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Gigathlon 2019

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Update: I was able to fix the image rotation for iPhone/Safari users. However the picture sizes are still wrong for some of the pictures. No idea why.

Warning long post! 😀

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Gigathlon provides an unbelievable wealth of experiences. To start with I wanted to say a big thanks to Amy & Marcel who made my participation possible. I won’t go into the details of their feats in this post but I couldn’t have done it without them. Thanks for all the support and encouragement and keeping good spirits while not sleeping enough and having to fulfill all my wishes 🙂

For context if you don’t know what the Gigathlon is. It is an endurance race with 5 disciplines (Swim, Bike, Run, Inlineskating, Mountain Biking). One can start as a single and do it all alone, as a couple (woman+man) or as a team of five (at least 2 Women)

Preparation
Last year we did the Gigathlon 2018 as a couple. We hadn’t trained enough and were struggling/suffering because of that. I tried to train more for this years, but various other things and the weather got into the way. One thing I was worried about was the inline skating which I had done less then 10 trainings. (and before that not ridden them in 10+ years). But to focus on the positive I felt like my cycling was in a good place and the weeks leading up the Gigathlon, I felt like my Fitness was getting into a decent place.
The week before the race was unbelievable hot (> 35C). The prediction for the race weekend was also around that temperature.

Friday – Swim/Run
4km running and 1.5km of swimming, with the swimming broken up in 3 chunks of 500m between the running.

1h before the start they announced that a wetsuit would be optional because of the warm water. I opted to swim in my swim skin, but was a little worried because I didn’t have a pull-buoy with me to keep my running shoes afloat. The race start was delayed and it was a little chaotic. Eventually we got to start and I tried to stay in control and not go too fast. While I started close to 19:00 it was still pretty hot and I was sweating. I looked forward to the swim part.

Since I started at the back of the pack there were a lot of people in the water (3 loops). It was a little hectic and some amount of body contact, which is not nice when everyone is wearing swim paddles and shoes. I was surprised that the shoes didn’t drag as much as I was worried. Each following lap less people were on the course which made it easier. I kept my pace and finished in a comfortable 50min 26sec. I was very cold after the swim, which I haven’t been in many days because of the hot weather. The water had been quite a bit colder than what they had announced. It took me a while to warm up again, after the race. With recovery, dinner, race briefing (Sa+So) drive to AirBnB and prep for next day we went to bed at Midnight.

Saturday
Note to readers: Times on Saturday + Sunday include Transition time!

Cycling – 89km 900hm
I got up at 2am to eat my breakfast and then slept some more until 3:20am. Punctual at 5am was the start of the cycling. They let 2 cyclist start every 3 seconds. I was pretty far upfront and once groups started forming I ended up in the first big pack. The pace was higher than I expected. We were riding between 40-45km/h for most of the time. I was just drafting the group and tried to keep up while not wasting too much energy. However, it was hard riding uphill to not lose them. I certainly burned some extra energy.

Me cycling in the back of a pack (at the very left, in black)

Eventually, I decided to fall back and hope that a next group would soon show up. I ended up riding with 2 other people for whom the pace was to high too. A little later another pack caught us which rode a little more reasonable pace for me.

Support Vehicle

On the downhill I had to call out a guy to hold his line. He told me in the flat afterwards that he was sorry and not used to ridding in the group. That reminded me again to be more careful around people I haven’t ridden with. That said most people were really good riders. I rode with them to Brunnen where we took the ferry. Then there was the 400 meter climb, which wasn’t as bad as I thought and before long I was already downhill towards transition area. Thanks to all the drafting I was about 45min ahead of schedule. Luckily Amy and Marcel were already ready in the next transition zone.

Time: 2:45:35 – Top Speed on the Downhill: 77.2km/h

Swim – 2km

When I got in the water there was hardly anybody in the water and people were spread out. So it was a very calm 2km swim. Because of the sun and only having 4 buoys in total it was hard to see. But I quickly found my rhythm and enjoyed the cool water. For the last 500m of the swim I found a person to draft off which pushed me to swim a little faster.

Time: 0:45:00

Inline – 33km 100hm

I started the inline and rode about 1/2 of the first loop (out of 3) by myself. Eventually another single guy joined me and then a group of 2 more single (a women and man) caught me. We formed a pack and my pace increased from around 20km/h to over 25km/h. We took turns leading and it felt great. Here or there other people tried to join the pack, but would drop off again. Luckily the people I rode with had good skills. We overtook some people whose skill wasn’t that good and it was scary to be around them. To top things off we saw an ambulance taking care of an inline skater. Luckily I made it without problems back to transition zone. I had noticed a spot on my heel, which turned out to be a big blister/patch of skin missing.

Time: 1:21:47 – Top Speed 33.2km/h

Swim – 2km

I lost some skin during inline skating 🙂

I was looking forward to this swim. I had finished the Inline after 10:00 and it was already getting hot. The cool water felt nice and I quickly found my rhythm. I really enjoyed this swim even though my arms were tired already. I had done more swimming in the last 24h already than I had done in my highest swim training week leading up to the Gigathlon :-). Once in a while I would open the neck of my wetsuit to let some cool water in. At the end of the swim before climbing out I opened the wetsuit and just cooled of in the water for a few minutes.

Time: 0:51:49


Up to this point the race has been going really well and I was 1:20:00 ahead of my planned time. This made me excited since my goal was to finish the bike before it got dark.

Trail Run – 25km 600hm

We patched up my heel with a blister tape directly onto the missing skin. I felt still pretty good, but the heat was crazy. I started the run around 11:21 am and was uncomfortable hot, the ultra running backpack was full and felt very heavy. I started wondering if I had too much to drink with me. Total was about 3 liters of water. My stomach wasn’t too happy anymore and tried my best to consume liquids and calories. The first 2/3 of the run was mostly flat.

My support crew taking a well deserved rest break

There were various people who had setup spots with water to pour over the head, which helped with coping with the heat. I was amazed how many faster runners from the teams of 5 (which started 1h later than singles/couples) overtook me without any liquid with them. I maintained around a 5min/km pace, I walked all the uphills. The part up through the valley to Engelberg was really nice and definitely would be worth a hike in summer. I tried to take all of that in and distract me from the heat and tiredness. I wasn’t in a good spot anymore. Consuming calories was hard and I knew if I wouldn’t try I would get into trouble later. Eventually I managed to get to top where it was roughly 1.5km to run flat. I ran/walked as good as I could. Hitting transition area way overheated.

I slumped down in one of the lawn chairs we had brought along only to realize I would rather lay down. Amy poured water over my body to cool me down. Cola and broth helped me to get back to my normal self.

Time: 3:02:56 (planned around 2:35)

MTB – 45km 1300hm

Starting the bike

After 26min in transition, I started the bike. I started slowly and on the cautious side, but realized to my surprise that I was feeling good. Not before long, I started overtaking people again. While the first half of the climb was on concrete and reasonable steep, the 2nd half was pretty steep and gravel. The first time I had to get off the bike I noticed that walking in these shoes with the blister on my heal hurt. So I decided to ride as much/often on the MTB course as possible. I only had to get off of the bike 2-3 times and pushed myself to ride the steeper sections. Once we hit the chairlift in Trüebsee the time was neutralized and I had time to consume some broth and a caffeine shot to wake up for the downhill. Once I was on top of the chairlift I started the downhill. They had to adjusted the downhill because of all the snow which was still up there. It was pretty technical and we even had to ride over some snowfields. I felt good and made good progress.
After some downhill we had to go up again to the next crest. It was a little exposed and we had to push our bikes. Hikers were impressed by all the bikers coming by. After that it was mostly downhill. However it was very strenuous.

The downhill was very bumpy with big stones and rattling the bike and whole body the whole time. I had to stop several times to shake out my arms. Several times the course would go onto the street where I got super excited that I could cruise down. Only to turn off of the street 100m later onto the next very bumpy path. I hadn’t studied the course that carefully and wasn’t aware that there was a good climb again in the later parts of the ride. I felt good and was pushing, but then on one of the little down sections my tire popped. Without looking at it much, I just got out the fix a flat foam and sprayed it in. Only to realize that it just came out on the other side. Turns out I had torn of one of the nobs on my tire profile and the tube had a big hole too which would make fixing it hard. To make things worse, I had packed the wrong diameter tube. Luckily, a very nice Athlete gave me a their spare tube and with the help of yet another athlete, I was able to pump it up. Note: I ate a gel and put the package where the torn nob was. The tube/wheel must not have been a good match either. Everything was wobbly and on big stones I would hit the rim. I probably could have pumped it up some more but without a pump I just continued on cautiously.
I was bummed. I had made some much time in the morning and had recovered after that hard run. To now only riding slowly/safely down the hill. Eventually I made it to finish. However, I wasn’t happy because I felt limited by my tube/tire and not by my ability. Guessing based on the time of athletes which were riding with me before the flat, I lost about 30min in total.

Finishing Saturday!

Time: 4:08:57 – Top speed – 65.9km/h

All in all, I still finished 23 min earlier than planned with a total time of 12:56:21.
After getting a new tire+tube, cooling off in the lake, shower, massage, an alcohol free beer, dinner, drove back to the airbnb, prep for Sunday, sitting in my Normatec boots, I went to bed at 22:30.

Sidenote on the massage. Gigathlon offers a massage service where athlests can get a quick rub down to increase blood circulations. When I got to the massage place there were about 20 people waiting. Mostly from team of five and couples. When I asked how long the wait was, I was informed that singles get to go at the front of the queue. So after about 1min of waiting I was next. This was really nice. There are some perks for doing it all alone 🙂

Sunday

Breakfast was 3:30am and getting up was 4:30am. So close to 6h of sleep. I was a little worried since my stomach was still upset and I knew that if that wouldn’t change it would not be possible to finish.

Inline – 42km 300hm
We were at the transition zone early and setup camp. I tried to relax as much as I could, but my stomach was not in a good place. The last hour before the race I had to go to the rest room about 4 times. I went to the start line with about 10min left. I lined up pretty far back but when we started noticed quickly that I wanted to be a little farther up front with people which looked more confident on Inlineskate. It started with an uphill I could make up some space and settled into the 2nd pack at the end. The pace was surprisingly high. Especially the downhill was outside my comfort zone with 44.5km/h. I still felt tired and not a lot of energy and staying with this group took a lot out of me. My quads were hurting. I let the group go on the next uphill/downhill and formed a group with some others which fell back. Four of us where riding together. 2 singles and 2 couples. Thankfully the couples were leading a lot. But towards the end of the first loop, the first two (couples) in the group fell. I luckily was able to dodge the two and swerve around them. We were only going around 25-30km/h at that time. Both of them left some skin on the street and I was wide awake after this adrenaline boost. We regrouped and the singles were doing some leading. I finished the first loop with them but decided to fall back on the next downhill and just do it by myself and stay safe.


Luckily I found two other singles around my pace and we regrouped. I finally got comfortable enough to ride in true inline style. Touch/push the persons hand in front and the person behind does the same. This only works if everyone in the group rides exactly the same rhythm. It is weird to ride like this because you constantly get pushed from behind, especially on the downhill. In return the people behind get to draft. However if something would happen everyone would be on the ground. The pace stays surprisingly high this way.

Swim Transition

There was a cool moment when we passed Viktor Rötelin (who was running for a team of five) and we jokingly said we shouldn’t run him over. He laughed at us.
Towards the end of the inline I was careful around the turns and wanted to make it safe to transition.

Time: 1:38:04

Swim – 3km
Until that point, I had hardly eaten anything. I drank a broth in transition. And got ready for the Swim. My energy was still low. I walked/jogged to the swim start in my wetsuit and got into the water and started swimming. This was certainly a low point. I had no energy and tired arms. I focused on just one arm over the other. Water felt nice, and I knew I could finish the swim it was just slow. My swim trunks which I wore under the wetsuit were way to tight for my swollen quads and were hurting. (Normally, they feel great). Several times, faster people over took me and I tried to draft of them, but had simply no energy to go faster. Sighting was again a challenge. For the 3km course they only had 5 buoys and with the sun, people were swimming all over the place. Considering my pace, I made sure that I used all the energy to swim in the right direction which payed off. My watch vibrates every 500m and it was nice to have some indicator of progress. After about 1km, I just settled into the pace and enjoyed the moment. I knew I could finish the swim. Each time I take a breath on the side I would enjoy the mountains around the lake and somehow while tired and slow I was just happy.

At the end of the swim I ask a volunteer to open my wetsuit and I sat topless in the water for a few seconds to cool down before I had to start the bike.

Time: 1:24:18

This picture made the news!
Pregnant lady helping tired Gigathlet get up 🙂

MTB – 44km 1400hm

The start was flat on some dirt trails, but it got quickly technical with lots of roots which took a lot of focus and energy. Which I didn’t have yet since I hadn’t eaten much. After that technical section the climb began. I had forced myself to drink a little sports drink and to my surprise after 5-10 of peddling uphill I started to feel better. I started to move slightly faster and overtaking people. The climb was long and somewhat boring. I found some other people to ride with, which made it a little more fun. Once in a while I had to stop to stretch my back. Amy had told me that about 2/3 up, was the next food stop.
Once I was there I put my arms in the cow trough and held my head under the water. Drank several cups of broth and some sport drink. I know that broth doesn’t have much calories, but my body just wanted it. Probably because it calmed my stomach and I needed the salt.
I ate some banana and a 1/3 energy bar. I also drank 1/2 of the 100mg caffeine shot for the downhill. While my stomach was upset after all of this, I felt better knowing that I had consumed some calories. Michele, another single athlete, had caught up with me.

After a little bit of uphill the next downhill followed. By now a lot of team of five were ahead of me, and many of them weren’t that technical when it came to riding the bike on trails. But they were all nice and let me pass right away. I made good progress on the downhill and enjoyed myself.
Little did I know that there were several more climbs coming. There were roughly 4 more decent climbs and every time we went downhill I thought that was it until I had to pedal up the next hill. I was riding with Michele off and on whenever our speed matched but in the end she went ahead, when I once again had to stretch my back. The last downhill was a little technical and with my tired arms/hands it was challenging and a few times I almost overdid it. At which point I decided to take a quick breather. At least this time it was in the forest and not really dangerous.
Most of the bike was in higher altitudes and really nice. My body also felt great in the colder temperatures. But as soon as we rode down and came closer to Sarnen it felt like a hot pool we would ride into. Immediately I was uncomfortable again.
To my surprise I was 10min faster then the predicted time. I told Amy that I was feeling better again and that I had consumed some calories, which made here happy to hear.

Time: 3:41:16 – Top Speed was 65.9km/h. Same as previous day, and again pretty fast for a mountain bike 🙂

On a side note on this bike and also for the cycling I had developed a baby-rash/bike-seat-rash on my butt from the wet clothes and the constant friction on the saddle. Not something I ever had before but certainly made the whole ride more uncomfortable. Michele which was in transition zone at the same time lent me some of her baby powder to at least temporarily relieve the situation a bit. Not something I would have thought about before the Gigathlon.

Cycling – 84km 2100hm
A neighbor in the transition zone offered us some ice which Amy put in the Camelbag. I couldn’t believe what a difference that made later on, during the climb to drink cool sport drink . This was really nice and I’m very thankful for that!

I was heading out not sure how I would feel and just started biking by myself. A guy from a team of five overtook me and stayed next to me to chat. All I could think of… I don’t want to chat… I just want to draft off you. Luckily shortly after another team of five came which asked me if I wanted to draft off him and that he was impressed with what we are doing. He took off and I could hardly keep up, he looked back and asked if the pace was okay. I said slightly too fast and he was nice enough to adjust slightly. I drafted off him for about 5-10km until the start of the hill. Thank you to whoever you were!!!
Mentally, I was in the right place to start the long climb. But my body was not! I was hot and still lacking some energy. I just focused on the right now and settled into a rhythm. After about 15min of climbing two kids had a water hose to fill up water bottle or cool down. I doused my back and arms and felt immediately better.
Because of my sunburned arms from the first day I decided to wear the white “cooling sleeves” I use for Ironman racing. I wore them both for Biking and Cycling. They are very effective if they are wet, but with the heat they had dried out quickly and I constantly had to remind myself to make them wet. Initially I was way too hot but once they were soaked and we were in the forest it felt great. To my surprise I started overtaking people again.
One annoying thing is all the wrong information people would tell you. 4 more turns and you are there. Only about 1km and then it is flatter. Spoiler: It was 4 more kilometer of pretty steep climbing.

This first climb was a total of 1000m and that alone took me 1h 35min. There was a nice downhill to the nutrition station. Where I took my time and consumed some more calories (yeah!). Michele had caught up again (I was quicker in the MTB->Bike transition) and we started working together, both taking turns leading. The other side of the mountain towards Entlebuch also quickly became hot and muggy.
We agreed that we would cool off in a fountain before we started the climb and luckily we saw one which we put our arms and heads in. After that we started the climb. Michele told me it was a 4km climb, followed by some flat and downhill, followed by another 4km climb. In total 16km. I trusted her and knew what I would get into. Which made it easier. The first 4km were rough it was still very hot and we stopped at every fountain to cool off. Michele, I and another single athlete rode most of this together. Keeping each other company. But once we were a little higher up, I started to feel better again and was able to push. Towards the end of the 4km, I felt pretty good. There was another rest stop which I ate some more. After that I kept moving again and to my surprise I felt pretty strong leaving Michele and the other single behind. The distances where exactly as Michele said which made it a lot easier to deal with. On top of the 2nd pass, I was happy to have conquered the cycling. I had been most worried about the cycling on the 2nd day.
While riding down towards transition I was hoping that Sarnen had cooled down. But the closer I came the warmer it got, turns out the Transition zone was still as hot and muggy as before.
Time: 5:00:37 – Top speed 73km/h.

Trail Run – 16km 440hm
The heat got to me right away again. I started walking and here and there jogged a little. After about 1km, Michele had caught up to me. I forced myself to run with her. Thankfully once we hit the uphill we walked, I was struggling to run on the flat as it was. We hiked up the hill together for quite a while. It was great to have company and someone to chat with about the race.

Hiking at a decent pace felt fine but running was a real struggle because my stomach would hurt. It was clear to me that I would finish the race and I just tried to enjoy the experience. I had carried a small bottle of coke with me for the run, which I took a swig here and there. The coke tasted great and also gave me some energy. The trail run course was actually really nice and would have been a lot of fun if I was fresh. One additional water stop they had setup they asked if we wanted a shower or a drink. We opted for both. Also later on we stopped again at a fountain to cool off some more. Eventually we hit the top and Michele started running, I tried it for a bit but then decided to keep walking. The course went along a cool ridge and then downhill.

I started running the downhill and that felt okay, but as soon as it was flat I struggled. It was a pretty long downhill which meant I made good progress. Based on the distance signs I was constantly calculating how much longer it would take me to get to the finish line. The downhill made this number come down drastically. Once all the way at the bottom another female single athlete overtook me and I tried to run in the flat as well to keep up. Turns out that my “slow” pace was slightly faster then her shuffle. But on every slight uphill I walked again and she would overtake me again. This went like this several times until she eventually pulled ahead. We were getting close to the finish and with less than 2km to go I forced myself to keep running. I just told myself then it will be over in 10-12min rather than 20min. A team of fiver overtook me and I pushed myself to stay with her. With about 500m to go Amy joined me. (Teammates and Supporter are allowed to cross the Finish line together). We ran together and I had to remind Amy (despite being 6 months pregnant) that she had to run slower since I couldn’t keep up. There was a little uphill before the finish line which I had to walk because I could not run uphill anymore. Then onto the finish line which I was able to enjoy and was really rewarding.

Time: 2:38:06

Total time for 2nd day was 14:22:19.

I was happy to be done. Very tired and an upset stomach. I met Michele again she was eating a big soft ice. Somehow that sounded very good and Amy got me one. Not sure why, but the cold and sugary taste was exactly what I needed. After 30min of just sitting around I managed to take a shower eat something and then go home.

Conclusion:
68 Single men started the race. 54 finished it. I place 36th with a time of 28:09:04.

After most Ironman I was very happy to have finished it. With Gigathlon things were different. I was happy to cross the finish line but it was 50:50 on having completed it and that it is finally over. I felt somewhat “cheated” that I was that strongly limited by food/heat. I wasn’t able to push myself (aka muscles) to my limit. But maybe for these long events I have to learn and redefine the term pushing myself to the limit. Maybe it has more todo with food and dealing with heat and other things. Rather than just having muscle pain. The following few days after Gigathlon I wasn’t as destroyed as I expected to be. My muscles weren’t hurting but I was tired and didn’t have any fast twitch muscle. My joints especially ankles were swollen quite a bit. I have now 3 black toe nails and a few blisters. Interestingly, after the Gigathlon weekend I was about 2kg lighter which went down another 2kg once the swelling were gone. So definitely a great diet 🙂 My stomach took about 3-4 days until I was able to eat normally again without feeling sick afterwards.
While on the 2nd day I was thinking there is no way I would do it again. I’m considering it, if I knew next year wouldn’t be that hot… but since weather is outside of my control we shall see.

Here a few pictures of things where my body took a toll. Not including the baby-rash one 😀

Thanks for reading this long post 🙂
I’m going to finish here with a video of the Highlights and the result page which includes my finisher video!


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