Training Log Archive: Bash

APEX Race Day 5 - Along Brienzersee to Interlaken. See below.

APEX Race Day 4 & 5 - Innertkirchen to Brienzersee.

As an unofficial team, we slept until morning so we could enjoy the views on our final trek. We left Innertkirchen when there was still some chill in the air and the clouds from yesterday's storm were burning off. It was far more spectacular than it would have been if the day had started out clear.











There were two routes from Innertkirchen to the village of Reuti - the longer obvious route that followed main roads for much of the way and a more intricate route that climbed more quickly, passed through quieter areas and appeared to peter out in someone's back yard at one point. It was fun and it worked. When we made it to Reuti, the inevitable happened... my teammates had a fight. It's not unusual in longer races. ;)



Hingo and I had been craving coffee and were disappointed not to see a cafe in Reuti. Hard to believe we're able to survive in the wilderness for days in North America! We ended up at a fancy hotel's free breakfast buffet where we convinced them to let us pay to just have coffee. (They didn't seem to want to charge us anything.) It was a fantastic day and we'd been making great time so we called Staffan, the race director, and asked whether it would be OK if we visitd the two high alpine checkpoints that had been cancelled due to safety reasons in yesterday's bad weather. He agreed and we offered to bring them down. We were happy to have a useful purpose to our day.

The next CP after Reuti was beside this stream.



We decided to skip CP #43, which was a smaller out-and-back climb, so we could focus on the extra CPs #45 and 46 on the high ridge portion of the trek. We would climb over 2,000 meters today which would give us views that most teams would miss and earn us plenty of Swiss chocolate. Before the big push up to Wilerhorn, we stopped at a restaurant where I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich to take along. They gave me a huge bag containing a ham sandwich *and* a cheese sandwich. I talked them down to a single sandwich but couldn't help wondering if I'd committed a faux pas.

As we climbed higher, the scenery kept getting better. Warning: we took dozens of photos and I had a hard time omitting any favourites from this race report!





What could be more Swiss than this scene? Close your eyes and imagine the tinkling of cow bells.



We gained height rapidly.





Looking back toward Innertkirchen where we started several hours ago.



The Swiss sure know how to build trails with a view!



Hingo and T. Rex looked awfully cheerful, considering that we still had to get to the top of that cliff.



At last we made it to the summit of Wilerhorn where CP #45 was located.



Although we would be taking the CP with us, we set strict rules for ourselves insisting that the CP *must* be punched at the correct location in the terrain. Even unofficial teams have standards!







From Wilerhorn (2004 meters), we would spend the next couple hours trekking along a rolling mountain ridge that finished at the summit of Brienzer Rothorn at 2351 meters. Here's the first part of the ridge.



And from partway along the ridge, here's the view back toward Wilerhorn.



For people who might wonder why this trek took us so long, we clowned around and took a lot of photos. Remember, we were an unofficial team and thought we'd just be taking a train back to Interlaken in the evening.











Tree pose by the Tree Huggers.



The trail was exposed and spectacular.



We could see why the lead team felt it was too dangerous for other teams to come through this section in bad weather in the dark.





If you slipped in this snow patch, you could shoot over the conveniently placed cliff just below.





Here's the view further along the ridge, looking back toward the Wilerhorn.



The Brienzer Rothorn is on the right. As often happened on this ridge, we were going to lose elevation before climbing to the peak.





As we approached Brienzer Rothorn, we came to a tunnel entrance and a sign saying that it was 20 minutes if you took the tunnel to the top and 30 minutes if you took the outdoor route. The sign warned that the tunnel would close at 5 p.m. It was now 4:40 p.m. Our pace had been faster than the hiking signs had indicated so we decided to take the tunnel. 'Bent and I hiked through a tunnel over 1 km long inside Mt. Lagazuoi in the Dolomites so this didn't seem too weird.





Bad choice! Turns out the sign failed to mention that the tunnel is not open in May. Of course, we didn't find that out until we hit the locked doors at the far end of the tunnel, having gained some elevation as we travelled underground. Boo. Taking the long way around the switchbacks on our second try, we made it up to the beautiful summit of Brienzer Rothorn where we punched and picked up CP #46.





Alas, the restaurant wasn't open for the season yet but they let us come in to use their washrooms and replenish our water.



Here I have both of the big checkpoint stands in the back of my pack. Note the awkward tree branches in my hands. I'd spent $150 on awesome lightweight Black Diamond Ultra Distance trekking poles which were safe in my gear bag. Doh! I switched out my hiking sticks for better tree branch specimens several times during the morning but nothing compares to real trekking poles. From now on, I'm putting a reminder in my gear bin.



It was an epic, knee crunching 1800 meter descent to Brienz with a CP halfway down.



We punched it but didn't take the control because we weren't the last team out - hard as that may be to believe after our all day photo session. When we got to the campground at the eastern end of Brienzersee, we had missed the paddle cut-off as planned. We mentioned to TA staff that we were going to catch the train to Interlaken after dinner and their eyes widened. "But that would change your status. At the moment you are unofficial but ranked. You just have to walk to Interlaken and cross the finish line. If you take the train, you will get a DNF."

Really?! Well, there are a few things we might have done differently if we'd understood that "unofficial" is different from "unranked" in Canada. However, I'm glad we got to hike the high ridge with the cancelled checkpoints, so maybe it's better that we didn't know. At this point, we only had to walk a few hours on a road to avoid a DNF, and that was easy, so of course we would do it. The volunteers took a Tree Huggers team photo and we headed back into Brienz.



The sun hadn't set on Saturday evening yet and the race course didn't close until Sunday at 2 p.m. There was plenty of time. We decided to have a hearty dinner that included beer for Hingo and me. The restaurant owner was familiar with the route we'd hiked that day and where we were going next. He kept repeating all the village and summit names in order, then shaking his head and declaring us "crazy".



After dinner, we started walking along the main highway on the north shoreline of the Brienzersee.



It was a bit of a death march; my feet were not happy hitting the pavement for 22 km in trail running shoes. It was nervewracking at times with the narrow road lanes, lack of a shoulder and cliffs beside the road. If a car was coming in the dark, we would leap over the guard rail into the grass. At times, the guard rail was beside a cliff or there was a tall fence. In those cases, we'd get creative and cross the road before the car got there. This was the only scary part of the race.



We'd been told that we didn't need to visit the paddling checkpoints but I found one on the lakeshore just a few meters from the road and couldn't resist punching it.



That is the last photo ever taken of my cherished Princeton Tec EOS headlamp. Shortly afterward, in the confusion of taking off my Buff and getting my hands back onto my trekking pole wrist loops (I'd picked them up at the TA), I managed to accidentally fling my headlamp into the lake. We stopped for a few minutes to look for it but unfortunately I'd turned it off because of the streetlights. I'd only planned to use the EOS for sections like this where I didn't need a powerful light. Luckily, I had an emergency headlamp that got me through the final hours of map reading. Oops!

In Swiss villages, there are often spouts with clean drinking water pouring out. Unless there is a sign saying that the water is not drinkable, it's OK.



When we got to Interlaken, we had to visit the checkpoint at the end of the paddle, located in an industrial suburb. Then we walked through town to the finish line, arriving at 2:55 a.m. Thanks to Hingo and T. Rex for making our last two days of unofficial racing so much fun!



We were greeted by some friendly race officials but they were distracted because they'd just received an emergency call from a team with a hypothermic member. A helicopter brought the racer down and he spent several hours in hospital warming up. All is well.

It appears that our ranking was 18th of 28 teams but that's just a reward for our stubbornness and refusal to quit. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do APEX as a race but our team would have been near the back of the pack in this field in any case. I think we could have completed one of the official short courses if we'd all been healthy but the full course was out of our reach.

There were a few firsts in this race... I've had several comments about the post I made to Attackpoint during the race while we'd stopped for dinner when MD was unwell. At that point, we thought we were spending the night in the hotel next door and we were curious about any race updates following the storm. After checking on the race, we still had a few minutes of Internet access left for our 5 Franc coin, so of course we contacted the outside world through AP!

I drank wine and beer during the race (!) and bought a lot of great food and drink along the route including two schnitzel dinners. I used a flush toilet 100% of the time. I got a decent amount of sleep. Our team got several hundred photos. This was not Wilderness Traverse - that's for sure!

In spite of our disappointment, we had a terrific time at APEX. The event was fun, safe and well organized. The race course was spectacularly beautiful. The organizers and volunteers were friendly, knowledgeable and hard working, and the international racers were great to talk to. Glad we went.

APEX Race Day 3 - Lauterbrunnen to Innertkirchen.

The alarm went off and there was a glimmer of excitement when MD said he felt well enough to continue after a good sleep. We packed for today's long bike ride over two mountain passes. MD ate something but food still didn't sit well so he made the wise and difficult decision to withdraw from the race. When we left, he was tucked in a bed in a cabin on a rainy day at the Best TA Ever and it was a short walk to the train station where he could head back to Interlaken. His bike and all his gear were with him. If he had to pull out of the race, there was no better place to be.

T. Rex, Hingo and I headed out on a long, rainy bike ride from Lauterbrunnen (low) via Wengen to Kleine Scheidegg (high) to Grindelwald (low) to Grosse Scheidegg (high) to Innertkirchen (low).



The three of us had a great time and worked well together. For the next two days, we took turns being the strongest at different activities and at different times. Since we weren't racing, we needed other motivation. We all had cameras so we planned to be the team with the best photos. We wanted to have fun and see as many race course highlights as possible without being a burden to organizers and volunteers. We decided to be the team who wouldn't quit. No question, these were all disappointing consolation prizes but we wanted to get something out of all the training, gear preparation and money it had taken us to get to this event.

Today was the fourth time in my life that I'd be making the trip from Lauterbrunnen up to Wengen, which sits on top of a big cliff.



The other three times I was on a cog wheel railway that seemed to do the impossible on a very steep slope. Today I would need to do the impossible under my own power. The carrot on my stick was our plan to buy coffee and breakfast in Wengen.

We started by trying to tough it out and ride uphill but we used less energy if we pushed our bikes up the steeper stuff. There was a lot of steeper stuff.





In Wengen, we found a place with great coffee that didn't serve breakfast - so we went to two restaurants. It was then that we came up with our clever plan to write a restaurant guide for adventure racers in the Bernese Oberland. This would require us to visit at least one restaurant in every village of any size. Always nice for a team to share common race goals.

The slope got less steep after Wengen and we had more opportunities to actually ride our bikes. The view had been misty all along but it deteriorated until we saw nothing but mist.



We rode out of the fog into bustling Kleine Scheidegg, surrounded by trains going in three directions and a sea of tourists with group leaders waving umbrellas and gathering their troops. Hard to believe anyone was going to make the $200 trip up to Jungfraujoch today in such nasty conditions and poor visibility. We posed for the obligatory tourist photo at the "Top of Europe".



We visited the same restaurant we'd eaten at with Team Untamed on our Jungfraujoch excursion before the race. Hingo got a scolding for checking out the Swiss rosti cooking pan a little too closely.



May I recommend steaming hot rosti (fancy Swiss hash browns) with chive butter as possibly the most perfect adventure racing food for a cold rainy day. It should be paired with a nice hot chocolate - mmm.



After lunch, the plan was to hurtle downhill to Grindelwald like out-of-control projectiles on slick trails in wind, fog and lashing rain. It seemed like a good time to add a few layers.



As we prepared to leave Kleine Scheidegg, the heavy rain was ridiculous. Maybe even ridonculous. (I'm never sure where to draw the line.) The ride downhill was fast and steep - sometimes fun but sometimes more steep than fun. I was afraid of wearing out my brake pads but equally afraid of going too fast, skidding on gravel and flying off the end of a hairpin turn. T. Rex and Hingo were afraid of nothing!





When we got down to Grindelwald, T. Rex had cold, wet toes and Hingo and I had cold, wet hands. Fortunately, there was a fine selection of outdoor stores and we did a little clothes shopping before starting our second big climb to Grosse Scheidegg. Because our AR restaurant guide needed to mention a popular destination like Grindelwald, we also had a coffee break. The rain was coming down so hard, we were really just stalling for time and hoping it would get better. It didn't.

After leaving town and weaving our way through a network of small roads, we encountered our first gated cow field where the road passed right through it. The cow in this photo had long horns and stared menacingly at T. Rex so she made me lead the way while Hingo stayed even further back "to take the photo". I come from a long line of dairy farmers so I guess the cow decided not to attack us out of professional courtesy. Or maybe she was just a nice cow.



Ironically, that was a wrong turn so we got to visit our cow again a few minutes later.

Cold rain kept pouring down as we climbed toward Grosse Scheidegg. That is, until it turned to snow.









Near the top of the pass, I started looking for a sheltered place to add more layers. The climbing kept us warm in our wet clothes but now we had about 8 km of fast descent, mostly on switchbacks. Our fingers needed to stay thawed so they could operate brakes and gears on the way down. There were a few buildings that appeared to be closed up tight as a drum - probably related to the ski operation in winter. I walked all around one of the larger buildings trying every door with no luck. I almost walked away without trying the last one - but I tried it, the handle moved, and I entered a well-heated and lit foyer leading to separate men's and women's washrooms! When I called Hingo over, he chuckled and refused to come at first because he thought I was joking. Too perfect!







After we emerged in our coziest duds, stray rays of sunshine started beaming through the clouds onto the fresh snow. Even in our warm clothes, we were a little chilly and thus my "models" weren't keen to pose for photos. Going over this pass in these weather conditions was one of the most spectacular sights of our trip - huge, snowy mountains all around us with our bikes looking so tiny.











Look at all the switchbacks going downhill. The fun was enhanced by road signs with cartoons of buses forcing cyclists off the end of a switchback and over a cliff. Wahoo! Luckily, we didn't meet any buses.





After coming down the main pass, we came upon a restaurant advertising homemade apricot cake. Well, *that* would certainly be a coup for our restaurant guide! So we had one more break with the dual purpose of thawing Hingo's fingers, which had morphed into an ice block from which they emerged with extreme pain.

From there, we had one more CP to pick up on our way to the TA at a campground in the town of Innertkirchen. It was another good TA location - not as fancy as the previous TA in Lauterbrunnen but we had showers and used the dryer on our wet clothes. At least, that was the plan. When I first put my damp clothing into the machine and inserted my 1 Franc coin, it filled with water and soaked my clothes thoroughly. Gack! Apparently, when I'm tired, I can't tell the difference between the German word for "washer" and "dryer". Doh!!!

It was dark and we pitched the tents with the plan of sleeping until first light. Team Running Free was out on the canyon loop trek so we knew they would pass through the TA during the night, continuing their awesome race. For us, it was difficult to agree on what to do the next day. When you're racing, there are principles that guide your decisions as a team. There is often a logical correct way to address an issue. When you're in adventure vacation mode, it's a lot harder for a team to decide what to do. We finally agreed to head out on the next long alpine trek since the weather was supposed to be good. From there, we expected to miss the final paddle cut-off and then call it a day, taking the train back to Interlaken.

After two hours of sleep, we headed out on our bikes. Stopping at the TA had been the right choice as MD felt much refreshed; he was cheerful and riding well on his shiny new 29er.





The first thing we did was push our bikes up a steep trail into the village of Krattigen.



People watching the race online must have been surprised to read that less than 24 hours into a 4-day race "the Tree Huggers elected to bypass many checkpoints en route to CP23 in an effort to catch back up with the race. This moves them into the 'Unofficial' race category." Well, we would have been even more surprised to read that!

It was just a misunderstanding. The next bike section was about 100 km and started with a 65 km loop where CP6 and CP19 were at the same location in Krattigen. At the end of that long bike ride, we were clearly going to miss today's 2 p.m. cut-off to start the longest high alpine trek. This would put us on official short course #1, which was fine with us after what we'd gone through on the first day.

However, when we came off the water last night, the TA staff mentioned that the race organization was "probably going to let us treat CP6 as CP19" on the long bike course and carry on from there. One or the other of us used the words "short course" in the conversation. It wasn't presented as an Option A "stay official" vs. Option B "become unofficial" choice. It didn't sound like we had the choice to do the full bike section, but we would have done it if we'd known. We assumed incorrectly that the organizers had come up with an ad hoc official short course for us because we'd fallen so far behind, and this would benefit them by allowing them to pull out volunteers and move them forward on the course.

Lesson learned - if you're going to do something different from the written race instructions, always double check the implications and check with the race director if possible. It wasn't a totally crazy assumption. At least one ad hoc short course was introduced later since most of the teams who finished the "full course" did not complete the final trek.



Anyway, this is absolutely not a big deal. I take full responsibility for the misunderstanding as team captain. I only explain it here because our decision would look bizarre to experienced racers. As it turns out, within 24 hours we would lose a team member and become "unofficial" beyond any doubt. The section of biking we missed was probably less fun than the parts of the race course we were able to do with the extra time we gained by skipping it. We were genuinely happy that volunteers didn't have to hang around for hours just for us. The only thing is that if we'd known we were already unofficial, the decisions we had to make later in the day would have been much less agonizing.

We climbed above Thunersee on paved and gravel roads, heading back toward Interlaken.





We had our first Euro race food experience, stopping for cafe latte and croissants for breakfast.



We continued to climb gently toward Lauterbrunnen, running into a couple of teams along the way. We greeted everyone with friendly smiles that were not always returned. Then it occurred to us that these teams were wondering who the heck we were and how did we get near them in the race? So if we got close enough, we made sure to tell them we were on a short course and they could relax.

We passed through the village of Lauterbrunnen on the way to the TA, which was in a campground at the south side of town. It was already steamy hot in the late morning so we stopped at a grocery store for icy Coke and sandwiches.



This has to be one of the nicest TA locations *ever*. Our bags were in an outdoor area under a roof. There were cabins for racers who wanted to sleep. Food, Internet and washrooms were a few steps away. It was also surrounded by some of the most stunning alpine scenery imaginable.









JayXC and Team Untamed New England arrived shortly before we left. They'd been doing well but unfortunately, one of their team members became unable to eat or drink during the next trek, so they were out of the race by the next morning.

Around high noon, we headed up steep switchbacks on the west side of the valley. For starters, we had to get up on top of this cliff - and then we'd start climbing for real!



At first we switchbacked up paved roads in town, then it became a trail.





We met a goat along the route. Early in the trip, T. Rex had spotted a herd of sheep from the train and exclaimed in excitement, "Look at the goats!" You'd think a Greek would know better. :) From that point forward, we referred to every animal in Switzerland as a goat to keep things simple.



We were grateful that sections of the trail ran through the forest, giving us a break from the sun.



Hydration and electrolytes were extremely important in this weather. I'm not usually good in heat but for some reason, I felt awesome today and ended up carrying extra weight. My new lightweight Black Diamond Ultra Distance poles were perfect. In this race, my best AR discipline turned out to be hiking up mountains - not running up mountains nor riding a bike up mountains. Just hiking - and we did plenty of that even when we had our bikes.

Hard to imagine a more spectacular trek up to a checkpoint. Well, at least that's what I thought until I saw half a dozen other CPs that were also spectacular. What an awesome race course!



The first part of our trail stayed close to the cable car route to Station Grutschalp. I promised the team that we would stop for ice cream and cold drinks there. I didn't know for sure that they served ice cream but they just *had* to. (And fortunately, they did.)



Just below the Station, here's my favourite face shot from the race - even though Hingo thinks I'm standing in front of a poster of the Alps.



And here are my photogenic teammates...







Here's a typical navigation problem at a trail junction in the Alps.



The fairy tale collapsed around Station Grutschalp. While I guzzled an ice cream bar and a big bottle of icy Coke, MD ordered a plain cup of tea. Uh oh. During a race, I tend to focus on the map in my hand and think ahead to what's coming up and what decisions we might need to make soon. Although I'd like to be better at it, I'm not the observant, nurturing type when I'm racing. Fortunately, T. Rex and Hingo picked up the slack in the empathy department and reported that MD couldn't stomach food and felt unwell. After 700 meters of climbing, we still had 200 meters more to reach the first CP - and we'd keep going up from there. They thought we should consider going down on the cable car since it was available. MD thought he'd be OK to proceed at a slow and steady pace.

This is one of those decisions that would have felt different if we'd known our status in the race was already unofficial. One of the CPs ahead of us was at a restaurant and there were a couple of villages (Murren and Gimmelwald) we could bail out to later on. So with MD's assurance that he felt he could go on, I took the gear from his pack into my own and we continued up slowly. MD is quite a trooper. Even though he felt nauseated and sleepy at times on this hike, he refused to quit.

We kept a moderate pace enroute to CP24 and CP25. We ran into Fluceluce on the way and had a nice chat. She was already down to a 2-person team. :(





We made it most of the way up the steep climb to CP26 (Schilthornhutte Restaurant) when the weather started to change.



Rain was coming for sure, then I heard the rumble of thunder. Argghh. Lightning on a high mountain ridge is no joke.



CP26 was a restaurant and we didn't know if it was open. If it was, it would be the safest place for us during a storm. If not, we might find an overhang or other place to shelter from the rain. But we didn't get that far before lightning struck nearby and hailstones began blasting out of the purple-grey sky.



"We have to go down now!!" I said and we headed about 200 meters down to a little ski hut we'd seen earlier. We didn't know if it was open but it would give us some shelter, plus it was lower down the ridge. We got there just as Sovijarvi's Finnish team was jamming in there. It was full of gear and when we arrived, they helped us heave stuff out onto the grass so that our two teams could just fit inside wrapped in our emergency blankets.



We weren't really supposed to be there, of course.



For awhile, hail lashed hard against the little hut and the wind howled. I hoped it was firmly anchored since we were near the edge of a big cliff.

At last the storm was over and the most remarkable rainbow appeared. We were high above the valley looking down at clouds and the rainbow was partly below us. I've never seen anything like it.





We changed into warmer clothes and faced another difficult discussion. MD is tough as nails and would never give up but he couldn't keep food or water down for long, and we were about to climb higher in the Alps on a night with unsettled weather. Once again, if we'd known our race status was unofficial, this would have been a no-brainer but it was heartbreaking when I made the call to drop out this early in what might be my last-ever expedition race. I'll admit there was a private tear or two as we trudged downhill. It's nobody's fault. These things happen in AR.



We decided to descend to Murren, a village about halfway down where there is access to cable car transportation into the valley.



Based on what we were first told about transportation, we thought we were stuck there for the night unless we walked down to Lauterbrunnen via the steep route we'd come up. So we went into a restaurant for a good dinner. I had schnitzel and red wine to cheer myself up. We spent awhile analyzing the possibilities for continuing ranked on the course if MD felt better in the morning after a good sleep. There was an Internet machine beside our table so we logged on to see if there was any race news after the storm. We'd heard a helicopter pass by our hut and we hoped everyone was OK. That was when we learned that we were already "unofficial" in the race. Gack. Well, that made it all much simpler then. I posted a short note on Attackpoint and we headed out into the village.

We learned that a hotel room was going to run us over $300 and decided we'd rather spend several hours on a steep hiking trail in the dark. The clerk mentioned that we could take a different cable car that ran until midnight. Yahoo! We rode down and hiked about 5 km along the valley to Lauterbrunnen, spending much of the time chatting in French with the 3rd place team who had just completed the entire trek and didn't want to go any faster than we did!

Back at the TA, racers could sleep in cabins instead of pitching our mandatory tents so we bunked down and set our alarms for first light. No sense taking a short race nap at this point. If there was any chance for recovery, we might as well try for it.

[Originally added during the race] Quick update - very disappointed that the race is not going as planned. Mountain Dan has been ill since the start and we have tried to use good teamwork to keep racing as much of the course as possible. He is still not feeling well. Looks like T. Rex, Hingo and I will continue unoffiically in the morning. Looking for a hotel in Murren now in hopes of some healing time for MD. Thanks for all your support.

APEX Race Prologue

We gathered at Race HQ at the civilized hour of 8:30 a.m. to get details on the prologue.



Here's the Canadian contingent.



Here's Race Director Staffan Kallback, a Swedish ultrarunner living in Switzerland.



Here's Assistant Race Director Grant Killian who also runs Untamed New England.



Both of them are wearing the gorgeous APEX race shirts in these pics - zippered lightweight fleece. The women's shirts are purple.

We walked as a group to an (apparently) abandoned airfield where our gear bags were waiting.





The teams were divided into four groups, each of which would tackle the prologue activities in a different sequence. Every 90 minutes we would start a new activity (although this got stretched a little when the whitewater rafting took longer). Our group of teams did the activities in the least advantageous order for an oppressively hot day in the mid 30s. Interestingly, JayXC pointed out that five of the six teams in our group were either DNF or Unofficial by the end of the race. I know the heat of the prologue was a factor for several of those teams.

Here's what we did:
1) Whitewater rafting - restful bus ride to and from the river, splashes of refreshingly cold water on a hot day
2) Trottibikes around the airfield - short, sweet and hot
3) Run/Trek #1 (7 km) - Airfield + trails on low mountain
4) Run/Trek #2 (11 km and higher) - Airfield + trails on low mountain



The rafting was great fun. Note the cows right beside the airfield as we're getting ready to shuttle to the river. Switzerland is as rich in cows as New Zealand is in sheep.





We started with a short Class 3+ section off the clock then there was a timed Class 2 paddling section between two bridges. Quechua passed us but we gained time on the team ahead of us.



In between legs, we had access to our gear bags. Note that Team Quechua was carefully watching me, trying to pick up some adventure racing tips. ;) If there was any time to spare between activities, most of us made a beeline for the shade.



In our second leg, we ran to the trottibikes without any clue of what they were. We just knew that two team members would go out to do a big loop of the airfield, followed by the other two team members, with each pair doing the loop twice (about 7 km in total).



Here's JayXC handing off to J and M of Team Untamed New England.



T. Rex was the Trottibike Queen and I pushed hard to chase after her. It's a great workout - like doing a one-legged squat for a really long time. The only trick is changing legs smoothly.



On the third lap, we started by running to several CPs spread around the airfield, then picked up another couple of CPs on the small mountain behind it.







At first the climbing went pretty well. It was great to be in the shade after baking on the airfield.











Mountain Dan was hit hard by the heat as soon as we started gaining elevation so in an attempt to keep him healthy, we maintained a slow walking pace on the mountain except for the downhills. Nobody could win the race in the prologue but a few teams (possibly including ours) lost it there because a team member used up too many resources early on.



Organizers took the combined time for all prologue activities, then started the leaders at 5 p.m. with other teams following based on their time differential in the prologue.

The last run/trek section took us 2 hours since we kept the pace down. We came through the finish arch just as the leaders, Silva Gerber, were heading out in the opposite direction. "And here's the last team - the Tree Huggers," said the announcer as everyone cheered us in and we scrambled in embarrassment to get out of Silva's way. :(



Not surprisingly, we were 28th of 28 teams in the prologue. We were 1 hr 39 min behind the leaders so we spent a long time resting at the empty airfield before it was our turn to go.

(Trek - 2:15, Paddle 2:30 before midnight - all times are approximate for this race)

When the time finally came for us to leave on foot, the airfield was deserted and only a few volunteers remained to load gear bags. Megan asked, "Would you like the PA system on?" I thought about it for a moment and answered, "Yes, absolutely." So she pumped up the volume on a great hip hop tune that stuck in our minds for the rest of the race. We danced and she gave us a great introduction over the PA. After a discouraging afternoon, it was nice of her to do that, and we headed out for the evening with smiles on our faces. It was cooler now and things were looking up.





As we went through town, there were volunteers in orange vests keeping an eye out for us and helping to manage traffic. We knew they'd been waiting almost an hour since the last team and felt bad that we'd kept them from their dinner.



MD had ridden his bike on this mandatory route yesterday to prepare to navigate it today. He did a great job of memorizing the landmarks.



Alas, he didn't notice CP1 on the map so when we arrived at the paddle TA, we had to make an extra 40 minute round trip to pick it up, which used up most of the remaining light. More than anything else, we felt bad for the volunteers at the TA who had been so relieved when we finally showed up and now needed to wait awhile longer.



I'll digress here to show you what we would have seen if we'd arrived at Thunersee with the other teams. Note the hard working M&M.







The 2-person sit-on-top kayaks were not comfortable for the lower back and legs. Hingo felt as if he were doing a sit-up the entire time. If I ever do another race in kayaks like these, I will bring a seat with back support and foot straps. We had to take breaks from paddling to stretch our aching bodies and prevent cramping. Hingo and I ended up towing T. Rex and MD using our hiking tow rope. We hadn't planned or tested this, but it worked pretty well. Hingo had the toughest job by far because he was steering our plastic barge while occasionally getting yanked in odd directions by the boat behind if they weren't steering the same way. It was a tough core workout that lasted many hours!



Before the race, we'd discussed at length how cold it could get in these kayaks at night since they are self-bailing, meaning they have holes through which water comes and goes, getting the paddler very wet. We purposely overdressed. T. Rex was toasty in her wetsuit and I was warm in my fuzzy rubber pants. Hingo was comfortable in his layers but the waistband of MD's pants slipped down and they filled up with cold water from the bailing holes in the kayak. By the time we got to the CP at the far end of the Thunersee, he was getting hypothermic so we went ashore so he could change into dry clothes and ingest some calories to warm himself up. T. Rex and Hingo were awesome at getting him back in action. We also tried chemical hand warmers but they didn't work too well. We all dug out our emergency blankets to retain our warmth since we'd been OK when paddling but cooled off when sitting still.



For paddling, we had to have an "all-round" light on each boat, preferably on the helmet of a paddler. These small lights are visible from a distance of 5 nautical miles and would hopefully prevent us from getting hit by a ferry. When we came ashore, T. Rex was wearing her helmet with the light and hadn't turned it off. As we walked around in shiny, crinkly emergency blankets beaming light from our heads, two men appeared out of nowhere on the windy point. After our initial shock (it was about 1:30 a.m.), we realized that they had been scared of us. Their English wasn't good (although much better than our German) and one of the guys explained that his house was a short distance along the lakeshore. "We thought you were ALIENS!!" He asked us to please turn the all-round lights off until we were back on the water and we agreed. Oh my!

T. Rex wore her emergency blanket as clothing on the paddle to the TA, leading to Hingo's memorable line: "You look like a falafel."



When we got to the paddle/bike TA, we decided to sleep for a couple of hours to give MD a fresh start first thing in the morning. Between heat and cold, the first day had been hard on his body and we wanted to get him back up to full strength before tackling the rest of the challenging race course. We learned that Quechua made it to this TA, took a break, then dropped out of the race because one of their team members was unable to recover from the harsh day. So we weren't alone.

Now that I'm less pressed for time, here are more pre-race photos.

We couldn't have asked for a prettier location for Race HQ than Balmer's Tent Village.



We had to walk about 800 meters between our accommodation (Balmer's Hostel) and Race HQ - a walk we ended up doing many times.



The final step of the race check-in was our team photo.



We went back to our room to work on the maps. Hingo took charge of the bike nav while I worked on trek and paddle nav. This would give each of us some mental rest during the race while keeping us both familiar enough with the maps to offer the other person a second opinion if asked.



We were just given two large 1:30,000 maps but they were chock full of Alps so they would definitely keep us busy for four days.



I love races where the CPs are pre-plotted. It's so much nicer to spend your map time planning routes instead of fussing over accurate CP placement. It's especially important in this mountainous terrain since organizers wouldn't want anyone to head into a dangerous area by mistake.

When Hingo looked at this section of the map, he asked, "Aren't you going to highlight our trekking route?" And thus I made the interesting discovery that he has slight colour blindness that prevents him from seeing pink highlighter. So I double-marked the route with orange highlighter in case he ever needed to use the map during a trek.



Virtually all our travel will be on trails or roads. There are many, many trails and some big cliffs in between so there are still opportunities to make errors.

Team Running Free came over to work on maps for awhile. Mountain Dan wanted to do some nav and he also needed to ride his new bike, so I killed two birds with one stone by delegating him the task of learning and testing the 7-8 km mandatory route we had to run through Interlaken between the Prologue and the first paddle.



Speaking of the first paddle, here are the boats. Smarter racers, like the guys shown here, had brought comfy seats with back support



I was already at my weight limit for flying but I would have gladly traded food for a kayak seat. I have a high tolerance for uncomfortable kayaks but these boats were designed for muscle pain - at least for people my size.

In total, I met four Attackpointers who recognized me from photos on my log. Every one of them was super nice, as you would expect from the AP crowd. Here is Tuomas Sovijärvi - my first (and, so far, only!) friend from Finland. On AP, he is Sovijarvi.



Here's the speedy Lucy Harris, aka Fluceluce, from the U.K.



I went into town to buy chocolate for the race and ran into Rderunner enjoying the local cuisine.



T. Rex and I flew the Canadian colours for the race briefing.

Very brief update since I should be in bed! We got up early today and had a strange experience at breakfast that gave us a good laugh but wasn't really funny. Most racers are staying in dorms with bunks but we opted to upgrade to private rooms at the same hostel. Free breakfast is included with all rooms and racers were allowed to have extra breakfast compared to normal guests. The staff member refused to believe that Mountain Dan and Hingo were racers and wouldn't even permit them a second orange juice! T. Rex and I had already gone through the line without knowing we could have had more, so we were spared the scrutiny. "Is she or isn't she an adventure athlete?"

We headed over to race check-in before it opened and there were two teams ahead of us in line. Incredibly, each team had a member who introduced himself as someone who has read my Attackpoint log - one fellow from the U.K. and one from Finland. It was so great to meet them!! Very nice and fit-looking guys as one would expect from the AP crowd. It was cool how we instantly became non-strangers.

The check-in procedure was very efficient and we were back in our room with our maps before 9 a.m. Anyone following the race will be able to see maps, photos, videos and GPS tracking so I won't say much now. It is a long, tough course with considerable climbing and descending. It will be hard on the body but when I saw the map, I realized that we're being sent to the kinds of places you'd want to go if you were taking an active vacation in this area. In fact, 'Bent and I have been to some of the places we'll be visiting in the race. As predicted, we will be passing through the territory we went through on our train journey a few days ago so we're glad we did the reconnaissance.

The paddling is on large scenic lakes (good) in 2-person plastic barge kayaks (bad). But we knew that. We had a chance to sit in them and I think the boats are going to hurt each of us in some different way. For me, it'll be the tailbone. We'll be doing very short sections of whitewater rafting and canyoning - an hour or less. Water levels are very low due to drought, unfortunately, so there wasn't much the organizers could do about that.

One of the challenges is that the 1:30,000 maps are very hard to read. It looks like they've been scanned and reprinted at a slightly smaller scale so things are a bit fuzzy and the complex trail network can be hard to see against a background that is filled with contour lines. We spent some time reviewing routes with Running Free and it looks like we've got similar plans for the race. I doubt we will take a step off-trail or off-road so I have unpacked my gaiters. We will be passing through many villages with stores and restaurants so we can buy food or even a sweater if we need it during business hours.

The first cut-off looks very aggressive so we won't be surprised to be short-coursed on Thursday already (Running Free is worried too) but we have our fingers crossed because a cut-off would mean missing the spectacular trek above the village of Lauterbrunnen to the Schilthorn hut.

It's going to be an early morning so I'm checking out until Sunday or so. If you're interested, check out http://www.theapexrace.com and you can even send us a Trail Mail if you're so inclined. (Thanks to the folks who already did - it gave us a smile tonight!) Have a great week!

Spectacular day in Interlaken! It would have been awesome to have this weather yesterday on Jungfraujoch but I'm not complaining.



We went through our gear, weighing things and figuring out how much food we can have. I bought some groceries and a few maps. We will have to buy food as we go along since the strict gear bin weight limits make it impossible to carry enough calories for 4-5 days of racing. With a 15 kg limit on our paddle gear bag, we can't even fill the bladders in our PFDs before we put them in the bag.

We're fortunate that today's major crisis was the terrible coffee at the hostel and the 10-minute walk to find good coffee elsewhere. We also had a near-disaster when the local bike shop sold Mountain Dan 26" tubes for his new 29-er, then replaced them with 28" tubes when he exchanged them the first time. Turns out you can't get 29" tubes around here but they removed the tubes from a new 29-er that had just arrived in their shop. We're hoping he won't have problems with flats because we'll have to repair the 29" tubes.

There are so many paragliders here! There are nine in this photo alone.





Hingo and T. Rex were able to get their rental bikes late this afternoon instead of waiting until tomorrow. I'm glad I brought my own bike though, as you never know what you're going to get when you rent.



There was a pre-race social tonight and it was great to catch up with Team Running Free, who arrived today.



Tomorrow morning we check in and pick up our maps. Race briefing at 5 p.m. which should give us lots of time for final preparations and a real sleep before the race starts Wed. morning. I'm surprisingly non-nervous, probably because our goal for APEX is simply to see all of the race course.