#giga13rr

[bewuethr]

Gigathlon 2013, epilogue

A lot more than just six days of exercising had gone into our Gigathlon experience. From deciding to participate to kick-off meetings, equipment purchases, training weekends, preparatory races and organisational challenges, there was a bit of everything.

Cold, hard numbers

But of course at the heart of it was running, swimming, inline skating, road biking and mountain biking. And some more sports. From when we signed up in November 2012 until we started the race in July 2013, I did exactly 295 hours, 44 minutes and 34 seconds of training:

1368 km running (including 1 marathon with preparation)

1274 km cycling (lots off-road, hence the small number!)

20 hours 11 minutes of strength training

135 km of swimming

13 km of walking (in a "training setting", that is)

17 minutes of transitions

279 km of cross country skiing

89 km of inline skating

18 km of snowshoeing

resulting in 3176 km overall, with 48'400 m elevation.

Kick-off and final celebration

Quite apart from all the sweating, the six of us often met for "planning", as we called having dinner and chatting about Gigathlon. In November, Markus organised an awesome kick-off event, complete with customised Gigathlon cake:

And after all was said and done, Gabriela hosted a review and "thank you, supporters" dinner:

So yes, there were occasions where we didn't wear spandex.

Gearing up

Gigathlon is a "battle of material". Just to be able to toe the start line, a lot of equipment has to be around. Apart from small stuff such as a new wetsuit, I had to get two major pieces of equipment: new inline skates and a mountain bike.

I got the inline skates in March 2013 and ended up with fancy Powerslide R4:

And after a lot of deliberation, I went with a cross-country full suspension mountain bike, the Specialized Epic 29er, in May 2013.

Training and racing weekends

It felt like every race and weekend of training was just preparing for Gigathlon, and there was a bunch of it (all in 2013, links to race reports):

January 12: Dietiker Neujahrslauf kicked off the racing season.

January 19/20: Markus organised a snow sports weekend in Filisur. There was some cross-country skiing:

And an epic snowshoeing tour, blessed by cozy mountain weather:

March 2: I immersed myself in Norwegian culture and tried classic style cross-country skiing at Svanstulrennet.

March 10: Trying to reap the benefits of frequent training in Norway, I participated in the Engadin Skimarathon.

March 23: A few weeks before Boston, I raced the 10 km Swiss Championships in Uster.

April 15: Boston Marathon! (Hi Jen & Joel!)

April 19-28: I recovered from Boston and did nothing, but the rest of the Triple Couple project was at the ASVZ triathlon camp in Giverola, Spain.

May 4: SOLA relay race with TV Oerlikon, where I got to do my "favourite" leg again!

May 10-12: ASVZ tri weekend Ticino with half of the TriCo people:

May 18: GP Bern to kick off a three day TriCo sports weekend, including

May 19/20: training weekend in Biel. We had a look at the Biennathlon skating course and tested the MTB course of Gigathlon's day six with an epic eight hour tour:

Followed by missing a train due to the pizza guy being too slow, but then again, waiting for the next train was awesome due to said pizza.

The following day, we checked out the Biennathlon MTB course.

June 2: Reaping the benefits from all the course reconnaissance, we raced Biennathlon in great weather – just after the region had been hit by serious rainfalls and the whole starting area had to be moved.

June 8: To get a taste of multi day racing, we did Zumiker Lauf on Saturday, followed by

June 9: Thurathlon, which was pretty much like one day of Gigathlon.

June 15/16: More MTB course reconnaissance! We had a look at the course of day four (around Stanserhorn):

We enjoyed great views from our accommodation (pictured: Grosser and Kleiner Mythen, as well as Kleiner Benjamin):

There was a short run after the first day of mountain biking:

And all was topped off by sleeping in hay, wich was surprisingly comfortable!

On the second day, we did the MTB course of day three, including some saddle adjustments:

And finally, all came together in the Gigathlon week in July, where we effectively crossed Switzerland from east to west:

Scheduling woes

At one point, we had to determine who would do what during Gigathlon. Deliberations started as early as at the kick-off meeting:

And more plans were hatched during the snow sports weekend:

It wasn't simple. There were boundary conditions given by the organisers such as "the person doing the inline leg on day five must also swim" or "road bike and inline or inline and MTB on day three must be done by the same person". Then there were wishes, as in "I really want do die while riding over Susten Pass" or "I am very slow running uphill, give me the mountain stage of day one". And finally, every day should be as balanced as possible, just like the overall load of the week.

Obviously, I wrote a Matlab script to generate all valid combinations and then sort them by total estimated difference in racing time per day:

The biggest source of uncertainty were the estimates of how long each leg would take us, but thanks to an elaborate spreadsheet prepared by running and football data guru Roger Kaufmann, we had something to work with and base our decisions on some data.

Once the race drew closer, the whole supporter organisation wanted to be set up. Markus created a fancy seven page general plan with everything spelled out:

This and a daily coordination meeting in the evenings led to a completely problem free race week.

After the race, it was time to geek out over the generated data. Who placed where, in which percentile of the field, what was the quota of women racing the leg, and so on.

And finally, a comparison of what we estimated our total times would be with what they actually were:

The "Ist" columns shows the time actually required, and "Soll" has our estimates. I'd say, 28 and 10 minutes off over almost thirty hours for a week was pretty close!

This concludes what I wanted to write about Gigathlon last year. There are still a few race reports to be written, but that was the big one!

[bewuethr]

Gigathlon 2013, day 6

We had made it to the last day! Even though day number five had been less exhausting than others, the week started taking its toll. This is Markus and me looking super fresh during breakfast:

Markus would go on to do all of the sixth day alone, just like the day before. I was scheduled to do inline skating, swimming and road biking.

Inline skating: 42 km, 50 m elevation

The day's stage started in Lyss, quite a bit away from Bern. We had to take a train to get to the inline start. While in that train, we checked the overall standings to see if much could change during the day. Our neighbours were "Team Mizuno" five minutes ahead of us on 32nd place and "Die Nimmersattä" ("The Insatiables") less than one minute behind us on 34th place. 31st was more than 15 minutes ahead, and 35th more than 30 behind.

Curiously enough, a guy sitting next to us outed himself as 50% of the "Nimmersattä" team, so the enemy had a face now. Sadly, I didn't see much of that face for the rest of the day.

The course was marathon distance, winding its way to Neuchâtel where I would have the unbeatable pleasure of changing from inline skating into my wetsuit.

A few minutes before the start, I was frantically looking for a bathroom to avoid being uncomfortable for all of the skating, but there was none to be found, so I ended up asking a nearby factory (or whatever that was) if I could use their bathroom.

I could, and minutes later, we were off! I missed any of the faster groups to draft off, and it felt like everybody around me was going slow, so for a while I was passing a lot of people and skating on my own. Eventually, a little group followed me and we started taking turns. All the while, the scenery was very nice:

Our group stuck together for more than half of the distance. Here we are crossing a bridge with a not-so-nice grate:

After a while, my lack of training for this discipline caught up with me in the shape of not being able to hold a nice tuck and some pretty annoying lower back pain. I got dropped from the group and caught up again a few times, but eventually I had to let them go.

Little groups started passing me and I tried to hang on, but not with much success. It wasn't until a really, really big group passed me (think several dozen in one chaotic line) that I could latch on. Once in the big group, all I had to do was try and not have an accident – the skating took care of itself with no wind from the front and people pushing from the back when too much speed was lost.

The average level of technical skills in the group was not great, but it was the best I could get, so I had nothing to complain about.

About five kilometres from the finish, a special treat was waiting for us: a two kilometre running interlude! Everybody had to bring along shoes for the occasion. First we had to take off the inline skates:

And then carry them along for the running bit:

And afterwards put them on again. I actually didn't mind as everything was hurting from skating. After the running break, the large group was split up and everybody just finished on their own.

After about 110 minutes, I arrived at the transition zone in Neuchâtel and was led to our supporters. Despite many helpful hands, putting on the wetsuit was a struggle and the whole transition took almost fourteen minutes (including the rather long jog to the waterfront). Next time I'll bring the talcum powder!

I didn't know it then, but at this stage I'd already lost eight minutes on the "Nimmersattä" team, so they'd passed us – but other teams were slower, so we were still in 33rd.

Swim: 3 km

The swim was one big counterclockwise loop:

The water temperature was pleasant and I felt good, and in a (for me) respectable time, I was back on shore.

Factoring in my slow transition, though, my time was slow enough to let yet another team get in front of us, so we were now sitting in 34th.

I handed over to Andrea for the week's monster mountain bike stage.

Mountain bike: 65 km, 1200 m elevation

We had done the course as part of one of our training weekends, and despite the undeniable beauty of the landscape (the course went past the Creux du Van), I didn't protest when Andrea wanted to do that leg.

I remember some of the climbs being steep enough to make me think that I should maybe better walk, but long enough to make me think that walking maybe isn't smart either.

But as I said, somebody else suffered!

After a short train ride, I arrived in Chamblon to wait for my road bike finale.

Road bike: 70 km, 900 m elevation

The athletes were quite far apart from each other at this stage of the day, so when I got to start my leg, I was more or less alone. The course would start flat for about ten kilometres, then climb for about twenty kilometres and then descend for the rest until Lausanne.

Here I am leaving the transition zone:

I started with the mindset that it'd be a solo effort. I apparently also thought that it would be a sprint, because I went out way too hard. One guy was drafting off me, but once my body realised that there was no way it could go this hard for much longer, he passed me and told me to hang on.

I gladly accepted, and we stayed together for most of the climb. Shortly after the climb started, we happened upon a distressed team rider with her bike turned over, trying to fix something. We both had a look and decided that we couldn't really help as the rear shifting cable didn't have enough tension to shift any gears. I left her my multitool and best wishes, then we continued.

I lost my companion after a while (or he lost me), but eventually I reached the top of the climb. Newly motivated, I passed two team riders early on during the descent, and stayed together until the end of the leg, taking turns at the front and motivating each other.

Without them, it would have been much harder and less fun, so I was really glad they were around. It was also after the mediocre skating, the slow transition and the typical (less than impressive) swim, by far my best deed of the day. We were now in 34th overall, and (spoiler alert) would stay there until the end.

Run: 16 km, 50 m elevation

I handed off to Andrea, and she started her loop through Lausanne, along the lake, past the transition zone and toward the finish.

I was allowed to accompany her on my bike from the transition zone on, so after a while I went to the lake and waited.

While waiting, the girl with the problematic bike happened to be nearby. She recognised me, handed me back the tool and told me that she'd been able to finish the bike leg. I was happy my tool had been put to good use, and also that I had it back.

The last few kilometres were harder for Andrea than for me as she had to run, but I had the wrong cleats for the bike I used and couldn't clip in, so that was also a challenge. Not a big one, to be clear.

Minutes later, after more than 58 hours of running, swimming, skating and cycling, we did it! We finished the six days Gigathlon of 2013.

The fries afterwards tasted awesome, and I felt like just staying there forever and see all the happy finishers stumble around.

Of course we didn't stay forever, so after a while we gathered our stuff and tried to find the showers. We all had wisely signed up for the extra night on the camping ground as driving home now would neither have been smart nor fun.

As mentioned, we ended up 34th out of 99 teams who finished. Kaspar and Gabriela from TriCo Barrito defended their top ten placement and finished 7th, while TriCo Muntanella was not in the overall rankings due to that pesky broken rib. Markus had done the last two days on his own, and had he been ranked with the two day single men for days five and six, he would have cracked the top five!

I'll write one more post with a bit more statistics and behind the scenes stuff, but other than that, that was it, the highlight of my 2013 and endurance sports "career" until then!

Day six, stats (links to result lists)

Overall time: 58:08:59, 34/99

Day split: 10:45:34, 47/99

Skate 42 km: 1:48:46 (23.2 km/h), 54/106

Swim 3 km: 1:24:08 (2:48 min/100 m), 85/104

MTB 65 km: 4:01:25 (16.2 km/h), 64/104

Road bike 70 km: 2:08:40 (32.6 km/h), 21/106

Run 16 km: 1:22:35 (5:10/km), 36/106

[bewuethr]

Gigathlon 2013, day 5

Day five was there to give us a little break. The distances were short, the start was relatively late and the weather was awesome. Everything would take place in and around Bern and the logistics were set up such that no cars were needed (or allowed) the whole day.

For me, it would be a bike day with the opening road bike leg, then a break while Andrea would do skating and swimming, then the mountain bike leg for me and then relaxing while Andrea would do the run.

Road bike: 43 km, 650 m elevation

The road bike course was never quite flat with two major climbs, one starting about five kilometres in, the other one roughly in the middle of the course.

Even though the start was single seed, drafting was allowed. The order of starting was the reverse ranking and teams had gone first, so my day began only at 10:30 am. We were sent off in ten second intervals, so groups formed quickly.

The reverse start order meant that people in front of me tended to be slower, while the ones starting later were faster. For most of the time, I was in a group, but the climbs broke those up quite efficiently.

Toward the end, the really fast people rode past – so fast in fact that it was impossible for me to hang on.

After a bit more than 80 minutes, I arrived at the transition zone at Marzili, which was extremely busy at the time: cyclists arriving, inline skaters leaving, and later also the switch from mountain bike to running would take place there.

Inline skating: 13 km, 100 m elevation

Up next was a mandatory combination: the inline skater also had to do the swim. From Marzili, the course went to the airport at Bern-Belp:

Swim: 6 km

There, the athletes had to do the afwul switch into the wetsuit and got to enjoy six kilometres of swimming in the Aare river.

There had been again some doubts about the water temperature before we started, but I heard that it wasn't too bad.

Mountain bike: 27 km, 800 m elevation

After the swim, it was my turn to do the mountain bike leg, which took me to Bern's "local mountains".

The climbs were hefty and some descents technical,  and to my shame I took a wrong turn toward the end.

A rather fast descent switched into a very steep climb, so steep that almost everybody was walking. Finally, at the top of the unrideable section, I hopped on the saddle again and followed everybody else – which turned out to be a slight shortcut. I only realised that when Kaspar passed me shortly before the finish for the second time during the bike leg, and as I had never passed him, I must have taken this shortcut.

To quantify the damage, I tried to find other people's GPS tracks from the day. I did the red course, and the two green ones are examples of people who did it right:

So yes, that's about one kilometres of cheating. When trying to find correct GPS tracks, I found a lot of people who had taken the shortcut as well (like everybody around me at the time), so obviously the course marking was not great, but then again, it's always the athlete's responsibility to know the course. Let's just say that this didn't influence the overall ranking.

Run: 9 km, 100 m elevation

The run course followed the Aare river and ended on the Bundesplatz, the large square in front of the Federal Palace.

We didn't have to wait long before Andrea arrived:

She even got to do a short interview and explained how our team name "Agglo-Dugongs" came to be. And what a dugong is.

On our way back to the camp, a photographer snatched a picture of some of our supporters:

The fifth day lived up to its promise of being not as tough as the other days. In just a bit over five hours, we finished on the 29th place for the day and kept our 33rd place in the overall rankings. Barrito finished 11th for the day and were in 7th overall, while Muntanella was not in the overall rankings anymore, due to the earlier mentioned broken rib. Markus from TriCo Muntanella competed as a single man for the day, non-competitive as in "wouldn't show up in overall rankings", but very competitive in reality, faster than us and most single men for the day!

One more stage to go.

Day five, stats (links to result lists)

Overall time: 47:23:25, 33/102

Day split: 5:03:19, 29/102

Road bike 43 km: 1:23:37 (30.9 km/h), 31/108

Skate 13 km: 0:36:35 (21.3 km/h), 64/108

Swim 6 km: 0:39:42 (0:40 min/100 m), 58/108

MTB 27 km: 1:38:54 (16.4 km/h), 27/107

Run 9 km: 0:44:31 (4:57/km), 41/108

[bewuethr]

Gigathlon 2013, day 4

Day four was a relocation stage: from Ennetbürgen, we'd move to Bern. The swim and mountain bike would be in the Ennetbürgen region, the road bike would be used to get to Bern, and once arrived there, an out-and back inline/running combo would round off the day.

While not as brutal as the third day, this certainly was not an easy one, either. We split it up as follows: Andrea would swim and do the mountain bike part, I'd do the road bike to Bern, Andrea would skate to Burgdorf and I'd run back to Bern.

This meant that I got to enjoy a few more precious minutes of sleep than others:

Swim: 3 km

The swim was special in that the athletes boarded a ship, which took them to the swim start, and from there they'd swim to Stansstad.

I was a good supporter and got up in time to watch the transition from swim to MTB:

I also used the short ride from Ennetbürgen to Stansstad and back to warm up a little for my first road bike outing of the week.

Mountain bike: 43 km, 1000 m elevation

The mountain bike course circumnavigated Stanserhorn:

We had done the course on one of our weekends, so I knew its distinctive feature, an almost 1000 m relentless climb, firsthand. This must have been taken on the second half of the course, on the downhill part:

I enjoyed a rather quiet morning in the meantime. Eventually, Andrea returned and I was off for the road bike stage.

Road bike: 114 km, 1550 m elevation

The course was more or less straight to Bern:

Somehow, the organisers snuck in a considerable amount of elevation, most of which on the climb to Glaubenberg. Everything afterwards was just hills, whereas Glaubenberg felt like a proper mountain.

For most of the ascent, I rode with this guy who told me that this week was his honeymoon:

The climb seemed to be infinitely long, and I distinctly remember how happy I was when some guy offered me some flat coke and told me it would be just a few more turns to the top. Nothing worse than somebody telling you you're almost there, only for you to realise shortly afterwards that you're not almost there – but this guy spoke the truth.

I'm pretty sure my efforts pale compared to what this guy did to get to the top:

The fifteen kilometres after the highest point were all downhill, and while I'm not a great descender, I did manage to pass a few people. Back in the flat part, I put my head down and worked hard for a few minutes before looking around to see if honeymoon guy was still around. To my big surprise, there was a whole string of single men drafting – more or less everybody I passed during the downhill.

This was great news, because riding in a group is so much easier (and faster) than going solo. The group turned out to be pretty awesome with everybody doing their turns at the front. We reeled in a lot of athletes and small groups; the problem was only when catching up with bigger groups, as this tended to split up the bunch. After a particularly chaotic situation at an aid station, I finally lost the fastest people of the group and continued with a somewhat less motivated bunch.

Bern was near by now, and thanks to a (for me) aggressively ridden downhill section, I managed to catch up with the other guys again. I was even "complimented" on my dangerous descending, to which I thought that a) it wasn't dangerous and b) the guy wasn't obliged to follow me. Anyway, we were close to the finish, and I had spent most of the time in the fast group, leading to an okay time: a bit under four hours, almost a 30 km/h average and a top 30% ranking.

Time was neutralised upon arrival due to the logistics: Andrea wasn't supposed to start until I was on the train to Burgdorf to make sure she wouldn't be there before I was. I enjoyed a little bit of down time before leaving for Burgdorf:

Inline skating: 25 km, 100 m elevation

The inline course was quite exposed to wind, so being able to draft would come in handy.

The inline skaters could start whenever they wanted within the neutralisation time window; for the first, still neutralised part through Bern they were escorted, and then the timing started. This meant they would usually organise in small groups to start together:

But the groups didn't always stay together, resulting in some hard work in this case:

Run: 24 km, 450 m elevation

I hung out in Burgdorf in the meantime. The transition zone was close to where I had gone to non-commissioned officer school many years ago, but I did not get to see the actual barracks.

It was hot by now, and when Andrea arrived, I was glad to get into the forest for a while.

The course was very hilly, but pretty and quiet, mostly through forest and on small gravel paths. The field was strung out, so I didn't get to see a lot of competitors.

The biggest climb of the course came shortly after the halfway point, steep enough to make me almost walk, but thankfully that was for just about one kilometre.

Shortly before Bern, the course went through the "House of Sports", the HQ of Swiss Olympic, the (then) organisers of Gigathlon. And "through" is to be taken literally here; when the first athlete arrived, even the lead moto went into the building:

By the time I was there, though, there were no more cheering employees in the hallways. Still, it was fun to run through an office building as part of the race course. This was taken just after leaving the house:

From Ittigen, it was about four more kilometres to the finish on Bern's Allmend. This was taken after finishing, including two of our awesome support crew:

The camp was already set up when I arrived. As always, the tent layout was carefully crafted:

Not far to go now! The next day would be a "City Gigathlon" stage, all in and around Bern, with relatively short distances. Almost a recovery day! And after that, there was only one more day to go.

This evening, a lot of new people arrived, namely all those set to do the last two days of the race, in a separate category.

We finished the day as the 38th couple, dropping one place in the overall rankings to 33rd.

Day four, stats (links to result lists)

Overall time: 42:20:06, 33/102

Day split: 11:16:53, 38/102

Swim 3 km: 1:02:26 (2:05/100 m), 66/107

MTB 43 km: 2:53:59 (14.8 km/h), 74/107

Road bike 114 km: 3:54:12 (29.2 km/h), 31/106

Skate 25 km: 1:17:19 (19.4 km/h), 74/105

Run 24 km: 2:08:57 (5:22/km), 19/103

[bewuethr]

Gigathlon 2013, day 3

Day three was supposed to be the toughest of the whole race, featuring a grueling 123 km / 2650 m elevation bike leg over Susten pass, and a mountain bike and run leg that were no jokes, either. Luckily, Andrea really wanted to do Susten, so I let her!

Unfortunately, this meant that my day would start very early with getting to the lake and doing some swimming. Clearly I was thrilled at the prospect of getting wet while trying to put on my suit at 5:00 am:

Swim: 1.5 km

Because it was such a long day, the couple and single athletes only had to do one swim lap, while the teams got to do two.

Gigathlon starts are a fine thing: there is no gun going off, but instead the Gigathlon song is played, and when it's finished, the day begins. Combined with a pretty sunrise, this made for a great ambiance:

The camp didn't look shabby at the time, either:

Of course I didn't get to see much of that, as I was swimming. But breathing to my left was prettier than to my right! The swim went fine, and while "72th out of 107" doesn't look great, it was much, much better than many of my triathlon swims, which often look more like "106 out of 107", so my 34 and something minutes were a win in my book.

Because of the replacement timing chip, which apparently wasn't yet properly registered, the announcer couldn't tell the waiting athletes my team name, but only "replacement chip", so Andrea had no way of knowing I'd finished. (Also, add in my surprisingly "fast" time!)

That wasn't a problem, though, I just went into the transition zone to find her after a few seconds. Surprisingly, she said something like "I'm done" and "devastated" and "can't anymore" before taking off. The riddle would be solved only at the end of the day: when preparing her bike, she blew a tire, and after replacing it, dropped the skewer and had it fall apart into many pieces, including these weird little springs that don't seem to make any sense. Time was running out, but she managed to be at transition on time, and if she hadn't told me, I would never have known that there had been a problem.

Road bike: 123 km, 2650 m elevation

The real problem was ahead of her: 123 km with lots of climbing!

The elevation profile doesn't do the course justice, but notice the highest point at more than 2000 m a.s.l.:

This meant that there was a lot of time for me. With one of our supporters, I took the extra train to Erstfeld, where the inline skating leg would start:

All the while Andrea was doing this:

Even though I didn't need it there, I brought along my mountain bike to make sure the new collar would fit. The shop indeed carried the part, and I opted for the quick release version, keeping me from shearing off any more screws:

The supporter took my bike back to Flüelen, where I'd transition from inline skates to MTB, and I went to the transition zone and waited. It took Andrea exactly five hours to arrive, good for the top 40% on the stage and second fastest time of all female couple athletes!

Inline skating: 18 km, 50 m elevation

I started my first inline skating leg of the week. I hadn't prepared a lot for inline skating, but my new semi-speed skates would do their part, or so I hoped. The course was going up to the end of Lake Lucerne, followed the west shore a bit, and after a U-turn led to Flüelen:

It went fairly well, but it proved to be hard to stay in a decent aero position. That's probably where some more training would have come in handy. Until the turnaround point, I got passed by a few people that were too fast to follow and passed a few myself, but was mostly working on my own:

After the turnaround, I found a group of three at a nice pace and stayed with them until the end, taking turns in drafting and leading. There was one tricky passage up a short and slippery ramp, but volunteers pushed us uphill.

This leg surprisingly turned out to be the best of my whole six days, placing in the fastest 17% – but at just 45 minutes, that didn't make much of a difference. But a good performance in a day going well so far wouldn't hurt, either!

Mountain bike: 37 km, 1400 m elevation

The transition was a whirlwind of being sat down on a chair, have many hands pull off various items of equipment, shove bananas and sports drink in my face, put on my bike shoes and send me off after what felt like a few seconds. I even forgot to take off the bib number, which I wouldn't need on the bike, but I think I realised it only after biking, so it wasn't much of a bother.

The MTB leg looked like this:

The part along the lake was naturally flat. After this, it was almost 15 kilometres of steady climbing on asphalt and later gravel roads, followed by another 15 kilometres downhill to Brunnen, where time would be neutralised.

We had done almost exactly this course during one of our training weekends, so I knew what to expect. The climb was long and brutal, but I found a bunch of people with whom I stayed for most of it, chatting at times (and just breathing loudly at others). This was taken about two thirds up the climb:

I remember when doing the course during our training weekend, some passages seemed almost impossible to ride, but the race course turned out to skip these places.

The downhill part was very fast at first and not very technical; the last part was a bit trickier. I felt great during all of it, not giving up too much time to the specialists, and I look back to this MTB leg as one of the greatest racing experiences of the week. The top 20% placement was a welcome addition to the good feeling.

Once back in Flüelen, the clock was stopped as the runner first had to cross the lake on a ferry, leading to one of the few opportunities of the week where the teams actually had some time during the day.

Shortly after this was taken, Andrea left for the ferry and I had some down time, well spent by eating all I could get my hands on. After a while, we took the train to where our cars were and headed back to the camp in Ennetbürgen.

Run: 23 km, 750 m elevation

The run course started at the historically significant Rütli and worked its way along the lake, accumulating quite some elevation metres along the way.

I didn't see any of the course, but this is what it looked like while being run:

We were at the finish line ahead of any of the TriCo athletes doing the run, so we could duly welcome them all. Kaspar from the ultra fast Barrito team (2nd fastest run, 7th fastest day, 8th overall after the day) even got interviewed:

After 2:19 hours of running and 11:21:24 of racing for the whole day, Andrea arrived and ended great day of racing. We placed 26th for the day and improved to 32nd in the overall standings. Barrito, as already mentioned, was comfortably in the top ten, and Muntanella, our third team, unfortunately dropped out of the overall rankings as the earlier mentioned broken rib proved to be too much of a challenge, so they hadn't started the day.

Half the race was over, we were still alive and doing well, the toughest day was behind us – everything was looking up!

Day three, stats (links to result lists)

Overall time: 31:03:13, 32/104

Day split: 11:21:24, 26/104

Swim 1.5 km: 0:34:13 (2:17 min/100 m), 72/107

Bike 123 km: 5:00:24 (24.6 km/h), 40/107

Skate 18 km: 0:45:40 (23.6 km/h), 18/108

MTB 37 km: 2:42:09 (13.7 km/h), 21/107

Run 23 km: 2:18:58 (6:03 min/km), 28/107