The 9 runners from ACP Breteuil returned delighted with their participation in the Grand raid, one of the toughest trails in the world, which took place in mid-October in Reunion.
They did it! the 9 runners from ACP Breteuil all returned with a feeling of accomplishment, from the Grand trail contested in Guadeloupe in mid-October. This legendary event is among the most difficult in the world.
The athletes were engaged in two races: the Diagonale des fous, for six of them, and the Mascareignes, for the other three.
The three from the Mascareignes (74 km), Pascal Degournay, Pierre Lefevre and Vincent Czaban, crossed the finish line.
Four out of six are also finishers of the Grand raid (175km): Yohann Holleville, Julien Commelin, Gérard Walkowiak and Maxime Vandamme.
“Fabien Laloup and Baptiste Meriaux had to abandon” indicates Julien Commelin, president of the ACP.
An adventure
collective for runners
This adventure, both collective and individual, required several months of organization.
Everyone prepared at their own pace and according to their possibilities. We also had to find sponsors to finance travel and accommodation.
As for the race, it turned out to be Dantesque, as Julien Commelin details. “This year we had to face very changeable weather conditions. We had heat on the first night, followed by lots of rain and mud making the terrain technical and slippery, then heat and sun again”.
“Des phases
d’hallucination”
Over the kilometers, the raiders experienced destabilizing moments. “Some of us were able to go through phases of hallucination, with the accumulation of fatigue. For example, rocks that suddenly transform or even unreal characters and silhouettes that appear. When we talk about it among ourselves, we laugh about it, but at the moment this phenomenon is quite intriguing and disturbing.”
In the end, the memories of this adventure “are multiple and infinite. We went through states of euphoria and happiness, joy, pleasure but also more difficult states with pain, tears, lesions. But always with the idea of going to the end of this completely crazy adventure for which our families, our friends, colleagues, employers, local businesses… followed us from a distance.”
The president of the ACP pays tribute to the volunteers present on site. “We managed to overcome these difficulties thanks to our shock assistants who were so dedicated in managing our equipment and our supplies.”
Ready for
new challenges
Are ACP members tempted by a new challenge? : “With hindsight, we are ready to start again, to relive this adventure or another similar one. Training resumes its course little by little, it's a return to reality. Little by little, other ideas blossom. For example, ultra trails like the great raid of the Pyrenees and the TOR of the giants, the Madeira island ultra trail, the Race Accrousse France by bike, Iron Man, the crossing of the GR and in particular that of Corsica… always with an element in common: the thirst for human and sporting adventure and the desire to push one's limits..”
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