 I'm having to stop every few hundred yards just to get my breath, but amazing view isn't it? It's a pity I'm so dizzy and half asleep. I can't appreciate it. Just got to get to the top. Mont Blanc. It towers over Chamonix in France and Courmayere in Italy. A year after my first adventure here, I had returned to run the TDS 2019. Previously, a 120km race with 9,000m of elevation gain, this year for the first time the route had been extended to 145km with 10,000m of climb. With tight cut-offs and very technical terrain, it promised to be a significant challenge. The difficulty of the task had been exacerbated by a foot injury which meant I'd not run for 5 weeks before the race. Still, I arrived in Chamonix full of hope and expectation. If a little blind to the ominous clouds forming around me, you can't cheat this mountain, but you can't escape it either. Like a mythical siren it calls you and regardless of how underprepared you might be, you heed that call and before you know it, you're packing your mandatory kit, pinning a race number to your chest and following an endless procession of twinkling stars as far as the eye can see, up to the heavens and beyond. We've commented afterwards, I'm going to enter the TDS and here we are! I'm super glad to be out in Chamonix, it's such an incredible place and such an amazing time of the year. Sadly not racing here this year but got to be sensible. So what is the problem? Just got a little bit of a knee issue at the moment, give it a couple of weeks and it'll be back to normal. You were supposed to be racing TDS, after finishing Western States did you think actually maybe I won't race it anyway? Yeah I wasn't planning on racing and then. So yeah I think I'm just making the sensible decision, I'm in it for the long run, preparing now for the mountain running world championship and GB. So really looking forward to getting back to training for that. Well we'll let you go. Tom's going to be crewing for me for TDS, so we'll see him on the course. See you later Tom, take care, bye. Are you doing TDS or are you doing CCC? No CCC, I decided last night. You're on the list for a different honour? No. Definitely CCC. Yeah I was never actually going to do it and then I got like helicoptered off a race last weekend so my legs are now fresh. Okay I'll do it. So I was like I've not trained for this, I've never run 100k but why not? So Holly is, well now that you're doing it is the top British runner in the race. Fine. Wow. You've got a fight. We'll see if I finish. Oh yeah. Have you run out here before? No, this is my fourth year being in Chameleon, New Zealand without actually racing but it's been crewed so far because I have another race to be in after whatever. I still have another race to be in after that. I just get confused with the number of Holly's. Good ultra runners. There's also another British runner called Holly Page. Oh is there? Who's, she's like maybe 10 years younger than me. Okay. But like she runs for Britain like Steeple Chase. Yeah. And it's just very strange that she has exactly the same thing as me. I was like, I was the first, like I got various messages from American universities over the summer saying would you like to come on a scholarship? I was like, I think you've got to run 100k. But yeah, fine. So this is Louise Alberto Hernando, ultra running world champion, trail running world champion. Also winner of Trans Volcania on how many times? One, two, three. Three times, three times winner of Trans Volcania. Amazing runner, amazing runner. Bye. Start time for this first edition of the new TDS distance was a crazy 4am. This meant getting up at 2am and getting on a bus at 2.30 to get to the start. Both the CCC and TDS races start from Courmayere on the other side of Montblanc in Italy. I'm so tired already and I've not even started the race. Good morning, welcome to Film My Run. We are here in Courmayere. It is five minutes to four o'clock. We're about to start the TDS. This one has never been done before. It's 145 kilometres, around about 10,000 metres of a cent. It's going to take me about 35 to 40 hours to do it. It's going to take them about 19 to 20 hours to do it. 700 metres climbed, about six and a half kilometres done. And you can see it's absolutely packed with runners. If you can see in the dark I don't know. But there's loads of runners. Sometimes you get really clogged up. But it's probably as well as you can do with the rest. It's a long, long way to go. 417 metres above sea level. We've climbed about 1,300 metres. And that's a run down to the first proper checkpoint. In about three kilometres, maybe a bit more than three or four kilometres. So it made it to the first official checkpoint. Three hours and eight minutes, 22 minutes ahead of cutoff. 15.83 kilometres in and feeling OK actually. So that's where we are now. Climb up, down, climb up. OK, first checkpoint I've got soup, I've got chocolate, I've got bread and cheese. I find it difficult to eat later on in a race so I need to try and get as much food in early as possible. And then I just don't eat later on. A half kilometre in. That was a really good 9K run down the hill there. Five and a half hours, five hours and 36 minutes. So we're ready to go. To Petit Sambana. The cutoff is 12.15 so we're well in time, an hour in time. So I'm going to spend a bit of time here and get some food. OK, there we are. There's a marathon covered on a TDS, 42 kilometres in eight hours, 17 minutes. So I don't know if that's the same as last year or a bit quicker or it's around about the same as it, somewhere around eight hours. I've no faster or slower than I was a year ago. We're here, we've just got a drop down to there. And then it's this one and this one. So this is Borg Samarit at quarter to two in the afternoon. At this point I'm 50 kilometres into the race and this unfortunately is where fatigue and lack of fitness begin to take their toll. From this point on I'm chasing every cutoff. So there's Borg Samarit down below us. We're now on the very long climb back up again. It's 1,300 metres of climb over six kilometres and we've only done about one and a half kilometres of that. So it's going to take us at least another two hours to get up there working on it. We do it about 25 minutes per kilometre and totally, totally nagged. I've got an hour to get to the fort that's up there. I should make it in about half an hour but I'm having to stop every few hundred yards just to get my breath. But amazing view, isn't it? It's a pity I'm so dizzy and half asleep. I can't appreciate it. Just got to get to the top. Still absolutely done in after that climb. I've covered another three or four kilometres and there is an aid station in a couple of kilometres. So I'm going to get there and then we'll see if I've got a chance of making the cutoff at eight o'clock at the other aid station. Do you think so? Okay. So that's what we'll do. Pretty scary. I'm going to put the camera away and use my poles to get down here, I think. I just did that section but I didn't want to film it because it was a bit sketchy. I'm not a fan of heights, as you well know. So I was a bit nervous going over that. It's going to be tight for the cutoff. I had a little period where I felt quite uncomfortable and I didn't want to film it. I didn't want to film the cutoff. I had a little period where I felt quite good but now I feel pretty rotten again. But it's just the climbing. I'm not fit enough. 66 miles. I can't remember what it's called. But we had a really tough time to get here before it closes. It closes in about five minutes. I don't know if we can stay in here until then. We have to get out before it closes. And so on we went into the night. By now though, I was so tired. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep on the side of the trail which I did on a couple of occasions. I was just looking for any excuse to stop and rest. At the same time though, I was desperate to make it to my drop bag at Beaufort checkpoint which was some 10 miles away. It was already going to be very tight with plenty of climbing still to do and then a very technical 2,000 meter descent down into Beaufort. I was moving so slowly I couldn't afford to waste time at aid stations. Do you have any soup left? OK, so halfway up the climb out of the last aid station it's unbelievably slow. At one point I was with the back markers, the sweepers. We've got about 450 meters left to climb to the top of here and then it's a massive long, almost 2,000 meter descent into Beaufort. Thanks to these guys for being here for a bit of extra water. OK, let's get on with it. Despite that rather determined final sentence that's the last thing I filmed of my TDS adventure. I carried on up the climb until I reached what I thought was the top. I was now expecting the long descent but as I approached a medical tent I could see lights heading back up another climb. My heart sank and at this point I lost all motivation. I thought I'd been nearing Beaufort but in reality I had another two short but significant climbs to negotiate and I simply couldn't do it. I lay on the floor at the medical tent and slept for half an hour. I was woken by the sweepers and made a half-hearted effort to start the climb but by then I was never going to make the cut-off and I didn't have the energy to try. My race was over. Unfortunately, elite Brit, Kim Collison who we saw earlier in the film also dropped from the race. However, my friend Holly Page finished her first 100 kilometre distance as top British female runner at CCC and Louise Alberto Hernando was the outright winner finishing CCC in 10 hours 28 minutes and beating Tom Evans' time of 10 hours 44 when he won it the previous year. And finally, my running buddy Richard finished his CCC race in 19 hours and 8 minutes. TDS beat me this year. The mountain beat me but I will be back and one day soon I will finish the TDS.