Rialp Matxicots 2024: Robs First European Race

What is Rialp Matxicots?

Rialp Matxicots (pronounced Mat-Chee-Cot) is a trail race series that takes place in the Catalan Pyrenees region of Spain, about 140 miles north of Barcelona. The race is held in the tiny town of Rialp which has a population of around 600 people. Matxicots puts on 3 different race distances: a 10k, a 21k, and a 50k. The region is extremely mountains and home to very good skiing in the winter and whitewater rafting in the summer time.

How The Hell Did I End Up Choosing This Race?

From the get-go I knew I’d be headed to Europe this summer with my friend’s wedding on the calendar in Spain for mid September. I’ve always wanted to race in Europe and initially was leaning towards racing in the Dolomites in Northern Italy. I decided Italy was too much of a logistical hassle to make it to Spain in time for a Tuesday wedding and narrowed my focus to races in Spain instead. The Pyrenees are where the GOAT of trail running, Kilian Jornet, grew up and honed his mountain prowess. They are also where he did a massive project crossing the entire mountain range over less 8 days last summer. Needless to say If the Pyrenees are good enough for Kilian, then they’re more than good enough for me.

I don’t recall how I found Rialp but somehow I did. I enjoyed the values the race emphasized and the seeming difficulty of the course. I started following their instagram account and translating all their posts from Catalan to English. The vibe fit the type of race I was looking for- community driven but competitive and challenging. Most importantly, the course looked STUNNING.

The race claimed to have 4,400 meters (14,432 feet) of elevation gain over 50K (31.1 miles) which is ABSURD. That puts the most “technical” or “mountainous” trail races in the US to shame. For comparison, the two most mountainous 50k races in the US are Run the Rut in Big Sky, MT and Speedgoat in Snowbird, UT. Run the Rut has about 10,500 ft of vert over 31 miles and Speedgoat has around 11,000 ft over 33 miles. I went on Strava to confirm Rialp’s claims and found the GPX from the previous years winner: they weren’t lying. The route showed over 14,000ft of vert in less than 31 miles. The race was going to be an absolute masterclass in how to annihilate your quads. I was game. It took a bit of translating pages and reading things twice but I officially signed up for Rialp April 16th, almost exactly 5 months before the race was scheduled to take place.

Preparation for a Masterclass in Quad Annihilation 

After pulling the trigger on the race sign up I was trying to set up my summer with a proper mix of races and big adventure days in the mountains. In my mind, the three key ingredients to my success at Rialp hinged around two big training weeks with tons of vert and one race to simulate/prepare for the conditions in Rialp. My two big volume weeks of training were to take place in Alaska in June and the San Juan mountains of Colorado in July. The race I was planned to compete in was the aforementioned Speedgoat 50k. I hoped Speedgoat would serve as a good testing ground to experiment with different race variables. Although not as steep or technical, I could take lessons learned from Speedgoat into my race at Rialp.

The first big training block took place in Alaska over a 9 day trip. As soon as I got to Alaska my mind was blown by the beauty and immensity of the landscape. I knew I might get myself into deep waters by going a bit overboard with running volume. It’s quite hard for me to practice restraint when I’m surrounded by astonishing beauty in every direction and ALSO have 22 hours of daylight to run in. How was I supposed to sleep? The mountains were calling and I HAD to answer.

In my Alaska visit I ran in Girdwood, up Mt. Marathon (Iconic), to Lost Lake, up South Pioneer peak, up Matanuska Peak, and up Mount Healy. By the time it was over I did something like 26,000 feet of vert in a week, my biggest vert week ever in my running life. By the middle of that week I was starting to wake up with a super stiff left heel that took time to loosen up. The stiffness/pain left me gimping before and after runs but would subside and loosen up once I started running. Being stubborn as hell, I ignored it and kept running through the discomfort. I figured I could rest it when I got home to CO and that it would be fine within a week.

Once back in CO, I took a down week from running and switched to mostly biking to give my heel a rest. I wanted to make sure I didn’t ruin my trip to the San Juan Mountains in Southwest CO and was willing to cross train for a week in hopes of returning to full running health. My plan was to run as much of the Hardrock 100* course as possible and then race the Kendall Mountain Run** that Sunday to cap off a huge week of peak training two weeks before Speedgoat 50k. My heel was still giving me tons of problems going into that Thursday, but I decided to drive out to Silverton anyway and hope for the best. I ended up getting in four days of training and 24,000 feet of vert but it probably wasn’t my smartest decision. While I was stoked to be enjoying iconic sections of the Hard Rock course and running a classic mountain race, part of me knew I might be sacrificing future adventures if I was exacerbating the injury further and being over zealous.

The heel pain became a constant and running was effectively off the table following that week. I got to a point where I felt demoralized and deflated. It was time to find some professional help in the form of a good PT. After a few calls and lots of reviews read, I ended up finding a PT I trusted in CO Springs. She did her initial evaluation and started me on an exercise regiment for plantar fasciitis. The first week didn’t see much change but I stuck with the exercises everyday. After a few weeks of mostly biking with one or two days of running sprinkled in, one day the soreness just disappeared. It took around 3 weeks but I was back in business by the third week of August. Although I missed around a month of prime summer mountain running, it was a lot better than ignoring the issue and causing more long term problems. I had confidence that my fitness was in a strong place despite not being able to run much, as I was biking and strength training to compensate for inability to run.

The Big Day is Upon Us: Race Day

My 50k race started with headlamps at 6:30 AM under an inflatable arch in the heart of the Rialp. Tons of people were laughing, chatting, and getting their pre-race nervous stretching out of the way while loud Spanish music was playing in the background. I spent a lot of time stressing over the mandatory gear list leading up to the race only to realize at the gear check that it probably didn’t matter. The guy took one look at my running pack and decided it looked big enough and waved me through. To get the crowd going before the start they shot off fireworks and did a countdown to the tune of Thunderstruck by AC/DC-I guess some songs just transcend language barriers. We took off and did a mile loop around the city to get the runners fanned out before hitting the single track trails. This was to be the only flat mile of the entire race and my fastest mile by a wide margin- 6:57.

I ran the first trail climb suspecting that I was around 15th or so place. I extended my trekking poles for what was looking to be a long day of using them for climbing and descending. The poles had barely made it through security, having to go back through and check them to not get them confiscated by TSA (apparently poles are immensely dangerous even though my Japanese Ballpoint pens are sharper). Hell hath no fury like a TSA worker that is determined to not let you bring something innocuous on a plane with you.

The first thirty or forty minutes were in the dark using headlamps until the the sun started to poke through. Around 45 minutes in I turned off my headlamp and shoved it in my pack, not expecting to need it for the rest of the race. As we popped above tree line, the sun started to reveal a warm and glowing smile on the medieval stone town we had just climbed through. I had my head down and grinded through the climb. I decided that I would kick myself if I spent the entire day too focused on racing to snap pictures of this magnificent scene. For this race, I would stop and take as many pictures as I pleased because I might not ever be back here for all I knew. So I whipped my phone out and tried to capture the beauty of the morning unfolding behind me.

The first aid station Sauri came at around an hour and change into the race. The first 4 hours cruised by as I didn’t look at any metrics on my watch except for the total time elapsed and my heart rate. This was a strategy I had never tried before in a race but was thoroughly enjoying. It left me free to just focus on my effort and body sensations rather than getting wrapped up into whether I was going fast or slow. I decided to pack all of my race nutrition in my pack/belt for the race, to simplify the variables of Euro aid stations and to stick to nutrition that I knew worked for my stomach. This meant filling travel-sized shampoo containers with electrolyte/calorie drink powders and looking a bit like an ultrarunning mad scientist. As I approached aid stations I would get a bottle of powder out and fill up my flasks with it before asking for water to complete the mix. This strategy worked well and I realized that I was much more efficient at aid stations than most of the runners, passing 4 or 5 runners at the first aid station.

The climb out of the Sauri up to the first high point, Els Altars (around 2,500 meters or 8,200 feet elevation) went smoothly and I felt in control as I slowly caught up to other runners ahead of me. The race was very front heavy with climbing and did most of the descending towards the back half of the race. Following the first high point we descended only to climb back up the highest peak of the course, Montsent De Pallars (2,883 meters or 9,456 feet). Looking back at the Strava segments it appears I reached Montsent De Pallars around 3 hours and 33 minutes into the race and likely in around 10th place. At that point in the race we had climbed about 9,000 feet over less than 13 miles, meaning that all the descending (the painful part that destroys your quads) was yet to come.

The low point of the race for me came around the climb up to Les Picardes, around 18 miles and 12,000 feet of climbing into the race. I felt like I was climbing like shit and decided to turn on some music for the first time all race. Looking at Strava, this is one of the only segments I didn’t come in the top 10 on this year (presumably keeping me in the top 10 of the race) and it didn’t surprise me looking back that the numbers coincided with how I felt. I decided to push some nutrition and try to recoup on that climb knowing that there was still a metric f*ck ton of descending to go.

After the top of Les Picardes came a 6.5 miles and 6,100 foot descent, the length and steepness of which we have nothing really comparable in the US. I was excited for this descent and curious how my legs would hold up for it. Despite being downhill, a lot of the descent was on uneven ground (one leg higher than the other) and there were multiple times that I had to stop to confirm I was still running on course. I also stopped to dump rocks out of my Scarpa Ribelle shoes knowing that a MASSIVE blister was forming on my right heel and not wanting to make things any worse for the last section of the race. Despite losing a minute or more form these variables, I managed to complete the descent in 1:06 which was good enough to be the 6th fastest time at the race this year and propelled me closer to the runners in front of me. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was in the race at this point, but I figured I was in the back half of the top 10 (turns out I was in 8th).

Coming off that monstrously long descent that I thought would never end, I knew there was basically one last crux of the course to finish strong on. The last 4.5 miles of the course consisted of a 1,840 foot climb over 1.91 miles (steep) and a 2.67 mile descent that lost 2,573 feet down to Rialp (Mega Mega Ouch). For the last section, I decided to skip getting food/water at the aid station and push hard to the finish knowing that a runner with a pink vest was just ahead of me.

A tree opening above me in the trail revealed not only my pink vested friend, but another runner as well. It was time to go hunting. I cranked up my music to max volume, put two songs on repeat (High Hopes Don Diablo remix and an AFI song I can’t name), and pushed like a madman. I caught Mr. Pink vest 2/3 of the way up the climb and the second runner just before the peak. Once the trail started descending, I absolutely SENT IT. I didn’t know if there was any runners in front of me that I could still catch, but I did know that I would regret if I didn’t find out by finishing like a man possessed. With around 1.5 miles left I spotted one last target ahead of me. After watching him for a switchback, I could tell he wasn’t moving as well as me. With exactly 1 mile remaining I caught and passed him and kept a scorching descent into town. When I came through the finish line I had no idea what place I was in but was stoked with my three passes in the final three miles of racing. Kaitlin smiled a huge smile and told me she was so freaking proud of me. I was spent. When I asked her how I fared I was shocked but stoked to find out I snuck into 5th place with my final miles minute surge.

Looking back on the Strava segments from the last climb and descent, I really was straight up COOKING. The final climb I completed faster than any other 50k runners this year and faster than multiple previous years race winners as well. You just can’t beat competition when it comes to late race motivation. I put 4 minutes into Mr. Pink Vest on that final climb and was almost 2 minutes faster than the race winner on it (37:45 to 39:30). Looking at my splits from that descent, I was indeed moving like a bat out of hell. I completed the descent in 20:34 with the next fastest 50k runner (the race winner) completing it in 22:51. I put almost 8 minutes into Mr. Pink Vest on that descent alone.

After finishing the race I chatted with the race director Kiko about the beauty of the course and the wonderful job they do of putting on such a community-lead event. He asked if I would stick around for the award ceremony since I got third in my “category” (of course I was going to?!?!) and said that the PR director Nuria would love to do an interview of my experience if I was willing (also an obvious answer, everyone knows I can talk all day about anything, esp running). I was FREAKING STOKED. Rialp was the best race of my life and my most favorite race scenery/atmosphere by far.

Thoughts about Racing in Spain/Europe

Do it. You won’t regret it. It can be a headache translating documents but the race directors (or at least in my case, Kiko) are so stoked to have racers to come from all over and are more than willing to go out of their way to help clarify any confusion. The after party was amazing: live music, whole Iberian ham legs being sliced fresh, free beer, and tons of people sharing their love of the mountains and endurance with one another. I thought this was the perfect way to add a race onto an already wonderful vacation. It catapulted my 2024 Spain trip to becoming one of my favorites of all time. I can’t recommend running Rialp Matxicots highly enough as they were unmatched with their gratitude, kindness, and warmth. At the award ceremony the announcer, David, switched from Catalan to English to call my name and let everyone know I had come from the United States to run Rialp. It was a tiny but sweet gesture and a cherry on top of an already delicious sundae of a weekend. I was beaming from ear to ear as I stepped onto the podium to acccept my race goodie bag. I truly hope I get the opportunity to return and run this race again, it truly is one of a kind. Thank you Rialp Matxicots 💚💛

*Author’s Note: the Hard Rock 100 is a mountain 100 mile race that links the towns of Silverton, Telluride, and Ouray together through a grueling course that includes 33,000 feet of climbing and descending. The race goes above 12,000 feet of elevation 13 times with the route also summiting a 14,000 foot peak along the way. The combination of the terrain, vertical ascent/descent, and altitude make it one of the most challenging 100 mile courses in the US if not the world. It is a coveted race to get into. Most runners take 7-8 years of applying to get in and the waitlist is only increasing in recent years.

**The Kendall Mountain Run is a half marathon that starts and finishes in downtown Silverton. The race is about 13 miles long and it climbs up Kendall Mountain at around 13,000 feet and then descends back into town. It really hurts.