calming all the streams and waterfalls down the valley. So the previous shot you just saw was taken in the past between the mountains and that's where it is right up there. You see that V shape at the top? That's where we've just come down from. 95 kilometers and 25 hours, 11 minutes. My quads, I don't know if I've mentioned this, my quads are absolutely shot. So it's very difficult to run downhill. I can run on the flat and I can make my way slowly uphill but running downhill is really, really painful. And we've still got to 75, 65 kilometers to go. There we are. So the sun's definitely gone in. It'll be getting dark soon. I'm just making my way to the aid station with my drop bag in. I had 103 kilometers officially. I am very, very tired. I'm rapidly losing patience with this race. So hard. There's still a lot of work to do overnight for the second night and it looks like I'm going to be finishing between 44 and 48 hours. So this is where you get your drop bags and basically spend a bit of time getting changed, which I've done already. I've eaten, got changed, got changed overnight section. Although I'm not really ready, I'm absolutely shattered. Apparently over 300 people have withdrawn DNA. It is a beast of a race. That's where you get your food over there. There's hot pasta and things like that if you want it. And all the usual sandwiches and fruits and things. And then there's other areas where people are sitting as well. But so many people have withdrawn. So many people have left and I'm going to be on my own on the hills tonight, I think. Anyway, let's get going. I feel sick. I've had enough of this race still 20 miles to go. You can't deny that it's really beautiful though, but having been up for two nights now, stomach feeling a bit funny, feet hurting, legs completely trashed and the gnarliest course you've ever seen in your life. I am not feeling it at all. Okay, like an idiot, as I always do, I fail to look at the information correctly. And I thought this aid station was the one with the 1245 cutoff. It's actually the next one, but we do have three hours to get there and do it. So we've got a little climb as you can see on the map there and then 968 meters all the way down. Fingers crossed we can do it. Dye things we can do it and then dye. So good news, we made it to the final aid station which has a cutoff time. And we made it an hour to spare. So all we need to do now is have some food, try and sort out how I'm going to stay cool for the final section. There's one aid station in the middle of the final section. There's a big climb and then a little climb and then downhill into Vaia or the finish. So this has been standard fare for the past few days. Basically trudging up a mountain very slowly through a forest and then eventually you'll come out into open land and then the mountains or the higher mountains you'll see in the distance. We've basically done that about four times over the course of this race but this is the last one. Final climb and then it's down to the finish. Half kilometers to go. There's Vaia down there but my legs are absolute rock solid. I can hardly move. That was the hardest race I have ever, ever done. I'm just so glad to be back home. This is the end. It was the most difficult race of my life. With all the hard work I've done but I'm happy. Siapo!