Swiss Adventures

 

For the second time myself and Julian decided to race at the iconic Grand Raid event, one of the oldest and toughest mountain bike races in the world. This a UCI sanctioned race so always pulls in the big names, current European champion and former world champion Alban Lakata was one of the favourites.

 

The event is considerably shorter than the Austrian Trophy race we recently undertook at 78 miles with about 16100ft of climbing but it has more technical sections, some which are pretty serious and steeper climbs. We last tackled this in 2014 and that time I had gone out pretty hard but blew up after about 7 hours and had to drag myself around the course for the next 3 hours which wasn’t a pleasant experience. This time I went out slightly easier maintaining a steady heart rate on the climbs which are all pretty long and steep.
 

The downhills are mainly loose gravel tracks littered with braking bumps and gullies or gnarly rocks. Julian came a cropper early on one of the gravel tracks cutting his leg and arm and smashing up one end of this carbon bars, luckily he was able to continue. It was my turn next, mid-way through the race whilst tackling a two-step drop-off someone stopped right in front of me, I then braked which resulted in the rear of the bike coming up and over my head and me landing in a heap underneath it. Luckily it was all in slow motion and other than a few bruises I was fine.
 

After what seemed like never ending climbing and descending I reached the final mountain climb but what a mountain and what a climb, at over 9000ft high this is a continuous climb of over 4000ft. with an average gradient of 18%. It starts off as tarmac, before becoming fire road, then rock littered single track then finally that runs out and the slog to the top begins. No longer rideable, the steep scree slope is over 40% in places. There is no option but to push, drag and carry the bike to the top, this hike-a-bike section takes around 45mins and in the cold thin air I still had sweat pouring from my nose.
 

Once at the top there is another sting in the tail, another steep climbing section but at least it’s rideable. Last time I had pushed up this entire section a broken man, this time I rode it no problem. I now put on my jacket for the 20min descent off the top. This should be fun but cold and tired it is anything but. The route is seriously gnarly with several sections being unrideable and highlighted with big DANGER signs. The arms, shoulders, legs and back take a pounding and any lapse in concentration could be disastrous. I finally saw the finish in the distance and crossed the line in 10hrs 6 mins. This was only 9 mins faster than last time so I was slightly disappointed, I had wanted to be closer to 9 hours. I felt pretty good throughout other than carrying a slight hamstring strain from the previous race so can only put it down to pacing, the course is so varied it very hard to judge how you are progressing. You see the 20km to go sign and think you are nearly there only to realise that 20k is pretty much straight up and straight down and takes close to 3 hours! Julian suffered with a painful knee during the race but made it in a time of 10hrs 31mins, 14 minutes faster than his previous effort.
 

We both decided this event was a war of attrition, it slowly wears you down and then kicks you in the teeth at the end and overall it’s probably harder than the Trophy race. We both said never again to this one last time and still came back, so third time lucky? Who knows? but it would be nice to finally get under the magical 10 hour mark.

 

Mark

Event / Article Type
Grand Raid 2016
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