Ultra Spirit

A new type of ultra event by François and Carline D’Haene.

Brian Metzler for Trail Runner:

Instead of running UTMB this year, D’Haene and his wife, Carline, are in the final stages of launching a unique new community-focused ultra-distance event in the Beaufortain mountains, near his home in France. In the Ultra Spirit event, September 9-11, there will be 25 three-person teams competing together and running approximately the same amount of time as other teams — 6 hours on Friday, 11 hours on Saturday, and over 5 hours on Sunday — with a variety of different routes and 10 unique team challenges sprinkled throughout the middle of the runs and during the night.

Beaufort, the town at the center of the Beaufortain mountains is François and Carline’s new home, after they sold their vineyard a couple of years ago. The area is just an hour and and half from Chamonix. So for anyone who wants a very different mountain experience after the madness of UTMB they can add a few days to their vacation and travel a bit south east.

I love that there’s space in our sport for folks to continue to innovate and create unique new running adventures, that are at the hear just that, running adventures, but also push the boundaries and offer a new way of enjoying the mountains and help create community.

A side note about the Trail Runner article:
Found it funny that the article had several outgoing links to various news articles, Broken Arrow, Ragnar and other things, but not an actual link to the ‘Ultra Spirit’ website, which can be found here. Wonder if that’s an oversight or an editorial decision.