Yesterday, I ran one of the five races of the Five Days Mountain Racing Cup (“5-Tage Berglauf-Cup”). I originally had planned to do the whole cup (you have to finish four of the five races to get into the overall ranking), but realised I couldn’t and wanted to skip it completely, but when Kaspar asked me if I wanted to join for one race I was in.

The cup consists of short and sweet races, all around 5 km and about 10% inclination. Just like yesterday’s leg from Steg up to Hörnli, 5.1 km and 430 m elevation. The profile promised to be all upwards (surprise!) with three tiny flat bits and an extra steep finish stretch:

The races are pretty low key (about 150 participants every day) and cheap (50.- CHF for the whole cup), but timing and organisation is super professional.

After a short warm up it was already time to get going!

Kaspar is in the front row at the very left, my head is just to the right of his. The two red guys front centre are Stephan Wenk (international caliber duathlete and mountain runner) and Christoph Menzi (national caliber runner), favourites of the day (and week).

After the start, I was mainly passed during the first kilometre or so, since I had been so close to the front. It’s good to never be blocked, but it’s not so fun to be slower than everybody else around you!

The favourites took the lead from early on:

I’m between Kaspar’s and Stephan’s heads. I like the guy with the fisher hat and the bermuda shorts, he runs every race like that! (And he’s pretty fast, even though apparently he goes out too fast every time and blows up at some point.)

Here’s another shot of the field shortly after the start:

I’m just in front of the orange guy.

The race was maybe short, but the intensity was sky high from the first second on. Shortly after the leading woman passed me about 1.5 kilometres into the race, I managed to hang on to the people around me. Just before the first flat bit, some orienteering juniors, one of them less than 14 years old, caught up with me and I didn’t really feel like letting them go.

The flat bit came to the rescue, I could undo a few passes. But as soon as we got into the next ramp, I was passed again. At least by now I was completely warmed up! I didn’t feel bad, but it was pretty hard to go at this intensity and still feeling slow, compared to flat road races.

The next flat bit approached, I was still around the same people and could stick with them until the third flat bit. After that came the final ramp: first you got a glimpse of the great view, then you stood almost still, it was so steep. With just a few hundred metres to go, this would have been the place to step it up a notch and pass a few people, but I was already content not having to walk.

One guy just in front of us did walk – until I passed him, that is. Then he started running again:

And he went on to pass me:

I thought the finish would be a little bit further away than it actually was so I didn’t push 100%, but I’m not sure I could have caught the guy also if I had known exactly.

I finished a bit more than four minutes behind Kaspar who placed third, and about one minute behind Markus, another tri camp buddy. My overall pace was 5:24 min/km, which is about 1:44 min slower than my fastest pace for road races… I’m not exactly a mountain running hero, you could say.

But! It was a really cool race, perfectly organised with a very cozy atmosphere. And this view!

Next year, I want to do the full cup for sure. There’s also the one day version: all five legs on a single day. In 2013 maybe, or who knows, now that I live so close to Üetliberg… I’ll see!

My next race will be Uster Triathlon, olympic distance, on the 28th of August. I hope for some cold rain until then, because at the moment it would be too warm for wetsuits! Oh the horror…