I traveled to Switzerland for this race on Wednesday. The race started on Friday night at 10pm, so this gave me a little time to settle in, but not too much time I was twiddling my thumbs. I was lucky to stay with a Swiss friend which really made for a relaxing build up. No worrying about eating out, staying in a hotel. It was all very relaxed.
I spent Thursday wandering around Zurich. This is my fifth visit to the city and I still love this place. Swiss life really does have an appeal in my opinion. I wandered down to the lake, seen of three Ironman attempts (2 finishes and one spectacular bike crash). This bought back some special memories and I was somewhat sad that on this occasion my family were not with me. Going into a 100km race maybe this was not the time to be getting all sentimental.
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| Carbo-loading in central Zurich. |
Friday was a particularly a challenging day. Usually race day comes, you eat some breakfast, drink a coffee and get ready to go. When the race starts at 10pm...race day really really drags on. You wake up...have some breakfast...think about the race....wait...have some lunch....wait...think about the race...well you get the idea. Myself and Donnino (Alain's flat mate and fellow competitor) went for coffee on Friday afternoon at Canal Grande. We met an "interesting" gentleman, Tian Harlan. Tian Harlan was the creator of the Chromachron Colortime watch. A 70s sensation, that I'm sure made him a lot of money. He seemed a very down to earth guy and it was interesting speaking to him about his history in the watch business. Just check out this watch, how the times have changed. Well it would seem Mr Harlan is trying to keep up with the times...Colortime now available on iPhone!
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| The Chromachron watch, so seventies! |
We took the train to Biel from Zurich at around 5pm. Still a whole 5 hours until the race. After a week of eating almost solely pasta we decided to eat something a little different. A yummy portion of plain rice. I was looking forward to my first proper meal after the race.
Arriving in Biel the race started to become real. This was different to any other ultra I had competed in. This event had that 'big event' feel. With other 1,000 competitors I guess it is a pretty big event. We found the food tent and settled their. I had travelled down with Donnino and Joachim. Joachim was Donnino's bike support. At the 22km point in this event each competitor can pick up a bike support who will to guide the runner, feed them and massage them through the event. The bike supporters or the "Coach" as they are known in Biel leave their runners temporarily at 56km before meeting back up the runners at 67km and then see them through to the end. I was aware this was going to be a long night for both the runners and riders! Alain was my bike support, but he was joining us later as he had a busy day at work to contend with. Sitting in the food tent we could all feel the atmosphere growing. I was started to use the loo more frequently than required. This was all getting very real.
Alain arrived and we discussed tactics and prepared nutrition. It was quite amusing to see his bike. A serious triathlete his usual bike really is a nice piece of kit. His bike for tonight however was a totally different piece of kit. The sort of bike you see an old lady riding along on. We had attached a basket to the back in A-team fashion with a couple of shoelaces and added bottle holders with gaffer tape. However the holders were too big for my Powerade bottles, so we beefed up the Powerade bottles by taping cardboard to them. We were a team to be reckoned with!
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| Mean machine! |
Before we knew it Alain and Joachim were heading off to the 22km point. All the "Coaches" headed off en masse. We wish each other luck. I really hoped Joachim was going to have a good night with Donnino. I knew it would be challenging at times for the Coaches. Donnino and I were left to have a couple more toilet stops and we headed off to the start. The anticipation was incredible. I was interviewed live on radio on the start line. Typically British it went something like this "sorry, what, do you speak English?". I don't know exactly what I said, something along the lines of being excited and how happy I was to be here racing in Switzerland. On the start line were some members of the Polish ultrarunning team.
After a countdown from 10, the loudest start gun ever and a front line charge from some American football players we were off. The Polish went straight to the front with their flag. This was great to see and even from behind you could see the smiles on their faces. The start was crazy quick and I quickly slipped into 40th odd place. Very easy to see how this was done, a day's worth of anticipation had been released and the crowds of spectators pretty large. I was running 7m10 per mile pace and getting my arse kicked. Surely this couldn't continue?
I settled quite nicely into the 7m10 pace, didn't feel amazing but I figured I would need an hour to get into it. I was advised for the first section up to 22km I wouldn't need a head torch as it was well lit...hhmmmm...I don't think so. There were some sections where it was really dark and I had to speed up to catch someone and run with them. I was very relaxed about this and I thought we would have a laugh about it at the end. At around 6km into the race we have a fairly steep climb of roughly 2.5km (100m climbing) so I drop in a slow mile split, followed by a fairly tasty one for an ultra.
Conditions on the night are fantastic, cool with no breeze. It could of been worse, we had a lot of rain during the week and during the day. It seemed to clear up in time for the start which was great. I understand this is a stark contrast to last year's deluge!
This first part of the race took us through Aarberg. This part of the race was very special, with lots of support especially as you pass over the bridge in this village. The picture below kind of says it all.
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| Crossing the bridge at Aarberg. Sorry no picture of me here. |
I made it to 22km feeling reasonably comfortable. This is where I met Alain and at this stage we were pretty jovial. However this didn't last long. At about 30km...things started getting a little tricky...my legs started to fade me and I had to start working hard for the pace I was running. Myself and Alain had been talking a bit, but I asked if we could have a little "quiet time". I'm not exactly sure what Alain thought at this point, but I expect it was something like "oh shit". I wanted to just concentrate regain my composure, but it really wasn't going well. I didn't feel awful, but I didn't feel awfully good. I was feeling quite negative but also fairly logical. I believed I would not be finishing tonight. However, the only place to get a bus back to the start was at 56km. So I figured, I would just keep plodding on as this was the quickest way to get there and then pull out and accept it wasn't my day.
The reason I was struggling so much was my nutrition strategy. I was taking a gel every 20 minutes, a strategy I had tried in training with good success. However, I had not tried the strategy when running late in the evening with a full three meals in my body from the day. I think because of this my body couldn't take them down quite so quickly and they sat on my stomach a little. Alain was an amazing help here. I really didn't want to put anything in my mouth but he forced me to keep taking fluids. Somewhere close to the 56km point I started coming back alive. The gels had been diluted by the fluids, and my legs started to respond.
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| Cool race numbers in Biel. |
The Emmendam trail really was quite tricky in places. Lots of large round stones covered by grass and dew. This made the stones hard to see and with my legs not feeling quite as agile as I would have liked I knew I had to concentrate hard through this section. So that is what I did. I started reeling people in at this point and this was lots of fun. Running along you were guide by some dim lanterns that were left out. These really helped make navigation a non-issue for this event. Once in a while you would see a different sort of light ahead, different from the lanterns and that's when you knew you were closing in on another competitor. This happened a lot on the trail and really helped me concentrate my effort. On this 11km section I overtook 6 runners whilst running and another handful through by getting through the aid station so quickly.
Having spent 30km-56km being overtaken this really lifted my spirits. I was now running quite well. Not fast, but I was holding a solid pace. We found out that fellow competitor Donnino had dropped out at 56km. He passed me during my bad spell. This was possibly the worst point in the race for me. I had been very confident in the build up to the race and to be fair to Donnino (who was aiming for sub 8) he was probably not expecting to overtake me, at least not this early on. So now it was clear not only to me that I was suffering but also to others, this makes the suffering somewhat more real. I did however smile and put on a good show as they went past. I wonder what they thought. Gutted for Donnino, but 100km is a long way to run and it just sometimes doesn't go how you want. He will be back for certain!
Coming out of the trail Alain was waiting. I think he was suprised to see me quite so soon. He figured I was in 12th place, but had it confirmed as 11th place when we hit the next aid station.
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| Hard to get lost in Biel |
Coming down the hill and for the next few miles I clock a few more 7m4x miles. Now I was quite close to the finish, but I was tired. The sun was coming up and I was slowing down. I had stopped overtaking people, not just because I was slowing down, but also because I had worked myself into the top 10 so there were not many left to overtake. The path on this final section was following the river. It really annoyed me as it was a little stoney. Not too bad but I just wanted a flat road, and I was tired and even the smallest thing can get to you. I caught a glimpse of someone in the distance but I just couldn't reel them in. I started feeling a bit sorry for myself. Here I hit a few 8 minute plus miles. My worst section in the race for a while. With 5 miles to go I made a conscious decision to up the pace and catch the man in front. I said to Alain "let's do this" or something to this tune. I thought back to some of my training runs, in particular a 5 hour run where I finished the last 5 miles at 7m10 and also my run at the Thames Trot back in February where I finished the last 13 miles in around 7m15. I knew I could handle the pace until the finish. So I proceeded to churn out some 7m30 miles, I overtook the runner in front and made sure I did it very strongly.
In some respects this was a really good point of the race for me, finishing strong after 50 odd miles is pretty satisfying. On the other hand I do wonder if I could have picked it back up earlier. This doesn't come down to me being "soft" or not pushing it, I think this comes down to concentration. When you are running for such a long time you have to keep your concentration levels high. I wonder my concentration levels slipped towards the end. I thought seeing the sun come up would give me some more energy, but it didn't. With the sun coming up I started to have some visual stimulus after so long running in the dark. This may have distracted me from the task in hand and affected my concentration levels.
The finish had a few too many twists and turns and you couldn't even see the finish until about 200m to go (something I understand the race organisers will be addressing next year). For this reason I had to keep pushing because I could not believe it was true until I actually saw the finish line. Then it came. Alain got my Union Jack flag ready (this was about as much of a Jubilee celebration that I had). This was quite funny though as the flag got caught in the rear cassette of the bike. He managed to rip it out, without crashing and I ran down the finisher's chute with an oil stained torn flag. Lots of arm pumping and chest thumping and also for some reason a moonwalk over the line (not quite sure what possessed me to do that!). I went straight to Alain and gave him a massive huge. I was quite emotional at the end of the race and did well up a little. That was a really long night, something that tested me more than before. It really was the "Night of Nights". Finished 7th overall in a little over 8 hours.
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| At the finish with 6th placed Roman Gehrig and my oily, ripped flag |
Well I think that is about it for my Biel race report. I hope to post shortly on some of the things I've learnt from this experience, but from reading the post you probably have a few ideas already.
Having read the report back I think I should add how amazing the support is out on the course. As you passed through the villages there were a number of people out throughout the night to cheer you on. As the night got later the numbers reduced, but they made up for it by being more drunk! This race comes highly recommended from me. I appreciate that travelling to Switzerland is not too cheap with the exchange rate, but certainly one to consider. Besides if you fly out on the Friday and return home on the Saturday you don't even need to pay for accommodation.
Take care guys.
Happy Running.
