This XXL triathlon is a junkie’s trip. Once you’ve tasted it, difficult to give up a hard drug. I needed to go back just to make sure it really was one of the hardest triathlons on the planet. Here’s the run-down of my second attempt. Or… how to drag one’s dirty carcass to the finish line after 3.8km swim, 188km bike ride (5000m+ vertical elevation) and a marathon to warm-up… The Embrunman, is powerful, beautiful, brutal and everything but easy. A battle, with your fists up!

Story : Franck Oddoux/Test4outside

Pictures : Gilles Reboisson & F.Oddoux/Test4outside

« Do we need to send monkeys into space to see how they explode?»

Neil A. Amstrong, drunk, to Buzz Aldrin, June 1969, leaving a Houston bar, Texas.

All cramps don’t necessarily have their hour of glory rising from the basement in the glare of a perverse Tarantino. Head-case masochists rule the waves in sports fitting under the “ultra” title.

In the same vein, triathlon, especially the XXL, 3.8km swim, 188km bike rode, 42km run, is one of the most demanding sports that exists. You need to be able to combine top performances in three different disciplines that are not necessarily complementary: you only have to drop your bike after 188km and start running a marathon to realize that the body’s different muscle groups scream out in pain… In his era Boutros Boutros-Ghali (typing error ?) would have alerted the UNO.

The Embrunman is one of the most demanding triathlons in the world alongside the Kona (high level + heat + humidity) and the Norseman, for its extreme conditions that only Vikingscan endure. Taking the start line of the Embrunman is pure macho sport: troubling similarities, we wear black very tight suits, only thing missing is the balaclava with a ball and a few chains for decoration. These strained faces seem to say at the start of the race this morning  15^th August.  A wave of 1200 triathletes, tight as a bow and arrow, move from foot to foot waiting for the start signal. Behind me a guy cleverly raises moral by chattering loudly by saying “ah, the swim section, it’s horrendous, horrendous… ahhhh… it’s so nerve-racking…. The last time I had a panic attack… my chest compressed and I couldn’t breathe… and now we’re going to swim in the dark with this pack behind us…. Perfect for drowning..”. Exactly what you want to hear at that very moment… anyone have a gun to silence him? At the end of the lake the moon is red, almost bloody, all that’s missing is Batman to fly past the cliché is complete. This is gonna hurt!

“A MMA battle in water“

Start. The black Ninjas throw themselves into the inky black waters. Sprint. The tiny stones crackle underfoot and then you dive into the big deep. It’s the edge of the giant bath. Run as far as possible and then go horizontal, and give up your mind, body and soul to the deep waters. After months of training, it’s finally here. The battle is on. Triathlon is an economical sport, a kind of biathlon. You feel like you register for a gentleman’s challenge… For the same price you have the right to an MMA battle. The gentle little lambs nicely penned in at the start are suddenly transformed into savage piranhas once released into the water. This is what specialists call the “Gremlins Effect”. Like last year I find myself (on a misunderstanding…) in the third line with at least 1000 snapping robo-machines behind me. The blows rain down on my head, back and legs. Hands grab my feet, cling to my thighs, like monsters out of a horror movie. Some literally swim over the top of people: there is no mercy, they pass by brute force. The gentlemen’s zest is instantly diluted in the great thirsty waters. An uncontrollable barrage of piranhas annihilating everything in their passage making the water rumble and boil in their wake. This is the first lesson you learn in triathlon, put your goggles under your swim cap, or say goodbye to them in the first strokes as you hit the water. A bit like putting your seatbelt on in a plane – reassurance….

Having your eyes open or closed, it makes no difference, we’ve just entered a 3.8km tunnel of hell. Swimming at night with a bunch of wildfire cowboys and Indians making chase is an experience both delicious and delicate. So, as you can’t see anything, your other senses take the helm, the sound of the water being violently slapped by the swimmers, your own breathing giving the rhythm like a drum in the bowels of a Viking’s ship ringing in your ears, your finger-tips stroke through the slimy weeds that get caught up in the rush, get stuck to your goggles, and arms. You slowly become an organic part of the lake, literally transforming into vegetal spawn. Tips for the organizers: next year, mow the bottom of the lake before the race…

And the fight goes on, the hefty beatings, like a boxing ring that extends eternally towards the next buoy. You lift your head from time to time to confirm the azimuth. It’s impossible to swim at your own rhythm, find the glide through the water that’s in constant motion, focus on your technique to save energy and go faster. Trying to stay Zen in the center of this violent brawl, reach forward into the water that moves before you. Months ago a friend said to me “you can immediately see someone who’s thinking when he swims…”. When he said it, I didn’t really get the gist of what he meant, now, with my head underwater, I finally understood. Fluidity, the glide, is not written beforehand, the day of the race, you either have it or you don’t. An ironing board can be as brainy as you like, and know all there is to know about the subtleties of the stroke’s technique, but he’ll move slower than a mermaid born in the lagoon. You have to leave it to nature, move forward, unplug your brain and even oxygenate the lake for the greater good of the fauna and flora.

“A pair of legs with a digestive tract“

My pal Gérard, a specialist in doing up old cars and retuning engines (the travelers buddy at Lake Embrun) said to me “triathlon is like an classic car’s engine: it all comes down to the battery”.  At the start it’s full, and then progressively it loses energy. To last you need to keep some energy under the hood”. But sometimes you can search high and low and there’s not much left. The solution comes from stocking the engine’s King’s court, royal fuel, the famous glycogen that you stock before a race by eating pasta, rice, potatoes… This black gold settles happily in the liver (left of the beer and wine) and in the muscles waiting for zero hour.

Like a current bank account, at the end of the month the capital has been eaten away, you have to put the brakes on, slow down, pull over, and accept the DNF… those three letters that crucify the heart. The solution for keeping your capital, is to have a Swiss bank account! Eat on the bike ride: “lay the table” as my coach says, to compensate for the calories used up in the swim and on the little 188km outing, you need to eat, swallow, consume, chew, munch, snack – fill up the gas tank. And eating whilst running is so much more difficult to digest, so make the most of those wheels!

“The maltodextrin Goddess is violated by a bottle of mineral water “

Out of the water, didn’t even drown! Make sure you aren’t running out the water with your head covered in algae, looks kinda stupid in front of this delirious crowd. It’s great to hear the crowds and come back to reality. The speaker is sounding-off on the mic. The bike park looks like a bee hive, with bees on ecstasy. Quick, slip back into autopilot: off with the wetsuit, run to the sass and jump on the bike. First climb, just like last year, the triathletes ignite … or are really amazingly strong. The pace, doubles, roaring breath, sweat, even in the chill of the early morning air. The joy of the first downhill, the precise trajectories, but keep an eye out for the ,overkill or the over-confident. Like last year, a cyclist misses the turn. In the ditch a volunteer administers first aid. Napoleon’s army will leave unknown heroes behind, it’s the price to pay for the Russian campaign.

The worldwide reputation of the Embrunman is its triple difficulty (bonus for the bike), but also for its Hollywoodian backdrop. In this super-production, the director of photography is especially talented. He has measured, as every year, a perfect cocktail of low-lighting over Lake Serre-Ponçon, with the immense bridge spectacularly silhouetted in the backlighting, and in the foreground a road that snakes away with cyclists gliding by. A pure and sublime moment. The humidity lifts away with the first rays of sun exalting in the scent of freshly cut hay.

Eat, it’s primordial, a must. When we start out in endurance sports everything is new in terms of feeding yourself, boosting your glycogen reserves. Under the guidance of sporting literature, sometimes coach’s tips, magazines and brands’ marketing gimmicks, you quickly pass from the hap-dash snack to high-tech dedicated produce: isotonic energy drinks powder, gels, pre- and post- race magic potions. If we ignore everything we risk severe dehydration, tendinitis, deficiencies, …. And withdrawal. The triathlete quickly subscribes to the promising miracle products. It’s Lourdes. Wallets empty in proportion to the speed that the water bottles fill up. My personal opinion, you can consider these knowledgeably marketed products efficient for those who want to perform at any price, and especially those, who are capable of assimilating them. Because, we quickly discover that all powders and gels do not sit merrily in the average human digestive tract. On the Embrunman, how many DNFs are due to severe gastric troubles, resulting from all these transformed products? Those who start regurgitating their insides are already visible in the saddle. But it’s the marathon where the true show begins : most athletes now take in nothing more (and therefore can no longer recharge their battery), because of the physical effort and the alimentation. Some parts of the marathon are like on the road for the holidays when kids can no longer deal with dad’s erratic driving. Some athletes, through sheer exhaustion unload all on the finish line. Having already experienced this very unpleasant end, I opted this year for an (almost) 100% natural journey: water, banana, sandwich with cured meat, organic bars, salted nuts and seeds. Result: no stomach troubles whatsoever and a “happy” marathon, if we can also talk of Tantalus’ torture. Ok performance may have suffered but isn’t it better to go slower and further…

“The Alpha Male gets castrated at Izoard“

A misunderstanding persists on the Embrunman. You could assume that the acme of the event is the legendary Izoard Pass, with its pillar dedicated to Fausto Coppi and Louison Bobet. The rest of the route is more wearing, with bumps, relaunches, roads with headwinds. But you should see the relentlessness of these triathletes just to grapple for a few places in the uphill. I prefer to listen to an old cyclist friend of mine: “when you don’t have the means to blaze the trail, you just try to hold on”. Having never wanted to kit myself out with a power sensor (the connected techno monster watch is already enough of a Big Brother). The heat on the tarmac makes it smell like pine resin. The slope flattens out. A quieter rhythm ensues. Foreheads start to drip and hocks swell. Pedaling is music, the chain, the whirring of the wheels and cogs mixed together with your breathing. But once a bike starts to squeak, it’s torture that could very quickly be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, or the rider’s.  Grease the chain, service your bike, apparently isn’t part of the “to do” list for some. Murder creeps to mind… A standing stone is pedaling in front of me. He’s in control, keeps to his own rhythm, I follow him, keeping an eye on the famous heart rate monitor. Generally it’s at this particular moment of wisdom, that some over-excited guy decides to overtake everyone to show that testosterone level is not a myth and also not shared by everyone. I was right, a deep breath, the attack surges from behind, but this time it’s a girl, with a solid backside and slightly overweight. In the history of humanity (and triathlon), it is written, that no Alpha male is overtaken by a female. My manhood quickly forgets any hint of wisdom. Legs turn faster, at first you hardly notice, then, frenetically and everyone can see the knicker line (that she isn’t wearing by the way, as lace is largely incompatible with the chamois leather). Here’s a physics experiment: take a jar, put male cyclists in it, add a little girl’s zest and watch how the liquid gets cloudy: or how Homo sapiens lose his one ounce of intelligence … The dictatorship of hormones.

“Too much speed…“

The aid station at the top of the Izoard pass looks like an immense banquet except that the sucklings on spits and the barrels of beer are missing. At this altitude (2361 meters), the food is almost celestial it’s so light, designed to head directly to the bottom of your digestive tract and be burned by the machine like shoveling coal into a steam engine. At the top of the Izoard, once again the view is king size. Welcome to a mineral world bathed in a clear southern light. We are go! The legs are charged and ready for battle and the road is cleared for a descent on a direct line (with bends) to Briançon. It’s Formula 1, vertically. The turns are negotiated on a crocodile line, the bikes lean in the bends and the speed on the computer goes haywire. Downhill skiing sure helps with this section. Some riders are hesitant in their trajectories, shift towards safety, use their brakes more than they need to, where you should anticipate and maintain the rhythm …and the speed. You also need to think about recovering, eating, when you’re lower down and when the speed decreases.

It never ceases to amaze me, triathlon is really a sport unlike any other, an amalgam of ultra-individualistic sportsmen who don’t say a word (or almost), before and during the challenge. Attempting to share a few words cycling is to expose yourself to a response as blatant as silence, or an exchange as rich and meaningful as “yes”, or “no”. This is probably due to the difficulty of this sport. A culture of mutism? An atrophy of the vocal cords? Training alone, I have the simple but indelible joy of having to find decent pools just to swim; like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s not easy in France unless you’re in a club. There is a lack of swimming pools in this country and opening times for the public are rarely practical. I came across a triathlon club session with a part-military atmosphere: the kind of gathering where everyone laughs at you when you get your foreskin, or something else (if you’re a girl!), stuck in your flies.

“Saint Augustin used to drink too much“

Losing vital energy in triathlon plays cat and mouse with your inner sins. Fighting highs and lows. To be a bit clearer, the high would be Jesus walking on the lake of Serre Ponçon in a trisuit or pedaling with just one leg in the infernal Pallon climb while listening to hardcore gothic music. The state of grace is Janus’ luminous side. The one where you no longer force, your legs no longer cry in pain, your body is light, sublime in sustenance. The triathlete’s spirit is diluted in the landscape, it even becomes the landscape! Half-man, half-kilometer. You’re a fluid breeze flowing towards the finish line. Don’t worry, this state never lasts very long.
Fatigue and its diverse variations very quickly knock at the door and remain stuck like a kitchen salesman. It offers a catalogue as vast as an Amazon offer: exhaustion, sudden loss of energy, that leads to total loss, and then you crumple under a stream of adjectives: exhausted, smashed, azimuth, destroyed, reduced to dust, flat-lined… (almost).

Saint Augustin, with whom we had the chance to drink tequilas shots over by Tijuana, said in substance: “everything that has an end, doesn’t last long”. A drunk’s words. It’s blatantly clear that he’s never had a triathlon license. How could we measure it? The Embrunman is almost as long as an Iranian arthouse movie, and minus the popcorn. The moment when time falls into another dimension is during the marathon. After the 3.8k swim and the 188k cycle, triathletes dive even deeper into their bubble. At this point, it’s no longer introspection but autism. The time, like chewing gum will stretch, stretch, and stretch … and ping happily at the finish line, if you are in a feel good movie. Otherwise, you finish stuck under the table. The Embrunman, like Netflix, feeds off twisted scenarios where space time is manhandled like in Inception. It shows in the runners’ eyes, some are haggard, perched on another planet. Some have left their brain in the bike park and run like a zombie. This year, I had the chance to be part of the Z blockbuster but only on the first round of the marathon. With no desire left to continue, running on boiling hot tarmac, and too hurt myself. In these particular moments, your sense of hearing becomes more even acute. Spectators don’t realize it but we hear everything, as if everything is amplified. Two women pressed up against the barrier to see the competitors are chatting to each other: “I wonder what they are thinking about during the marathon?”. Nothing! Well yes, actually, an infinity-edge swimming pool, a caipirinha with a long multi-colored straw and at least 12 professional masseurs with magic fingers.

Keep moving your legs, don’t walk, always run, even if it looks like you’re really walking – it’s a mind thing. And try not to listen too intently, here I am in the middle of the wave, two people are warmly encouraging me, clapping and shouting nice things, before laughing together saying “…hahaha… he’s still got three to four hours of running to do…”. Then the light returns, heaven knows how. The legs are working better and better and the hope of finishing this second Embrunman dawns….slowly, like the early morning mist. I am going to finish, that is if my right leg allows me to, seeing its bizarre twisted stance due to cramps on the bike. I just have to keep putting one in front of the other and finish this challenge that costs enough to keep an entire Bangladeshi family in room and board for three months. Or buy out the Rana Plaza ruins and erect a five story aquatic center.

“Deaths and resurrections!” 

The marathon is a great party where the three loops allow you to meet athletes who you haven’t seen cycling. No, I’m not talking about the elite, who at this very moment are already showered, had a nap and finished an “Asperger’s level” 5000 pieces puzzle. On this part of the course, there are those who are dragging their feet, whose burial is a nearby concept. We see those who miraculously maintain an aerial stride and rush towards a glorious ranking and then, there is the underbelly, the undecided performances, that continually die and resurrect: tomb-riders. The aim is not to sink into a zombie state. A marathon without music, even more than when you are cycling, how boring! I, who never trains without a few gigas of play list, find my ears very empty, and my spirits low. With a good guitar sound, a bass, and drums, I would go at least an hour faster over the entire course. The organizers are right to consider music as a form of doping. The organizers are wrong to draw us into a monastery. Dampening our spirits is counterproductive. But this asceticism gives a rare and spicy show. The fine connaisseurs, the pros of the small folding armchair (option armrest to house the 8.6 junkie’s beer) do not be mistaken besides: I think of the spectators assiduous of the dreaded fear of Pallon, the ignoble hitting the ” Wall “.

A “moral” question, they won’t get put off. On this launch pad that Elon Musk will rent for its space rockets, some spectators have set up their folding seats and drink refreshments while contemplating the cyclists as they stand up bent over on their pedals, frying in the sun: this is better than the Tour of France. A drink tastes much better whilst watching a show of others in full effort. They also could have set up their base camp in Chalvet Hill, the very last climb… one too many.

….but not too much. Here too, the atmosphere is somewhere in the “I’m grilling my popcorn in the Embrun furnace, and the corn grains are the triathletes”.

And this is where the moment comes when Saint Augustine’s words, the amateur Tequila addict, are changed into: “all that is long has an end”. I manage to motivate a warrior who was throwing up in a corner: “you mustn’t give up… it’ll get better soon … don’t give up here … it’s nothing, it will pass …”. The usual blah blah. Even I don’t believe a word of it. Surprised, he swallows his vomit back down. He tames his guts, and starts walking. In the downhill, he runs with me. His stomach at the edge of his lips, he finds his legs and finishes faster and faster this last round of deliverance. We cross the finish line together, arms raised, lifted like Swiss cuckoo clock! Medal. Then everything stops abruptly. You can’t live all the time bigger and stronger. Surprise, the body responds well, nothing collapses, no visit to the infirmary. Just look a bit stupid after having finished this XXL. I want to go and drink a large cool beer with my friend Saint Augustine. It’s his round.