A week ago Thursday, soon-to-be Mount Marathon rookie Kilian Jornet walked out of his home in Chamonix, near the juncture that connects France, Italy and Switzerland, and spent nearly 24 hours hiking, climbing and running with a friend in the Alps.
On Friday, though he had initially not planned to race, he spurred his legs to a seventh-place finish in the European Vertical Kilometer Championships -- runners climbed 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) on a 3.8-kilometer (2.35-mile) course.
Saturday morning, Jornet and a friend bagged Mont Blanc, which at 15,781 feet is the tallest peak in the Alps.
Sunday marked a "rest'' day -- Jornet and his girlfriend, Emelie Forsberg of Sweden and also an accomplished mountain runner, flew to Anchorage and arrived that evening.
And before noon Monday, Jornet was atop McHugh Peak in the Chugach Range. Jornet that evening appeared at Skinny Raven Sports in downtown Anchorage, signed autographs, charmed star-struck mountain runners -- in their circles, it was the equivalent of Lebron James dropping by the Fairview Rec Center -- and took part in an well-attended outdoor panel discussion that also featured Forsberg.
Largely considered the world's best all-around mountain and trail runner, and a world-class ski mountaineer, Jornet may just be the world's most interesting man in alpine athletics.
"I like the mountains, and I like to explore different things,'' said Jornet, who in 2014 was named the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. "The lifestyle's beautiful. The mountains give you a lot of good moments.''
The 27-year-old Spaniard, who grew up in the Pyrenees, on Saturday will race Mount Marathon, the storied race up and down the slopes of the 3,022-foot peak overlooking Seward and Resurrection Bay. Alaska's mountain runners are amped to match themselves against a man 2009 Mount Marathon champion Matias Saari calls a "transcending athlete.''
"He's the guy,'' Saari said. "He can win a 45-minute race or a 100-mile race, or a multi-day race. His versatility is pretty amazing. I'd call him a once-in-a-generation athlete.''
After Mount Marathon, Jornet will travel to Colorado to defend his title in the Hardrock 100-Mile Endurance Run, which features 34,000 feet of climbing, an equal amount of descent and an average elevation of 11,000 feet. Last year, his time of 22 hours, 41 minutes, slashed nearly 42 minutes off the course record.
This is Jornet's second visit to Alaska. Last year, he merely climbed Mount McKinley and descended -- skiing part of the return -- in an astonishing 11 hours, 40 minutes, the fastest known time for that feat. He is a multiple-time Skyrunning World Series champion, and a multiple Vertical Kilometer champion. He has won races like the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run in California, Hardrock and the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a 100-miler in the Alps.
Since 2012, Jornet has also devoted himself to his project, "Summits of My Life,'' aiming to notch the fastest ascents and descents of the world's most notable mountains. His Mount McKinley feat was part of the project.
Jornet, who is 5-foot-7 and a whippet 128 pounds, said he's excited to race Mount Marathon. He was encouraged to place it on his race schedule by Rickey Gates, the Coloradoan who is his teammate on the Salomon international running team and has run the race the last two years.
"He said, 'You should go to the race,' '' Jornet said. "I've seen videos and read some things about it. The images -- it looks really fun.''
Gates said he told Jornet that Mount Marathon is a unique race that draws spectators by the thousands.
"I told him it's the most European-style race we have in America,'' Gates said. "I've done a lot of racing around the States and there's no other race like it.''
Jornet grew up in the Catalonia region of Spain, where his father Eduard was a mountain guide and his mother Nuria a teacher and ski mountaineer. The Pyrenees served as a playground for Kilian and his sister, Naila.
"Every day after school, I was in the mountains,'' Jornet said. "When you are outside, in the mountains, it's good days.''
Jornet was just 5 when he climbed the highest peak in the Pyrenees, 11,168-foot Aneto.
"When he was young, we soon realized that he was a child that we would have to tire out,'' Jornet's mother told Gates for a TrailRunner magazine story Gates wrote in 2011.
When Kilian was 10, the whole family trekked the length of the Pyrenees, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, in 40 days.
Mountains serve as Jornet's canvas, whether he's running, climbing or skiing.
He was a sponsored athlete as a teenager, and by his 20s was so successful in mountain circles that he reached one-name status: Kilian. These days he has 194,000 Twitter followers.
He speaks Spanish, Catalan, English, French and Italian, and is learning Swedish.
And Jornet foresees a lifetime spent in the mountains, discovering and exploring new places and new races, like Mount Marathon.
"I'm not the type of person who likes to do the same thing every year,'' Jornet explained. "It's really nice to get out of your comfortable area.''
Reach Doyle Woody at dwoody@alaskadispatch.com and follow him on Twitter at @JaromirBlagr