Tour du Mont Blanc
Straight off the top, we didn't complete it. We did about 150 of the 170km, although we did get in 9600m of elevation gain (and about the same of downhill). There were a few reasons for this: (i) we had to dodge thunderstorms on day 1, greatly curtailing that day's plan; (ii) we were cooked by day 7 and there was no way we were ascending 1200m from the valley floor after a 15k hike; (iii) we should have start/finished in Les Houches to minimise the extra elevation involved in getting on/off the trail; (iv) we are old and weak. That out of the way, this was an awesome hike! A week of splendid scenery, hard, hard hiking, at times challenging weather, cozy refuges, local food, full immersion in everything Alps and hiking; a real feast. The generally accepted timeframe for hiking the TMB is 10-11 days which would give you around 17km and 1,000m of elevation change per day. Sounds just about right to me! The record for running is 22 hours which is simply inconceivable but I