Sunday, second day of Gigathlon. The program was as follows: Teams started with skating from Turtmann to Leukerbad (what the Singles and Couples had done on Friday already), then the mountainbiker rode to Raron where the swimmer would do four laps in a little lake; the cyclist took over and rode to Zermatt. From there, the runner had the pleasure to go up to Gornergrat, time would be neutralised until back in Zermatt, and the cyclist would go back to Turtmann for the overall finish.

A specialty about the day for teams was that we didn’t wait for the cyclist to start the run; the top ten teams from Saturday would start at 09:45. Then, every hour, one third of the rest of the teams would start, also according to the Saturday ranking, so my start was at 10:45 with about 250 others.

I got up just before 6 am to watch the start of the skaters. There was no starter pistol; the played the official Gigathlon song, and when it stopped the race began. The top 10 teams had red helmet covers today and started at the front:

After that, I collected my breakfast/lunch bag and treated myself to a coffee. Soon, I changed into race gear and prepared to walk to the station. It promised to be another beautiful day:

And another view of the camping area:

The tents were actually laid out to form stars like they appear on the flag of Valais.

The travel to Zermatt was uneventful, I slept through most of it. Once arrived in (car free) Zermatt, it was a short walk across a lot of tourists to the transition area. The first start was still an hour away and things were still being set up. The leading actor of the day was getting ready as well:

Matterhorn!

I walked around, chatted with friends and just enjoyed the atmosphere. One hour before my start, the top 10 teams from Saturday started. Among them were some of Switzerland’s top mountain runners, and checking out their equipment, I learned that apparently you can run up a mountain with the thinnest of racing flats. The compulsory rain coat was tiny and put in a pocket somewhere; my heavy shoes and the ultra distance trail running backpack suddenly seemed to be a bit of an overkill.

Here are the top 10 teams taking off:

Guy in yellow didn’t want to strap the chip to his ankle, and to make sure the time was registered he held it close to the timing mat.

About 45 minutes later, we were assembled to get ready for our wave. I wanted to be in the front third, but because the front turned out to be where nobody thought it would, I ended up at the very end. Oh well.

While waiting for the last few minutes to pass, the first Couple athletes arrived and switched from road bike to running. They were cheered at by all the Team of Five people waiting and time passed quickly. Finally, we were sent off!

The first bit, about one kilometre, was flat and on concrete, within Zermatt. It was way too narrow to pass a lot of people, and because I started at the back of the crowd, I felt like I was held back. When after five minutes the first steep incline started, this was all forgotten and I was happy about every bit of energy I hadn’t spent yet. The next three kilometres were an average of 15% inclination, and much earlier than on the day before I had to walk a few steps here and there.

There were four aid stations spread over the course, and at every station I took some sports drink, water and a gel. A lot of tourists was hiking in the area, many of them cheering for us in various languages. One guy even offered to take the empty gel wrapping he saw me carrying.

After about four kilometres, the course became flat and even a bit downhill for about three kilometres. Not single trails like on Saturday, just flat and wide paths to run along. I could feel that my shoes are really way too heavy for running, but the extra stability came in handy in rough terrain, and I enjoyed the break from climbing anyway.

After the flat bit, there was a climb from Riffelalp to Riffelberg and Riffelhorn (almost); the hardest thing about this climb was that you could see all the runners until very far up, making it painfully clear that there was still a long way to go. From here until the end, I was walking for maybe half of the time.

Matterhorn was unfortunately in our backs, but at least this made for pretty race pics. This one was taken during one of the (many) walking bits:

But for this one I managed some running:

The end was drawing closer, the Gornergrat summit station could be seen from far away. I tried to run as much as possible, but that still was not very much. At the last aid station I passed Reto (who I know from the tri camp) while he was stretching a bit; it was only two kilometres to go from that station.

Those two kilometres were not the slowest and steepest of the day, but I took about ten minutes for each. At the very end there was a flight of stairs to climb, and finally I was done!

Reto arrived soon after me and took this tourist shot of me and Matterhorn:

And the two of us together:

Here’s a Google Earth view of the course:

The hardest part was between the “Lap 10” and “Lap 11” markers, I would say.

I grabbed my bag, changed into dry and warm clothes, ate and drank a lot, wondered how my thighs got all bloody (cheap running tights…), and when running mate Silvan also arrived, we slowly moved to the train station to travel back down towards Zermatt.

This is the station seen from the train:

And, important detail, elevation above sea level was 3089 metres (highest point ever reached in a Gigathlon):

While riding down, we could watch others still running up:

And we got great views of Matterhorn:

Arrived in Zermatt, I handed the timing chip to Markus so he could ride back to Turtmann to finish. We took the train and I hoped I’d be there in time to run to the finish line with the team.

I was; the rest of the team sat in the eating tent and was drinking and waiting for Markus to arrive. When we heard our team being announced, we ran to the finish line, just to find out that thanks to tunnel vision he had already finished… so we just finished again.

I give you the team “Air Force Suisse 1”:

I did the Sunday running part in about two hours and eight minutes, at a very similiar pace as on Saturday. Overall placing was a bit worse, no more in the top 100, but still okay. Our team placed 71st out of 795, so we lost a few positions from Saturday, but we were still happy with that.

Afterwards, everybody left rather quickly with promises of a get together in the near future.

Even if that probably won’t fly, I’m looking forward to next year’s Gigathlon already. And who knows, maybe I’ll do it in a couple or on my own, one day in the (very far) future!