Jan Frodeno proved that his extraordinary endurance engine remains very much intact as the triathlon legend produced a superb performance at OCC by UTMB.
The 2008 Olympic gold medallist and three-time IRONMAN World Champion was venturing well outside his comfort zone on the trails around Mont Blanc, with the 61.4km race representing the longest run of his life.
But Frodeno didn’t just make it to the finish in Chamonix – he was remarkably competitive.
The 45-year-old stopped the clock in 6:31:55, winning the men’s 45-49 age category by nearly 25 minutes and finishing an impressive 58th overall in a field of around 2,000 runners – a mixture of professional elites and the world’s best age-groupers.
Frodeno gets stronger and stronger
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Frodeno’s performance was the way he paced his effort.
OCC features nearly 3,500 metres of climbing and Frodeno had joked beforehand: “I suck at uphill and I suck at downhill. So I’m really looking forward to the flat sections, which according to the map are not many!”
But he certainly appeared to get to grips with both.
At the Trient checkpoint, around 24km into the race, Frodeno was 83rd overall.
By the time he reached Col de Balme, the highest point on the course, he had climbed to 75th – and he continued picking off runners during the final 20km to eventually cross the line in 58th.
It was an impressively measured performance given Frodeno was going into unchartered territory.
Despite the huge amount of climbing, he averaged 9.4km/h across the 61.4km course and finished just one hour and 21 minutes behind overall winner Frédéric Tranchand of France, who clocked 5:10:08.
Frodeno was the 52nd man across the line, with six of the elite women also finishing ahead of him.
Age-group domination
His performance becomes even more impressive when put into the context of the OCC field.
The race is the 50K UTMB World Series Final, meaning the thousands of age-group runners lining up alongside the elites in Orsières had earned their places through the UTMB qualification system.
Yet Frodeno led the M45-49 category throughout and ultimately won it by almost 25 minutes.
Indeed, his 6:31:55 was even quicker than the winning time in the younger M40-44 men’s category, which was 6:33:47.
It was some performance from an athlete who retired from professional triathlon three years ago and had stressed beforehand that he was approaching his first experience of UTMB with curiosity rather than expectations.
Frodeno said before the race that the restrictions of being a professional athlete had often prevented him from experiencing other iconic sporting events and that he was simply “soaking it up like a kid” in Chamonix.
And despite producing such an impressive result, that mindset clearly remained intact throughout the race.
“My legs still hurt, but I have to say, what an event and what a weird feeling,” Frodeno said afterwards on Instagram.
“I have never ever gone to a start line and genuinely not cared about the result and yet cared what I wanted to do.
“I turned myself inside out. I don’t know how many times today. I was pretty close to passing out at altitude, but not at one stage did I think, ‘Oh my God, I have to catch this person or I have to get this time.’
“It was just like a really weird feeling.”
And there was an appropriate family moment to round off an experience which was clearly about much more than the result.
After more than six-and-a-half hours on the trails around Mont Blanc, Frodeno was joined by his two children as they crossed the famous OCC finish line together in Chamonix.
