REPORTING FROM CHAMONIX
Today’s 80km race was actually 82km in length and after a start at 4am in the morning the first man over the line at 3:03pm in the afternoon was Frenchman Xavier Thevenard.
It means he ran the route in 11hrs mins and 5 seconds averaging out at a 7.45 km/hr pace.
2nd was Spaniard Clemente Christofer, just 13mins after Xavier in a time of 11:16:55
3rd was Romain Berger (French) a further 15 minutes after Clemente in a time of 11:33:24
The women were fast too, with the beautiful Mimmi Kotka (who had knee surgery last year) finishing 1st in 12:59:51, just under the 13 hour mark.
Australian Lucinda Bartholomew came across the line 2nd 23 minutes later with the Russian Ekaterina Mityaeva hot on her heels and just a minute behind her (13:24:11).
The highest placed British runner was Sophie Grant who had an incredible race, coming in 11th place, with a time of finish time of 15:47:39.
It’s interesting to see just how many people are now entering this 80km race; 1147 in total with 113 of these female. The number of withdrawals today was 429.
The next race is the 23km Saturday morning at 8am. The actual marathon (42km race) starts on Sunday morning at 7am with 2000 runners expected to take part.
Follow live tracking here mbm.livetrail.net
Photo © Gaëtan Haugeard
