On Friday the 18th of August at 3:10 am, we started in Verbier with our goal to run the Via Valais route as fast as possible.
We were wearing a 6kg backpack with lots of sports gels and eating at the huts and hotels we were staying at as well as the supermarkets we found along our way.
We divided our route in 4 stages:
1. Verbier- Cab Aiguilles Rouges 67k, +4250m
2. Cab Aiguilles Rouges - Zinal 45k, +2300m
3. Zinal-Randa 38k, +2700
4. Randa- Zermatt 51k +3400
However we do want to highlight some changes that we had to make to the original route due to unforeseen circumstances:
1. During the second day, there was a MTB race taking place on a big part of the route so we couldn’t follow the normal track 100%
2. The third day a part of the downhill part was closed on the downhill to Randa so we took the downhill to Herbriggen and went from there to Randa. These were unforeseen situations and we tried to run as much as possible of the original route.
3. Due to stomachal problems, Lisa didn’t do the final loop around Zermatt.
(regional editor MG: because Lisa missed the last part of the route, only Elena can claim the FKT and Lisa was supporting her along the way)