By day four, she felt like the pink track flags were talking to her. She felt dizzy, as if drunk, and could no longer judge distances. Instead of flowers on the high pastures, she saw action cameras everywhere that seemed to be filming her in her misery. For two hours, Rosanna Buchauer felt “extremely altitude sick,” she says. At first she was alone with her fear and felt the impulse to call a helicopter with her satellite phone. Then a local runner from Bhutan came and advised her: drink, eat and lose altitude! Buchauer followed the advice, covered the last few meters of altitude to the highest point of the race at 5,470 meters and then started running back down. She looked ahead, concentrated on every step, kept her nerve – and in the end she won one of the world’s toughest ultra races: the Snowman Race in Bhutan, which took place for the second time in October.
It was not clear at the beginning of the season in spring that the Innzell native would even be able to take part in an ultra trail race this year. Over the winter, Buchauer, who now lives in Innsbruck, suffered from an injury to the plantar tendon, which is located between the ball of the foot and the heel on the sole of the foot. Her training consisted of ski touring and racing bike rollers; she wasn’t able to run for the first time until the end of April. In her first race of the season, the Lavaredo Ultratrail in the Dolomites, she won the 120-kilometer route. “After that I knew it could be a good season,” says the 34-year-old – and she was right.
The invitation to the biggest running adventure of her life comes from the King of Bhutan himself
In July she took first place at the Großglockner Ultra-Trail over 56 kilometers, and at the end of August she impressed at the UTMB CCC over the 110-kilometer distance, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, one of the most prestigious racing formats in the world. The CCC stands for the route between Courmayeur, Champex and Chamonix. She took third place. This was all the more important for her as she had to end the race prematurely a year earlier due to her injury. Her goal for the season was achieved and the way was clear for one of the biggest running adventures of her career: the Snowman Race in Bhutan. The King himself invited 16 athletes, seven local and nine international trail stars from the USA, Japan, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Europe. Rosanna Buchauer started as the representative of the German-speaking region.
The Snowman Race is a five-day stage race covering a distance of more than 175 kilometers at an average altitude of 4,267 meters. The route follows the trekking route of the same name, which usually lasts around 20 days. The individual daily stages are between 29 and 43 kilometers long, and there are supply stations about halfway along the route. The aim is to complete a stage as quickly as possible, also to use the remaining time for regeneration. The individual times of day added together result in the total duration.
With the race, the Himalayan state east of Nepal, which is about the size of Switzerland, wants to draw attention to the noticeable consequences of climate change. The Buddhist kingdom with fewer than 800,000 inhabitants operates in a carbon-negative manner, but is massively affected by the effects of climate change. The glaciers are melting faster, the associated lakes are in danger of bursting and flooding the valleys below. Two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers are expected to be gone by the turn of the century, according to the event website – and with them the rivers that feed them and are the lifelines for billions of people downstream.
Rosanna Buchauer attributes her hallucinations on the fourth day to the fact that her oxygen saturation was too low. “I wasn’t acclimatized well enough for the altitude,” she says. They spent the nights in tents, and from day three to day four they even slept at an altitude of 5,000 meters. This extreme altitude was too much for her body. The fact that she still pulled through and showed remarkable speed on the other stages earned her the nickname “The German Machine,” as she says not without pride. She attributes this title to her ability to eat in any situation.
On the one hand, you don’t feel hungry at altitude, but on the other hand, you need more calories
This is the biggest challenge at altitude because on the one hand you don’t feel hungry, but on the other hand you need more calories. On average, she probably burned 10,000 calories a day. She ate gels and energy bars on the way, then pumpkin soup, rice and curries in the evening. Every morning at six o’clock we went back on the trail. Overall, Rosanna Buchauer needed 31:58:02 hours, which put her at the top of the women’s race and was only three and a half hours slower than the fastest man. What was surprising to her was that she was faster than the local women, who are actually better adapted to the altitude.
After this successful season, the next milestone in her career is coming up next year. Thanks to her top placement at the UTMB, Rosanna Buchauer secured a starting place for the Western States Endurance Run in the Sierra Nevada in California, which takes place in June. Over the 100 miles, which correspond to 161 kilometers, the runners cover around 5,000 meters of ascent and 7,000 meters of descent – which, considering the distance, is relatively moderate. The pace should therefore be correspondingly higher. Buchauer is therefore planning more units on the tartan track this year than on skis, because her strengths currently lie primarily in alpine terrain and accumulating altitude. In winter it’s time to concentrate more on running as an athletics discipline and to work on running technique: “I’m looking forward to the change.”
Would she ever take part in a race like the Snowman Race again? “No,” she says with great conviction. They would have had sunshine and blue skies for the five days – unthinkable for them to endure such hardships in a snowstorm and extreme cold. For her one thing is certain: “You only do a run like this once in your life.”
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