Swiss Epic - A Race to Remember
Smiling because I still didn’t know what I was in for…
It was the end of one of those crisp, clear days in the Swiss Alps in August 2023, the type that just seems too picturesque, the colours too vivid to be true, I sprinted around a last gravel corner in my brother’s wheel. I heard the announcer shout out our names, cheering the ‘Weakened Warriors’ in at the end of an epic first day of racing. As we rolled to a stop after the finish line and felt Rob’s arm around my shoulders, I struggled to hold back the tears. Not because of any pain from a gruelling day in the saddle. I felt like crying because I had never truly believed I would reach this point.
Back in 2022, I hadn’t seen my brother for a long time. I had been stuck in China through the COVID period and had spent a total of around four days with him since I had left the UK in 2028. In a twist on the saying ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’, and in a bout of wistful nostalgia, I decided to ask him if he would sign up to a mountain bike race with me. Now I had done a lot of racing over the previous year – all of it entirely on my own two feet, running. I had never done a bike race of any kind in my life. What’s more, my last serious foray into mountain biking, brief attempts to ride the red routes at a local trail centre in the Lake District, England, close to where we had grown up, had been when I was 14 or 15 years old. Trying to look strong, I had followed my brother, cousin and uncle that day on the gnarly singletrack trails while the rest of my family recognised their limitations and rode the wide, smooth forestry trails. It hadn’t gone well. I had held back tears that day too, as I chickened out of each boardwalk, rock garden and drop-off. I had neither the skill or courage for mountain biking at that point and had tactfully made the decision to leave the mountain biking to my brother and focus on more sensible sports, of the kind where broken bones were a less common occurrence.
More than 15 years later, I was conveniently forgetting all of that, as I asked Rob to sign up with me for the Swiss Epic 2023. The Swiss Epic is much more than just a mountain biking race. Held over five days in the Swiss Alps, it tests riders to their limit, with gruelling days climbing 3000m mountain passes on rocky footpaths, only to bomb down the other side again at breakneck speed. To Rob, of course, this was no problem. He had mountain biked for years, and happily spent his summers throwing himself down mind-bogglingly steep trails at ‘Enduro’ races. He said yes straight away. After a moment of elation as I started to dream of the summer to come, reality kicked in. Mountain biking was tough. Very tough. I had been terrible at it when I was 14, and I hadn’t gained any courage with age. I needed to get better…. fast.
“As I fell hard over my handlebars and off my bike on the first mildly challenging rocky descent, I couldn’t see how I could possibly be ready for the Swiss trails.”
But I didn’t get better. My last year in China was a whirlwind, and I just didn’t get any chance to train. The concrete jungle of Shanghai is not the best place for outdoor pursuits. I did do a lot of cycling in the lead up to the race, riding back the 7,000km from China to the UK when my contract ended in early 2023. But the straight, concrete highways of Kazakhstan, the traffic of Istanbul and the smooth, pristine cycle paths of Germany were a world away from what I would find in Switzerland. On my return to the UK, I managed to squeeze in three days of practice at a trail centre in Yorkshire with my brother. As I fell hard over my handlebars and off my bike on the first mildly challenging rocky descent, I couldn’t see how I could possibly be ready for the Swiss trails. But at this point I was already all in. The race was approaching, and I just had to do it.
Lenzerheide, Switzerland
We might not have got much practice in, but we did at least arrive early. My brother drove his van from North Yorkshire in the UK, all the way through France to Switzerland, picking me up in Geneva on the way. We arrived two days before the start of the race and set up camp in a car park next to the start. Although to call it a car park isn’t doing it justice. Everywhere is beautiful in Switzerland, at this mountain valley location next to a lake was no exception. We certainly weren’t living the most luxurious life, sleeping squashed up in the back of the van next to our bikes, but waking up and having breakfast with the mountains as a backdrop was a great feeling.
The next couple of days were fun, swimming in the lake, trying out the trails that would be used on the first race day and generally enjoying the atmosphere as more and more riders arrived ahead of the race. As we chatted over a beer at the race hotel the night before the race, I felt strangely calm. My mind had blocked out the fact that I was grossly underprepared, almost certainly the worst rider technically in the entire race, and I was relaxed and looking forward to the next day.
Race Day
We were standing on the start line the next day and it was looking ominous. I had been blasé when self-seeding for the race. There had been a range of options from expected average speed of 21km/h down to 8km/h, and I had plumped for 16km/h, placing us in D corral, the 4th of 10. With the first two corrals reserved for professional riders, this put us in amongst a lot of scary looking guys. These lycra-clad warriors were all perfect looking physical specimens, on bikes that must have mostly cost five figures. The countdown began, music blared, and we were off! It was eyeballs-out racing from the start. Winding around the lake, I gradually slipped to the back of the pack, and then we were onto the first climb. Over the course of a couple of kilometres I just about hung on, even seeing a couple of guys slip back of the pack past me. But then the singletrack began, and I was plunged into a hell of my own making. The organisers seemed to have gone with the tactic of putting the worst muddy, tree-root covered, ridiculously difficult trails first in an effort to weed out anyone that shouldn’t be there. I was immediately dropped by the pack. As I battled to stay upright, the next corral were already closing in on me from behind. Panicked now not only from the effort of negotiating the rocks and tree roots, but from the prospect of holding up or crashing into other riders, I tried harder than I had ever in my life to attack each feature with all my focus and determination. It worked to a degree, and with a lot of apologies to the much better riders struggling to overtake me in the limited space, I somehow battled through to the next long climb and the wider tracks that adorned it.
It was here that I realised just how fit mountain bikers are. In the UK, I was used to chilled-out middle-aged men with expanding waistlines covered by baggy shorts. This was a world apart. Everyone was lean, toned and had clearly done the work to be here. As a couple in the mixed Veteran 50 category cruised past me like I was standing still, I just had to marvel at the Swiss. Living an outdoor life from a young age and growing up at altitude clearly did wonders for so many of them. It might be humbling watching a pair of 50-year-olds ride away from you up a climb, but it is inspiring too.
Five hours of scrapes, near misses and lung-bursting efforts later and I had reached my brother’s wheel again ready for the final 5km run in on wide trails to the finish. It had been an emotional day, with every bit of my body screaming by the end of it, to the point that on the final long, rocky and technical descent I had barely cared if I fell off (somehow, I only did once), I just wanted it to be over. But as we raced along the final section, picking off other teams who were spent at the end of a day’s hard racing, I felt alive. As I struggled to hold my emotions back as we crossed the finish line, I felt a strange calmness and feeling of release. I had wanted to do this for so long, but had spent so much time blocking out the nagging fear that I couldn’t do it, that I was doomed to fail and likely hurt myself badly in the process. But the first day was over, and despite finishing a lowly 217th place, racing along the last stretch had felt like one of the biggest victories of my life.
St Moritz
St Moritz - a mecca for endurance athletes and tourists alike, due to it’s rare picturesque beauty and the equally rare oxygen content of the air (its Alpine location is over 1,800m above sea level). We arrived at the end of another tough day in the saddle, but this second day had been much more encouraging than the first in terms of our ability to compete. The trails had been slightly less technical, and at over 80km long, I had been able to put my endurance to good use. The sun was shining and as we lay basking in the sun on the grass in the finish area, I was really beginning to enjoy it. As we found it easier to relax, we were also beginning to enjoy the whole experience. The organisers really do put on a show with the Swiss Epic. The race hotels are fantastic, food excellent, and we were really well looked after, with bikes washed down for us after each stage and bags transferred between hotels as we rode. We should have been resting and eating platefuls of rice and pasta, as two of the pro riders we sat with for dinner that second night did, but instead we were dragging our hurting bodies around the local lake to see the sights and tucking into piles of luxurious food at the hotel buffet.
However, the next two days would really test my new relaxed frame of mind, as the rain moved in and the trails became harder with it. Day three saw me sum it up perfectly on my Strava:
‘Hardest day so far. Relentless route of rocky, muddy singletrack climbs and descents. Some beautiful flow trails to break it up and great views but broken after this one’.
Day four contained kilometre after kilometre of muddy, technical trails through forests, resulting in me crossing paths with the Singaporeans, the perennial back-markers at the Epic Series races, for the first time. But I redeemed myself on the singletrack climb crossing a mountain pass at 2,600m on the way to Davos, and as we raced down the other side, we realised that we were feeling stronger, while others around us were visibly struggling to maintain the intensity of the first day. There was one day to go, and almost sadistically, I now didn’t want it to end.
Davos
At the start line on the final day, the announcer was doing his best to rev up the crowd and riders, but most of them were looking broken, just desperately not trying to think about surviving a final day in the saddle. But long, multi-day cycle tours had prepared me well for this. Just that summer I had averaged nearly eight hours a day of cycling over 48 days on the way back to the UK from China, so my body seemed to be remembering what it was like to get up after a day when it wanted nothing but to stop, and yet go again. As such, my brother and I raced off the start line and up the first climb, slicing through the riders setting off in the corrals ahead.
It was technically one of the hardest days, with the first climb topping out with a 6km section along difficult singletrack strewn with boulders and tree roots, made far worse by a steep drop on one side. But I felt brilliant. In hindsight, five days of mountain biking at the Swiss Epic was probably more technical trails than I had done in my entire life up to that point, so it was natural that I was going to improve quickly. I had the affirmation of overtaking not one but two riders on singletrack descents - up until this point I had assumed I was the worst technical rider in the race. The final stage passed in a blur. The pain and lung-bursting exertion was still there, but after five days full of mountain biking, our bodies and minds were hardened to it, almost not feeling it, making the exhilaration of approaching the finish line for the final time the only emotion present. As we crossed under the banner in the bright Swiss sunshine on the pristine grass of the finishing paddock in Davos, everything felt focused and clear and yet I felt like I was in a dream at the same time. Books, social media and all of the self-help noise on the internet bombards us with messages of how we should step out of our comfort zones in order to push our boundaries and become better people, but it is rare to actually take the leap and take on a challenge that truly makes us scared. I don’t know about it making me a better person - but the Swiss Epic had made me feel alive.
Finding out that travel isn’t always bliss… navigating the alleyways of the Marrakech Medina, with a surpise around every corner.