Mont Blanc Trails

Snow has finally fallen in the village! But this means that my training runs are going to be a bit more tricky now - still I like a challenge, heck I wouldn’t of entered the UTMB CCC if i didn’t !Set out this afternoon at about 4:10pm and headed out on the trails that I normally run - there is a fair amount of light powdery snow about, probably 5 inches or so. The first gently uphills weren’t too bad as a few other folks had walked out along this way and so the snow was fairly well flattened, but it was certainly using up more energy. The sun was low and there was a lovely light on the Aravis and the Fiz as the peaked through the atmospheric low wispy clouds.The steep uphill was *really* hard, the snow dragging at my feet, and struggling to keep grip on the soft powdery snow. I’m usually at about 24mins on a good day or 27 on a bad day at the top of this climb and today was 30mins, which was what I expected given the conditions so I was quite pleased.It was a great adventure - slipping and slidding on the down hills, running across the ski piste (It wasn’t officially open but there where people skiing it!). Temperature down at -12 centigrade, my water bottle was freezing even with all the jiggling about it was getting. And finally running the last bit as the last light faded from the sky. Now this is definitely the sort of running I like !Todays figures are 12.7 Km, 530m Ascent, 1hr:45 (ish) as the cold got to my watch which stopped working half way round!