Road to CCC: Tijana’s Journey to UTMB Mont-Blanc 2026
108 km. Around 6,000 metres of elevation gain. 25 hours on the course. Nine months of consistent preparation.
For Team Arduua runner Tijana Pljeskonjic, completing CCC at UTMB Mont-Blanc 2026 was much more than crossing a finish line.
It was a journey that started years earlier with a skyrunner flying past her on an alpine ridge, developed into a fascination with trail and mountain running, and eventually became a commitment to see just how far her body and mind could go.
In January 2026, Tijana started training with Arduua and Coach David Garcia. Together they spent the following months building towards one major goal: CCC at UTMB Mont-Blanc.
This is Tijana’s road to CCC.
Tijana Pljeskonjic, last long session before CCC, on Trofeo Kima trails.
From Serbia to Japan, Germany—and the mountains
Originally from Serbia, Tijana describes herself as carrying plenty of Balkan spirit, a love for the outdoors, and a passion for activities that challenge both body and mind.
In her twenties, she studied literary arts and worked in Japan—an experience that left her deeply connected to Eastern culture and its values around nature and community.
For the past ten years, Hamburg in northern Germany has been home, where she works in the medical device industry.
And then there is another important part of her personality:
“I’m one of those rather stubborn characters, so I often get motivated by ‘impossible’ things—especially when I’m told something cannot be done.”
That trait would eventually come in handy.
It all started with a skyrunner
Interestingly, running wasn’t Tijana’s first mountain passion.
It was climbing.
Rock climbing and alpine climbing have played a major role in her adult life, with countless holidays spent climbing somewhere in the mountains.
Then, a few years ago, something happened on the Grigna massif in Italy.
Tijana was on a long alpine ridge climb. Her team was moving slowly, and she was tired of carrying a heavy rope and sweating her way along the ridge.
She wanted to feel light and fast.
Then, where the climbing route intersected with a hiking trail, a skyrunner flew past.
“He looked completely light, competent, efficient, and like he was having the best time of his life. My mind was blown and I thought: I want to be him when I grow up!”
After descending, Tijana met more skyrunners and started talking with them.
The seed had been planted.
She began researching trail running and skyrunning, adding runs whenever possible to her climbing trips. In late 2024, she signed up for a small race in the Italian Alps simply to find out whether this new sport was something she wanted to pursue.
The answer was very clearly yes.
“Thereafter, the passion—or better say obsession—only increased, and still keeps going!”
The road towards CCC
Once Tijana learned more about UTMB, she set herself a long-term goal: to reach UTMB sometime before turning 50.
During 2025, she completed six races, including the 60K edition of Adamello Ultra.
The shorter races were fun, but something about the longer distances attracted her more.
They tested not only physical ability, but mental resilience.
By the end of 2025, Tijana started wondering whether she was already capable of making the jump to 100K.
She applied for CCC.
At the same time, she made another important decision.
If she was going to take on a challenge of this magnitude, she wanted to stop trying to figure out everything herself.
“It was kind of a New Year’s resolution for 2026: don’t be too stubborn, partner up with a coach, commit, reach the next level.”
And that is when her journey with Arduua began.
Training with Arduua and Coach David Garcia
Tijana started working with Arduua Coach David Garcia in January—even before she knew whether she had secured a place at CCC.
Their first conversation immediately changed her approach.
At the time, Tijana had plans for several races, including Matterhorn Ultraks only one week before CCC and hopes of racing Grigne SkyMarathon in September.
David’s response came quickly.
“Five minutes into our first meeting, David said very concisely and directly: Too many races. You cannot do them all. There is no recovery time. What do you really want to do?”
Tijana appreciated the directness.
Together they separated the season into primary goals and optional races and started building the training around what mattered most.
But structured coaching wasn’t simply about receiving workouts.
Tijana lives in Hamburg—a very flat environment for someone preparing for 6,000 metres of climbing. She also has a demanding full-time job, travels, climbs and wants time for family, friends and recovery.
She describes balancing everything as a weekly game of Tetris.
Training therefore had to work with her real life.
“David took a great interest in my motivations and psychological process, so from the beginning it felt like a partnered journey.”
They worked on pacing, strength, mindset and nutrition, gradually discovering what worked best for Tijana.
And there was another metric David kept returning to:
Did you enjoy it?
“Joyfulness was not a side product, but an assessment criterion equal to all others.”
For Tijana, that mattered.
She is willing to work extremely hard—but particularly for things she genuinely enjoys and feels strongly motivated by.
Arduua Coach, David garcia
Winter intervals in Hamburg—and finding mountains wherever possible
Nine months of preparation sounds difficult.
But Tijana says the training itself was rarely the hard part.
Even Tuesday interval sessions in the middle of a Hamburg winter—running with spikes over icy trails in Stadtpark—were something she enjoyed.
The real challenge was fitting everything together.
Living somewhere flat also meant that meaningful elevation training usually required travelling to the Alps or Serbia.
And that created another problem.
Whenever she finally reached the mountains, she wanted to make every metre count.
Sometimes, too much.
“Whenever I was in the mountains, I often felt compelled to take the most of it and thus overtrain—which here and there had some consequences.”
Learning when not to do more became part of the process.
Andorra: the test before CCC
In June, Tijana lined up for the 80K race at Andorra by UTMB.
But David had positioned it differently.
It wasn’t the main goal.
It was a race to learn and test.
That changed Tijana’s mindset. She approached Andorra more relaxed, enjoyed the experience and discovered more about how her body and mind responded over a long mountain race—particularly in heat, which she considers one of her biggest weaknesses.
She finished.
And something changed.
“When I reached the finish line, I was pretty sure CCC was a realistic goal.”
She also got to share some post-race beers with other Arduua runners and exchange experiences.
The confidence was growing.
CCC was becoming real.
“We have done the work.”
Despite the successful preparation, doubts appeared in the final week before Chamonix.
Life had become busy after Andorra. Tijana worried she hadn’t followed the plan closely enough.
Had she become overconfident?
Was she really ready?
During their final pre-race meeting, David gave her a simple reminder:
Her body already had the memory of the work they had done.
That message followed her into the race.
“We have done the work. We have the muscle memory. The tank is more than full. We have pushed through. It’s an execution of a skill set we already have.”
There was another lesson Tijana carried with her:
An ultra starts towards the end.
Earlier in the season, she had repeatedly gone too hard at the beginning of races.
At CCC, she turned David’s pacing advice into a mantra.
Let people overtake.
Save something.
The time to race will come later.
CCC: 25 hours in the mountains
Race day began almost perfectly.
Heat was Tijana’s biggest concern, but instead she stood at the start in mild rain and comfortable temperatures.
Her family was there, including her niece and nephew, who were experiencing an event like this for the first time.
It made the start especially emotional.
The opening hours felt almost effortless.
Cool temperatures. Clouds occasionally opening to reveal glaciers. Mountains all around.
“For the first 40K or so, I thought I could go on forever!”
At Champex-Lac, she met her family and one of her closest friends, changed clothes and ate a warm meal.
Then darkness arrived.
The rain stopped.
The sky cleared.
And the stars came out.
Conditions couldn’t have been much better.
But sometime after midnight, the real race began.
“The night took too long.”
Tijana had practised running in darkness throughout the year.
Darkness wasn’t the problem.
Sleep was.
She hadn’t expected the sleepiness to hit so hard.
On the way towards Trient, runners began instinctively moving together.
“We were like a line of zombies, staying close to each other, clearly all of us orientating based on where the next runner’s feet were going.”
She noticed runners without poles struggling more with balance and became grateful that David had convinced her to train with them.
The night stretched on.
Tijana had heard that a course change meant the race would now finish at approximately 99 km.
She made a mental deal with herself.
At 90 km, she would wake herself up, empty the tank and start counting down the final kilometres.
Then she reached Vallorcine.
The course wasn’t ending at 99 km.
It was 107.8 km.
That realization hurt.
There were tears. Voice messages with her partner. Two more five-minute micronaps.
Then acceptance.
The countdown would simply have to start later.
Quitting wasn’t really an option
Through all of this, Tijana says she didn’t seriously consider quitting.
There was a powerful reason.
She had promised her niece and nephew that they would run across the finish line together.
Her 13-year-old niece lives with scleroderma, an incurable autoimmune disease.
Tijana wanted her to witness something specific.
“I really wanted her to be part of an experience where suffering and joy coexist. I wanted her to see that it is possible to push through something hard and come out smiling.”
As the night became harder, that thought became stronger.
“I wanted to make it, even if I needed to crawl on all fours.”
There was still a Plan B.
If she genuinely couldn’t continue, she would sleep for a full hour and then walk—even if she had to walk “like a sloth”—as long as she could stay ahead of the cutoff.
Forward was forward.
Small mistakes become big after 20 hours
Looking back, Tijana doesn’t think her biggest mistakes happened during the race itself.
Many happened before it.
The days leading into CCC were hectic, and she hadn’t switched into race-focus mode early enough.
Most importantly, she could have slept more.
Starting an ultra without enough accumulated sleep became significant when she entered a full night on the course.
There were other small lessons.
A communication misunderstanding meant her family didn’t bring drinks she expected at Champex-Lac.
She assumed coffee would be available at aid stations because it had been available at other races—without checking.
Busy aid stations took longer than expected, and sometimes she escaped the crowds without actually taking everything she needed.
None of these things alone destroyed the race.
But that is precisely Tijana’s lesson:
“Planning the detail really matters when small mistakes can accumulate to big effect later.”
The people behind the finish line
Tijana’s CCC finish belongs to more than one person.
Preparing for an ultra changes everyday life.
Friday evenings become quiet dinners because Saturday means a long run.
Trips and social events get planned around training, tapering, racing and recovery.
Partners, family and friends become part of the training journey whether they run or not.
And in Chamonix, Tijana had an extraordinary support team.
More than ten friends and family members travelled from different countries to share race week with her.
Her partner encouraged her through the darkest part of the night.
And behind the preparation was nine months of work with David.
“I don’t think I could have made it if I kept working alone and with my mindset and training methodology from the year before.”
“Overtaking is for the end.”
Six kilometres from the finish, something changed.
Tijana changed clothes.
And she remembered David’s words again.
Overtaking is for the end.
After almost an entire day and night on the course, it was finally time to empty the tank.
She increased the pace.
She smiled.
She soaked up the spectators’ cheers during the descent towards Chamonix.
This time there was no reason to save anything.
She knew she was going to finish.
“This is the kind of memory that cannot be bought or engineered, and is going to last for all of us throughout our lifetime.”
Her niece and nephew joined her for the final 500 metres.
The rest of her team waited close to the finish, armed with voices and cowbells.
According to Tijana, they were loud enough to “wake up even the dead mountaineers at Chamonix graveyard.”
Then came the finish line.
After nine months of preparation and 25 hours on the course, the circle was complete.
When the mind wants to stop—but the body keeps going
CCC changed Tijana’s understanding of resilience.
Before the race, she believed her mind was stronger than her body.
After CCC, she wasn’t so sure.
At the beginning, her inner child wanted to run freely when glaciers appeared through the clouds. Her rational mind had to hold her back.
Later, her body could continue while her mind desperately wanted to sleep.
At other moments, her mind wanted to push while her body insisted on a slower rhythm.
“I always thought my mind is stronger than my body, but what I learned this time is that the body can keep going even when the mind is at its limit, crying, wanting to just sleep.”
Her conclusion is beautifully simple:
“As long as one or the other keeps pushing, you reach a finish line—and the more the two are in sync, the more joyous it is.”
Only after CCC, she says, did she truly understand just how much of an ultra takes place inside the mind.
So… was it worth it?
Immediately after CCC, Tijana wrote:
“My mind keeps thinking: what the hell did I do that for?”
A fair question after 25 hours.
But with some distance, her answer is clear.
Yes.
Both the race and the journey were worth it.
She had pushed her physical limits before. Going beyond her mental limits through an entire night was something new.
And rather than satisfying her curiosity, CCC seems to have created several new ones.
There are dreams of MIUT Madeira.
There is Trofeo Kima 2028, with Tijana and David now considering what races and development could take her towards that goal.
She wants to become better on technical terrain and return closer to the thing that originally drew her into running: moving efficiently and freely through steep, climbable mountain terrain.
And despite declaring at the CCC finish line that there would be “never again an all-nighter,” Tor des Géants and multi-day races are apparently still occupying a corner of her imagination.
At the same time, she wants to explore more small, less commercial and community-oriented races.
“The beauty of being just an ordinary runner is that all of these choices are entirely up to you!”
Tijana’s advice to runners dreaming about CCC
For runners wondering whether they could one day take on CCC themselves, Tijana’s message is encouraging.
Prepare properly—physically and mentally.
Not simply because insufficient preparation increases the risk of injury or a DNF.
Prepare because being there is an opportunity.
The mountains, the atmosphere and the landscape deserve to be experienced rather than merely survived.
“To any runner who is curious or inspired to run CCC, I’d definitely say you won’t regret it, and with proper preparation—physical and mental—you definitely can do it.”
Training is not only about reaching the finish line.
It’s about building enough capacity to enjoy the journey there.
From one Arduua runner to another
Tijana ends her story not with another race goal, but with an invitation to the community.
“I have met only a few other Arduua runners, but it does seem many of us share passions across disciplines. I would definitely like to meet more members, get recommendations for cool races and exchange experiences. Ping me when in North Germany, the Alps or the Balkans!”
And perhaps that sums up her CCC journey particularly well.
One runner did the running.
But she didn’t do it alone.
Nine months of training. A coach guiding the process. Family and friends adapting, supporting and travelling. Fellow runners sharing experiences. A niece and nephew waiting to run those final metres.
And finally, after 25 hours:
They really freakin’ did it. 💪❤️🏔️
Tijana Pljeskonjic – Team Arduua 🏁 CCC by UTMB 2026 🏔️ 108 km / ~6,000 m D+ ⏱️ ~25 hours 🏃♀️ Coached by David Garcia
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