"Damn, do you mean that your father has to do that?"

Torelló“There are people who tell me: 'Damn, are you sure your father should be doing this?'”, admits Roger Sanglas (Torelló, 1988). “Yes, sometimes they say to me: 'Until when, Josep?' They’ll stop me. Life stops you eventually. But as long as I can, I’ll keep going”, smiles Josep Sanglas (Torelló, 1957). Father and son have participated in the latest edition of the Tor des Géants, one of the world's great ultra-endurance races. It covers 330 kilometers through the Aosta Valley, in Italy, with 24,000 meters of positive elevation gain, around the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and Monte Rosa. “In reality, it’s 360 kilometers and almost 26,000 meters of elevation gain”, they clarify.

They started in the world of mountain racing a long time ago. “I have always liked solitude and I love this moment of being with oneself. In these races, there comes a point where you move from the physical level to the mental one, and that hooks me. It gives you a freedom that I don’t find anywhere else. In the sense of having no worries, of having no ties. Of being myself with myself and setting aside many things: material, sentimental. Your head makes you go inward. This point is what has hooked me”, admits the son. “When I left work, I needed a physical release. It was like when they unleash a dog that has been tied up all day”, points out the father, who is now retired. While he runs, he goes over his life: “I think about what I have done, what is left for me, where I am going. I like the solitude and I love the nights in the mountains. The starry skies, the lines that the headlamps draw in the darkness. All of this is priceless”. Each year they do about 3,000 kilometers and about 150,000 meters of positive elevation gain between races and outings.

In 2018 he did the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc. In 2019 he did the Tor des Géants and he had always thought he wanted to return with his son. “I was very excited to be able to do it together. It’s something that few families can say,” says Josep, happily. That is how they arrived at the start, in the town of Courmayeur, at the foot of the summit of Europe. Roger was the best runner from the Spanish state, with a time of 87 hours and 47 minutes. He was 34th overall in the race, with 1,500 registered participants from 86 countries and 690 finishers. When passing through the aid stations, he would warn that his father would pass by a little later. “Every fifty kilometers he would take his mobile phone and ask: ‘How is my dad, oh, my father?’”

“In these races of 150 kilometers and up you have bad moments. You always have something that isn’t going well: your legs, your stomach, your head. You have moments of discouragement, of wanting to stop,” he explains. But you have to overcome it and keep walking. The first night he didn’t sleep. “On the second, around 6 in the morning, I got a wave of sleepiness on a descent,” he admits. In total he slept little more than an hour in three and a half days. Josep slept two hours in five and a half days. In this world you have to learn the art of microsleeps: “You close your eyes and open them 10 or 20 minutes later. You don’t know if you’ve slept or not, but you no longer have that paranoia. It’s a reset.” Until a few days ago they still had a kind of strange jet lag.

Having hallucinations is part of the race

Deliriums are just another part of the journey. “Things move around you, you see things. It’s a continuum, and when you’re very sleepy, they become full-blown hallucinations. You talk out loud, your vision is blurry. You don’t know if you’re going forward or backward, as if it were Groundhog Day,” points out Roger. “Sometimes I see a woman with a white ponytail watching me from a window,” continues Josep. He spent quite a while fighting with some lights because they looked like drones following him. He asked them what they wanted.

Roger reached the finish line at half-past one in the morning. He still had to walk another two kilometers to the camper van. Josep arrived two days later, with 134 hours and 54 minutes. He finished 387th overall and eighth in the 60 to 70 age category. Tears welled up in his eyes when he saw Courmayeur below him, after completing the last climb. “I told myself: ‘Kid, today is going to be awesome.’” He continued descending and, coming out of a turn, he found Roger. He was waiting to accompany him to the finish line. “I thought: ‘I’m saved now. This is it. I’m almost there.’” He was walking crookedly due to lower back pain. “The finish was a total drama. The physios couldn't handle it. You suffer a lot because you push your body to the limit, but when you finish, it gives you a satisfaction like few things in life. It’s something very difficult to explain. These are minutes of glory,” he stresses.

“I spent five minutes crying. It was a spontaneous cry. It just came to me. I am a person who keeps feelings to himself quite a bit, Roger already knows that, but there everything exploded for me. Everything came down on me,” he smiles. “As a father, being able to do something like this with my son has represented more than just satisfaction. I don’t know, it’s something I don’t know how to put into words. It’s a total satisfaction, something that will stay with me forever,” he adds, visibly moved.

“Maybe we will do another big race together, but maybe not. When I saw him arrive, tears were falling down my cheeks,” admits Roger.