Ben Dhiman opens up the five-week block that closed a fifteen-week build for the 90km du Mont Blanc, a deliberately high-volume, low-intensity approach aimed at rebuilding tolerance to the mechanical load of trail running, and works through the separate disciplines the race would demand, flat running, climbing on poles, and descending fast, before finishing the block in Chamonix with his biggest week of the cycle, 24 hours of running for 180 kilometers and 14,000 meters of climbing on the terrain he would race on. Along the way he traces how a runner from flat Ohio ended up here, through a six-month Appalachian Trail hike at 19, university in Montana where trail running was still just an activity, and the move to France where he found a professional sport and became obsessed with it. On race day he starts patiently and holds his own rhythm, staying in contact at the decisive descents he had reconnoitered twice and found far more comfortable than expected, then works with Cristian Minoggio and Louison Coiffet at the front, backed by a crew feeding him splits at every point they could reach, before losing the closest race of his trail career by 40 seconds in 9:38:02. He closes on what an ultrarunner does with three or four race days a year, and why the training itself, not the result, has to be the thing that keeps him going.