About three years ago, Durangoan Cameron Winters said he was eating too much and wasn’t super healthy.
“I needed to do something big to get in shape,” he said.
Three years before that he had run the Boston Marathon, spending two years to qualify and then completing the race.
“After the race I was done – that was my goal,” he said. “I quit for three years.”
When he decided to start running again, however, he set his sights even higher. Winters planned to run in the most prestigious ultra race in the world, he said – the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc.
Last week, he accomplished the feat – starting in Chamonix, France, and running 106.5 miles through France, Switzerland and Italy around Mont Blanc, gaining 34,000 feet in elevation along the way. He finished 221st out of 2,347 runners who started the race, in 34 hours, 2 minute and 19 seconds.
The journey to the finish, however, actually took him years if you include his training.
When he first decided to do something big again, the Zion 100 was only a couple weeks away.
“I walked out my door in Durango and said I’m going to do 50 miles,” Winters said.
Ten hours later, he said he had run 35 miles, but his legs stopped cooperating.
“I literally couldn’t walk,” he said. ”It crippled me.“
He canceled the Zion race that year, but did a 50-mile race in Bryce Canyon, Utah. This year, he was able to do the Zion 100.
“It’s been a journey,” he said. “I got a coach and train with other pros; it’s intense training.”
Winters said he originally wanted to run the Hard Rock 100, but since it uses a lottery to select the participants, he said it could be eight years before he got in.
The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc also uses a lottery system, but Winters found a loophole. He could qualify by running in the Oman UTMB in Dubai. “I finished that one,” he said. “It was like running the Grand Canyon over and over again.”
With that under his belt, Winters lined up in Chamonix at the end of August with runners from 89 different countries.
“It was crazy,” he said. “I was trying to talk to people, but nobody speaks English.”
Winters said he wore a heart rate monitor for the first time in the race and ran off his heart rate for the first half of the ultra.
“I wanted to stay aerobic,” he said. “I let a lot of people pass me.”
He said he started about 300th and then slid to about 600th. Then he started passing runner after runner.
“At one aid station, I passed like 300 people,” he said. “Everybody goes out fast and then, bonk. After mile 20, I started passing people like crazy. I worked to get to the front, but the leaders don’t let you pass.”
At around the 50-mile mark, however, Winters ran into some trouble of his own on what he called the “steepest descent” in the race.
“Coming down into Courmayeur at mile 50 crushed my quads,” he said. “That was a tough moment – my quads were locked out. I literally couldn’t straighten my legs.”
The trails, he said, differ from local trails in one significant way. “There’s no switchbacks. They’re literally straight up and down ski lifts,” he said.
Winters used his poles to help him walk down and then, luckily for Winters, he had his wife, Tyan, to help him out.
“She massaged them for 20 minutes,” he said. “People were passing me, but I couldn’t walk.”
The massage worked, however, and he was able to carry on.
“She motivated me to keep going when I didn’t think I could,” he said.
Fearing his legs might lock out again, “I said, I’m not stopping again,” Winters said.
The course, however, still had plenty of challenges ahead.
“There were three monster climbs in the last 40 miles,” Winters said. “It was insane. The last climb was like climbing a cliff. It was the ugliest thing I’ve ever gone down.”
About a mile to the finish, a runner caught Winters, and he was saying to himself that he could pass him, but he would have to earn it. They ended up catching the guy ahead of them, but he didn’t want to get passed either.
So, after 106 miles, Winters found himself in a race within the race.
“It ended up being an all out sprint to the finish line,” Winters said.
He placed 221st in the race. Only 1,520 runners managed to finish out of the 2,347 who started it.
“Placing in the top 10%, I’m pretty satisified with it,” Winters said.
And now that he reached his goal, this time he doesn’t plan on stopping again.
“The worst part of the race was finishing,” he said. “Being in the mountains with the views and the competition, chasing elite runners around Mt. Blanc – it’s something I’ll always be grateful for.”
Francois D’Haene of France ended up winning the race in 20:45:59. D’Haene also won the Hardrock 100 this year.
Colorado’s Courtney Dauwalter, meanwhile, was the first woman to finish in 22:30:54. No American male has ever won the race.
Out of the 36 male Americans who completed the race this year, Winters had the seventh fastest time.
His takeaway from pushing himself to finish the race: “Anybody can do what they put their mind to. To me, that’s what life is about: dream big and we can accomplish things.”
colivas@durangoherald.com
