There's a particular kind of weight to going back to a place that once broke you.
Two years ago, Geneviève's UTMB ended in Courmayeur, after a fall in the Pyramides Calcaires, two broken fingers, a concussion, and a DNF that stayed with her longer than the bruises did. This year, she stood on the same start line in Chamonix. Different athlete. Same mountain.
We wanted to share her story here, in her own words, because it says something we believe in: that resilience isn't a straight line, and sometimes the bravest move isn't finishing, it's knowing when to stop.
Ten days out
Weeks before UTMB, Geneviève toed the line at the first-ever Boréalys by UTMB 50K in Mont-Tremblant, a race that mattered to her beyond the results, as spokesperson for the Association québécoise de l'épilepsie and someone who lives with epilepsy herself.
Seventeen kilometers from the finish, she rolled an ankle. Minor, but enough to rattle the days that followed.
"A sprained ankle ten days before a 176-km, 10,000-meter UTMB wasn't exactly the ideal scenario."
She flew to Chamonix the next day, mind racing. But something settled the moment her feet touched the Alps again. The team's therapist was reassuring. They'd work on it. She'd be ready.
She was.
The start
Race day brought brutal weather and a delayed start, the kind of wait that turns nerves into something closer to electricity. Then the gun went off, and the kilometers began to fall away.
Around 50 km in, her vision started to blur. Not alarming at first. Just an inconvenience.
Then it got worse.
By the time she reached Courmayeur, 2024 was unavoidably present.
"I didn't want this mountain to become, once again, the place where my UTMB story ended."
She kept moving toward Refuge Bertone. A small black spot appeared in her right eye.
It grew.
And grew.
"Until I completely lost vision in that eye. That's when I got scared."
Continuing, anyway
What followed was hours of a single question circling in her head: should I turn back?
She kept going, while stomach trouble set in and the vomiting started.
Little by little, the joy, she says, began to fade.
More than ten hours into fighting symptoms she'd never faced before, her vision slowly returned. Relief, but the nausea didn't let up, and every wave of it brought the fear rushing back: that pressure behind her eye, a constant reminder of what had just happened.
At La Fouly, she slowed down.
"My friends were there. They motivated me, encouraged me, convinced me to keep going."
So she went on.
Two kilometers later, the vomiting returned. Midday sun. Dehydration closing in. Sixty kilometers and 2,500 meters of climbing still ahead.
That's when she knew.
"My limit was reached for that day. And I dropped out."
Knowing when to stop
Quitting was never going to be easy, especially after coming back to Chamonix determined to rewrite the story of her first DNF. But sometimes, victory isn't pushing through at any cost.
"My health matters more than a finish line."
Another day, another race, another set of circumstances, the limit might have looked different. But that day, the joy was gone, and her health was on the line. So she chose to stop.
It takes courage to finish a race. It takes a different kind of courage to end one early.
She leaves this UTMB with more questions than answers, and with lessons she wouldn't trade for a finisher's medal, because ultrarunning was never just about pushing past your limits. It's about learning to recognize them.
Her bib for UTMB 2027 is already secured.
"Never two without three."
Next time, maybe the story writes itself differently.
"But one thing is certain: I'll keep dreaming big."
This is what resilience looks like to us: not the refusal to stop, but the wisdom to know when. We're proud to stand behind athletes like Geneviève who show that the strongest finish is sometimes the one you choose not to cross.
