Training: Day 1

Bright and early, I wake to meet the rest of the Yak Pack attending Marathon Training Camp. There are 10 of us all together at the training camp, out of 26 who are running the Jungfrau Marathon for Room to Read.

We also had the privilege of having Swiss long-distance two-time Olympian Daria Nauer on hand to help out and give us some useful advice about the marathon. Daria represented Switzerland at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (10,000 m) and the marathon in Sydney in 2000. She has also competed in the Jungfrau Marathon with top 10 finishes. Plus, and this is a big one, she's my friend on Facebook. So yeah, she knows a thing or two.

Daria sharing her wisdom with the Yak Pack

For today's training we would run the final leg of the Jungfrau Marathon from Wengen to the finish line at Kleine Scheidegg, covering a distance of 24 kilometers round trip and an elevation of around 830 kilometers:

Training Day 1: Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg

We left Wengen and headed up towards Allemend. At the top of the hill we came across a ski lift - realizing I had just run up a mountain that, in inclement weather requires a ski lift, gave me a slight sense of accomplishment. Little did I know this was only the beginning...

Once I hit the 1600 meters mark, I began to have some trouble breathing. Like, a lot. My throat burned and it felt as though I was breathing through a cocktail straw. Suddenly, my breaths didn't seem to register with the rest of my body, making it harder and harder for me to recover. "This must be my body reacting to the change in altitude", I thought. Finally, a coughing fit made me stop dead in my tracks as the rest of the Yak Pack carried on, out of sight. I began walking in an attempt to get my breath back.  That's when I turned a corner and came across something that only contributed to my breathlessness:

Not a bad place to collapse

Comin' atcha like Cleopatra

This path carried on for a while, gradually climbing higher and higher until we reached the moraine: a small, rocky, dangerous path. Initially, it's hard to imagine that this is actually part of the marathon, but, according to the Jungfrau Marathon website, it is the highlight where "every runner's pulse beats as high as possible":

Once we reached the top, we stopped for another meeting and to start adding the layers:

Because the rest of the course was covered in deep snow, we opted to head an alternate route towards the finish line. Although this route had "less snow", it still proved to be pretty substantial, and, well, slippery, as I discovered:

"We have a yak down!"

But we all made it up and back in relatively one piece:

"Jungfrau, WE WALKED ON YOUR FACE!"