Running Around šŸŒ IT

UTLO 34K: back where it all began

gara20 October 2026

Race facts

I donā€™t know if I can call it my home race. Iā€™ve been going to Lake Orta since I was a kid, but my passion for the mountains came late, in my last year of university. Since then I run trails and head for the paths whenever I can, and a good part of the credit goes to the Ultra Trail Lago dā€™Orta.

The UTLO was my very first race ever. I had been training for just two weeks and signed up for the 21 km. I finished it wrecked physically, with a decent time by my standards, and completely hooked on this sport and on the woods around the lake.

Three years later I came back to where it all began, on a longer distance: the 34 km.

The 5.30 alarm

At 5.30 the alarm goes off, I have breakfast and get everything ready. Itā€™s exactly the moment when I regret every life choice: signing up for such a long race, waking up instead of ā€œmissingā€ the alarm. My head tells me not to go.

Pride kicks in. I said I would do it, and I got my dad to come with me. At that hour heā€™s getting up too. He could have found a thousand other things to do, and yet heā€™s there. The moment every doubt disappears is when he comes into the kitchen to have breakfast with me and says: ā€œLook, if you want we can go back to sleep, you knowā€.

I can have doubts about making it. Everyone else doesnā€™t. So I go.

Before the start

The race pack has a t-shirt with the race logo, a non-running Cimalp cap and a buff, which I slip onto my wrist right away and which will stay with me to the finish line. After leaving the gym where I pick up my bib, my dad and I slip into a nearby cafĆ© for second breakfast. I canā€™t eat and only drink a coffee. He thinks for both of us and orders two croissants anyway.

Thirty minutes before the start we step outside, and my dad decides he has to be my coach. He tells me to warm up, to run a bit, to stretch. Every time someone runs or does exercises past us, he asks me why Iā€™m not doing the same. Iā€™m here to finish the race. I want to do it as well as I can, of course, but I can perfectly well use the first 2 km to warm up by going slowly. Thirty-four kilometres is still a lot.

Every time I say no, he shakes his head: ā€œI got the laziest athlete in historyā€.

In the end I do jog a little, but more because Iā€™m about to miss the start than to warm up. Before I can realise it, weā€™ve already started.

The climb

I run easy and think: 33 km to go. Fear. I try not to think about it and keep going without getting tired.

All the elevation is in the first 12 km, with 1700 m D+. I walk the whole climb and notice that, even though I push, I donā€™t get tired. I can keep going, and little by little I overtake other runners. I pick the next one, catch him, then pick the one after. It goes on like this to the top, and meanwhile I manage to enjoy the woods, the atmosphere, a few words with the people running next to me.

I reach Monte Croce, the highest point of the course, in under two and a half hours. My legs are still fresh, and so is my head. In front of us Monte Rosa emerges from a low haze, clear and imposing.

The descent

From here about 22 km of gentle downhill begin, all extremely runnable except the first stretch down from Monte Croce. I feel good and my legs are turning over. Almost without noticing, I reach km 20 perfectly on track to finish around 4 hours 15. Iā€™m amazed at how fresh my legs are, and for once in a race Iā€™m not only thinking about how much I want to quit.

And itā€™s here, just when I thought I had made it, that the pain in my knee arrives. I already know it and thought I had gotten past it: the IT band. Or rather, the cursed one. If the descent is too steep, my right leg hurts and I canā€™t run.

For thirteen kilometres I alternate fast walking, running stretches and stops to try to loosen it up, until the cursed one brings me back down to earth. Meanwhile my watch keeps pushing back my estimated finish: from 4:15 to 4:30, then 4:45, then 4:50. I try with all my strength to keep that number under 5 hours, but 3 km from the finish I wave the white flag. On my wrist I read 5:02.

New goal: donā€™t go over 5 and a half hours. And I keep plodding on.

The finish

My final time is 5 hours, 29 minutes and 54 seconds.

In the end Iā€™m satisfied. I was aiming for 5:20, and Iā€™m a little annoyed because I was going decidedly faster. But Iā€™m happy to have come so close despite the problems. I arrive barely tired, my legs feel great and even my knee held up better than other times: after the finish line I already canā€™t feel it.

What the UTLO is like

The race is superbly organised and marked, so much so that I never looked at the track. The woods around Lake Orta are magnificent and the trails are almost all runnable. Along the course there are 3 well-stocked, well-spaced aid stations. The course is very runnable. The view of Rosa emerging from the haze was the cherry on top.

Letā€™s see if next year I can finish it without pain. Or who knows, maybe even take on the longest one.