I never wrote about it on this blog, but Amy and I are taking a break from Ironman racing. At least for me racing wasn’t fun anymore. So we were looking for some fun endurance race to rekindle the fun. Since, we are back in Switzerland what better than one of my all time favorite races. The Gigathlon, an adventure race with 5 disciplines. Every different, every year a challenge. You can do it as a single, couple or as a team of five.
We signed up as a couple. We had hopes and dreams that this would get us motivated to train. But unfortunately things came slightly different, with both of us starting a new job and moving into a new apartment. One day we received an email from the Gigathlon organizers saying it is only 100 days until Gigathlon. Finally we started training a little and the last 6-7 weeks we trained a little more serious, at least we tried next to all our other obligations.
Needles to say we arrived at the starting line undertrained and only moderately ready to start. Amy was really worried at this point and I just knew that my stubberness would get me through and asured her it would be fun…

Intro from Amy:
Gigathlon. At the start of the year, Guido had talked about signing up for Gigathlon, because he had such good memories of the last one he had done as a team of 5 (well 15 people together in 3 teams of 5!) We ended up doing it a couple, and it’s definitely not the same experience given the difference in 2 vs. 5 people. We had planned to train for it similarly to a half ironman, and then have fun along the way. Well, the training didn’t go as planned. Our first bike ride was 100 days before the event. We ramped up quickly, but there is only so much time in the last 100 days. I also think we didn’t take into account the 2 days. We didn’t train any double weekends, or weekdays. But we were mostly enthusiastic, decided to have fun and hope it wasn’t as hard as it seemed.

Note:
The following write up will mostly focus on the sport event. We will leave out most of the logistics even this was certainly part of the puzzle and also added to the stress and effort. Especially since we did it without a supporter.
Which meant that Amy did 4 hours of driving on the 2nd day. In the morning 5am from Arosa to Davos and in the evening around 5pm again back to Davos. Thank you! You rock!

The following write up is done by the person doing the sport. Annotated in braces. So this is our first combined blog post.
It might be a little longer but also more interesting to read both sides of the story.

1st day

Just finished the 2nd last Swim.

The first day, Friday, started with something new for Single and Couples. We had to do a quick Swim/Run race. 4k of running with 1.5k swimming mixed in between. You had to carry all your swim stuff and all your run stuff on either discipline. 10min before the start of the Gigathlon my watch broke. While I’m normally fine racing based on feeling, I really was hoping to use the watch to pace properly.

Swim/Run: (Guido)
We got started in groups of 4 every 15sec. My start time was 18:41 I couldn’t believe how quickly the other 3 in my group started. I figured the first day was to take it easy and safe energy. So I did my thing and just ran my pace until a very step and technical downhill where I overtook countless people.

Swim/Run Finished

I was one of the few people who had the neoprene stripped down while running. (too hot) and I think it payed of since many other people were overheated. However the first lake helped with that it was 8C. and we were advised that we only had to wade along the edge. No requirement for swimming to cold. We made about 200m until my feet where numb and then ran up the hill to the next lake.Were we swam a loop of about 600m. This was the best lake to swim in, it was roughly 17C and very clean. I was making good progress with my paddles without trying too hard. But when I came out I was very dizzy and disoriented. I could hardly ran and had to walk for a bit. Up the hill to the next lake were we swam another 800m in about 15C water, but this time super dirty and gross. Before we ran the last bit to the finish line. I was super dizzy which I’m normally not used to. Maybe my allergy medicine or the altitude which had something to do with it. Despite me taking it easy I finished it much faster than expected in 48min 16sec and in 43 place.

We ate dinner and went to our tents around 10pm, prepared stuff for the next day and were asleep at 11pm.

2nd day

Around 6 am 1/2 of the climb done

The next day I got up 2am to eat my race day breakfast (banana, apple sauce) and went back to bed. At 3 we both got up took our stuff and went to main area. Amy had breakfast while I got ready for the race.

Trail-Run: (Guido)
At 5am the trail run started from Arosa to Davos. It was a distance of 19km with 900m of elevation gain. I took it really easy on the downhill and talked to some friends I met. But gradualy increased the pace. Initially I was running quite a bit of the uphill but then started walking more and more. I felt great for about the first hour. There was a sign for 5km and then I saw a next distance sign. I figured it would be 15km since it had been so long.

Almost done with the first run. This is the same road we had to bike through in the evening and that wasn’t even the narrows part. In the background next to the lake you can see transition area.

Only to discover that it actaully was the 10k sign and I hadn’t missed anything.That took a little wind out of my sail, but I kept going. Right around there was the hardest part with lots of uphill and many stairs to the top. I was struggling and my muscle strenght was fading.
But to my surprise once we were on top the running on flat and downhill still went well so I continued on. This was definitely a mountain trail run. There were various section which are pretty exposed and one wrong step and it would be over. So I didn’t push myself too hard there, but was thinking good thing I’m comfortable in the mountains. I reached the time check on top of the gondola above Davos. This was a time nutrazlied zone since we had to take the gondola down. I reached the time as predicted in 2h 15min.
Luckily, 2min after I arrived there was a gondola. I grabed some recovery food and hoped onto the gondola. Afterwards we did a short hike to transition. Where Amy was already waiting for me.

Swim: (Guido)
I quickly changed from running gear into the wetsuite to emark onto the 1.5k of swimming. It was also cold, supposable in the 14-15C range. But after a while it was okay, I’m glad I brought the neoprean hat though. To my surprise I overtook many people and made really good progress. The 1.5k felt way longer than I thought. Also once again, I was amazed how many much faster swimmer can’t swim straight. (this might be more pronounced in an adventure race, where people don’t train open water swim). It was hard to find someone to draft of, but after the last turn buoy I found some feed to hang on.
With the few swing training I had I was happy to finish the roughly 1.5k in 28:48 minutes.

Gigathlon 2018 Abfahrt vom Albula

Cycling: (Amy)
My first disciple was the 110km, 2500-meter elevation bike ride. I started off feeling pretty good, and accomplished the first of three climbs feeling ok. Unfortunately it was also the shortest and lowest of the three climbs. By the 35km mark I was starting to feel tired, which seemed much to early given that was only 1/3 of the distance for the day. Thank goodness there was a bit of a flat section, and I fueled more, and rallied a bit for the next climb. The climbs in Switzerland over these mountain passes take forever. They are incomparable with the riding we did in Seattle, where a major hill can take 20 minutes. Here the climbs go on and on and on, and around every corner you think the peak is finally coming into view, only to see another farther peak (pro tip: its also not the top). At the top of the second pass, I took a break, and sent Guido a picture of me laying the grass saying “fuck it this is hard”. But a Twix bar later, and time off the bike, and crawled back on for the final stretch.

I almost didn’t make it. The last mountain pass seemed to go on for forever, and my legs were very out of energy. I kept taking 3-4 pauses, just to catch my breadth, and get a bit of the wobble out of my legs. Good thing, all of the riders passing me were nice, and said “keep going!”, or “hop hop hop!” (ie Swiss German for “go go go”). I finally made it to the top, and cried a bit, and ate the rest of my Twix bar. I knew it was only 5 miles downhill to the transition area.

Time: 6:08
(Note: that the actual time was closer to 7 hours, since they neutralized a big junk of the flat sections which had to many constructions sites.

Amy on the run course in the background the transition area next to the lake

Run: (Amy)
Good thing my second discipline for the day came next, a 10km run. Only 10 mostly flat kilometers. Turns out, they had to change the course, so it was 11.5, but who’s counting!

That was mostly ok, I could chug along at the flat sections, and the downhill sections, but I walked all of the uphill sections. My muscles, and my head had no desire to go any higher any more. Finally finished, and gave the chip to Guido and could be done for the day. Well except for packing up all the stuff, hauling it the 1.5km to the car, and the 2hr mountain pass drive back to the campsite.

Start of the bike running to the mount line

Bike: (Guido)
I had a long break to recover and before I could get started on my biking endevour I had to take care of Amy a little which seemed pretty destroyed. But before long I was off. I knew what I had ahead of me but just tried not to think about it. It was just a continues long climb initially on nice natural streets with good tracktion but then more and more on street with lose stones. A few times I had to push my bike for a few short sections until it was flat enough to get on the bike. I reached the aid station and figured we had to climb quite a bit more. But to my surprise I was told 20m more and then it is a long mostly flat traverse. What great news. Turns out we were biking bike were I was running in the morning. It was pretty exposed. I was thinking to myself, kinda crazy that we are biking back the way we ran this morning. Esepcially considering that I probably wouldn’t take half of my friends hiking on this path (let alone running/biking). At the end of the traverse there was a last little climb. I put on the arm warmers for the downhill. But at the beginning of the downhill there were some medics which told us that we needed to cary the bike for the first part which we did. I saw people carrying their bike way far down.

After the first hill just before the start of the climb to the finsh line

Once I though it would only hurt to fall and I wouldn’t be my end. I hopped onto my bike and rode as much as I could. There were still a few sections which I had to get off. Mostly just because it was steep with big loose gravel. The second half of the downhill was nice and fast on bigger paths. There was one last aid station before the climb back up to Arosa. Luckily at the very bottom before the climb other people overtook me which were just slightly faster and I rode with one of the guys all the way up to Arosa. It was nice gradually climbs which allmost all could be ridden. I arrived happily the finish line of the first day. Unfortunately, Amy was still in the car on her way back to Arosa.
Once I got of the bike I found the reason my hands were hurting. I had bloody blisters on my hands since I wasn’t used to holding on that hard 🙂

Recovery: (Guido)
I cleaned the bike and we both took a shower and had dinner. But since we finished around 19:00 until we had eaten and were ready to had back to the tent it was 21:00. Amy was not in a good mood. She was worried about the next day and was pretty destroyed from her hard bike ride. I prepared my stuff for the next they while she recovered and contemplated if we even should start the next day.

Night: (Amy)
Guido and I had a long conversation about if we were going to make it on the following day. I was very worried, because I started the morning with another long bike ride up a mountain pass. 30km of biking with 1500meters of climbing. Eventually, I decided to try it. But apparently my heart was convinced it was a bad idea, because I had trouble sleeping.

3rd day

Morning: (Guido)
We got up 05:00 after a little over 6h of sleep. Amy had decided to start and see where the day would take here which made me happy that we had a chance to finish what we came to do. We got up and packed the tent and all our stuff. We took the bus to the main aread and had breakfast. Amy went to get the bike and I cheered her on while she started the cycling. In the meanwhile I put the tent and all the other stuff in the car.

Morning ride through the city of Chur

Cycling: (Amy)
Dark and early Sunday morning we were awake, and heading to the start line. After some last minute running around, and one more round of nerves, I started. The bike ride on Sunday started at the top of the mountain in Arosa, and drove downhill 30km to Chur, before turning around and climbing all the way back to Arosa. I had a nice long, 50 minute descent to wake up, find my bike legs, pack in some calories, and figure out my mantra for the day. “Slow and steady” and “don’t pause till the halfway point” were the two mantras that kept me going. The climb was not as steep as I thought it could have been, but it was pretty much unending. I did make it to the halfway point with out pausing, and I only made one other pause on the final stretch. So I finished! A huge relief!

Amy on the first swim, in between the loops. Getting ready to jump back in.

(Remark Guido: I was super happy that Amy finished the bike. I knew she could easily do the swim and the run. And that she was smiling meant the world to me!)

Swim 1: (Amy)
Sunday I had a full triathlon planned. So after I finished the bike, I jumped into my wetsuit and went swimming. It was hard a slow to get into a swimming rhythm. The course was only 1500m, but the lake has only room for 500m! We had to get out of the water, grab a lap marker, turn around, and dive back in. Getting out of the water is always so hard, I get light headed after swimming. It as quickly finished, and I ran to transition, gave Guido the chip, and sat down on the grass to relax.

Guido enjoying the trail run in the mountains

Trail Run: (Guido)
I felt surprisingly good. From the beginning on I walked all the steep parts and ran the flats and downhill. I overtook many other people (mostly team of 5). This trail-run was much more reasonable it wasn’t all that steep and the long flat section in between really helped to speed up things. While I told Amy initially that I might be slower than the day before I was making really good progress. I caught up to a friend (Rolo, Single cat.) and walked/talked with him for a bit. It is still impressive to see that people do this whole endevour alone. I felt really good and started pushing myself a little on the 2nd climb. I though about 3 times we were on top while we had to climb more and more. But eventually we were on the downhill which felt good mentally but also bad for the quads. Since I knew I had several hours of Mountain biking ahead of me.

Finishing the 2nd swim

I didn’t push myself to the edge. I arrived after 2h 15min in transition 10min faster than planned, where I found a shocked, who wasn’t ready for swimming yet.

Swim 2: (Amy)
While Guido was trail running, I relaxed, took a nap, ate a lot, and tried to get ready for swim number two. I must have been relaxing too well, because I wasn’t ready when Guido got back! I jumped into my wetsuit and headed back for another 1500m, and 3 laps. It felt much better the second time around. The water was a wonderful temperature, and I even saw a couple of fish. When I finished, we traded the timing chip once again, and Guido headed out for his mountain bike ride.

Pretty much the low point of the bike ride. In the background you can see the steep gravel road I pretty much pushed the the bike up all the way.

Bike: (Guido)
After the strong run I felt great and was ready for some biking. I started at a decent pace but pacing myself a little. I made really good progress. But because the previous day I had stomach problems from all the sport nutrition I decided to just drink water and eat gels on the bike. Well that turned out to be a mistake. I overtook Martina, which I knew from my home town which was fun. She was doing it in a team of five which consisted of 5 women. While we were already had gained some decent altitude I started to see were we needed to go which was much further up. I tried to ignore that and just focus on what was lying in front of me. There were various cowherds. But that one cowherd had to go onto the street right around the time, when we were biking. This made things interesting. I had to bike between/around 50 cows. Luckily it was so steep that my speed was only slightly faster than the cow. Unfortunately, that took a lot of energy and focus from me and once I had passed the farm and the cows were behind me I started to struggle.

After I recovered on the last downhill towards Arosa

In hindsight it was probably just mostly the missing carbs, but I didn’t realize at the time. The path had now gotten so steep that I mostly had to push my bike. So for the next ~30min I was pushing my bike uphill. I should have trained for that, this is really hard on your arms. I was super warm from the sun. Poring water over me and drinking it as well. Stomach wasn’t happy either. All I wanted was to make it to the top. At least I wasn’t alone and there were several other athletes also struggling. This was definitely one of the lower points in my sports career. I haven’t often struggled that much. It just became all about finishing and not in what time. Once on top I took a long rest ~10min. I lied down for several minutes drank 4 cups of chicken broth and had some gels. Martina caught up to me and we had a quick chat. Before I started the downhill I took a 100ml caffeine shot. Which was disgusting and my stomach hated. But I figured if I wanted to survive the downhill I had to do it. I started the downhill and my focus was halfway there. Luckily the downhill wasn’t that dangerous. But I must have being going slow since Martina overtook me with a smile.

Amy on the last discipline of the Gigathlon

The caffeine started to kick in and I started feeling better, probably also because of the calories I had consumed. My riding got more aggressive and once were were at the very bottom I had caught up to several riders which had overtaken me. But we had to do another long climb. To my surprise I started feeling better and better and made decent progress on the uphill. Once on top I called Amy to give her an update that I wouldn’t be far out. I enjoyed the downhill back to Arosa which I arrived after 3h 19min.

Run: (Amy)
I had a fairly calm afternoon eating more sports food, and trying to stay out of the bright and hot sun. 

Enjoying the Finish line

About 30mins before Guido’s planned bike finish, he sent me a text with a picture of him lying in the grass saying, “Fuck it this is hard”. I know that feeling well this weekend. Eventually he too finished, and I started the last section of Gigathlon a 14km run. It ran around a pretty lake, and past the tent camping spot, along a beautiful river, and up a 1.5-mile hill. My legs refused to run uphill anymore, and I walked most of that hill. At the top there was such a pretty view of the entire valley around Arosa. It was the first time I had finally enjoyed the beautiful setting and valley. I realized the whole weekend, I had had my head in black cloud of worry and angst, but finally on the run it had lifted. I knew I could finish a run 🙂

Guido meet me 1km from the finish, and ran into the to finish line together! So glad to be finished, and proud that we finished.

May the force be with you

Finish line: (Guido)
Our team name was “May the force be with you”. The various announcers had said our team name with various degrees of success. Some of the completely pronouncing it in Swiss-German. (No doesn’t sound good 🙂

But the finish line announcement was amazing: “Next from Star Wars. May the force be with you! Leia and Luke Skywalker!” What a way to cross the finish line. Amy and I both laughing and happy! We had done it!

Happy to have finished!

Aftermath: (Guido)
It was a great experience but it was definitely too much for both of us (at least with the training we did). We drove home the same night and arrived at home

around 11pm. We just went to bed and didn’t do much clean up. I got sick afterwards with a fever and stayed home for 2 days. Amy just felt weak and tired for many days. But a week later we look back on it and think about all the great memories we made. The great people we met and that we persevered!

Total combined time was 25 hours and 12 mins!

This is a nice video with some highlights from the Gigathlon.

Following is our Certificate and the placement for each segment.