You’re not supposed to be leaping and singing with just a few hours left during an ultra. But how could I not? I was running through the most majestic scenery I had ever encountered.
I had been looking for a big, scary goal to motivate me through the early wake-ups and humid Sunday slogs on the East Coast and I saw a race that piqued my interest — the Swiss Alps 100k. My friend Andrew would be spending the summer working at a biology lab in Basel, Switzerland, and I was already planning a journey through Europe. Why not combine running with my travel plans?
As I embraced this new goal, I also joined a local running group, traipsing through local trails with the Leatherman Harriers. There, I got to speak with a few runners who had DNF’d the Eiger 101k the previous year, and their cautionary tales of the grueling climbs were enough to make me rethink my ambitious plan.
Fortunately, the Swiss Alps 100 is a festival that takes place in the town of Fiesch, and features distances that range from a kids’ race and a “fly” paragliding option to a daunting 100-mile course with over 34,000 feet of gain. I “leveled down” to the 50k, still a scary task, which begins with a 4,500-foot climb and has 9,500 feet of total elevation gain to make one giant loop
The day before the race, I arrived in Fiesch a couple of hours before Andrew. As I walked around the picturesque town, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. The wooden chalets cutting into the hillside, mountains reaching up as far as the eye could see, and, of course, the brightly dressed foreigners reminded me that I was in Switzerland. This race was about to happen.
The gun went off at 6 a.m., and we rose with the sun. Up and up until we finally emerged from the trees. While my East Coast quads were confused by the European mountains, my eyes were simply trying to catch up with the panoramic views along with the cows who cheered for us with their cowbells. As we passed through the first aid station, we soon turned a corner to see a sight that had been awaiting us: the Aletsch Glacier.
The course paralleled the glacier and then meandered down the mountainside along crisp single track. As we moved, both passing people and getting passed, a polyglot cry of greetings and thanks echoed around us, “Hi, thank you, danke, grazie, merci!” Our appreciation for the day transcended borders. Language wasn’t enough; when I had a pocket or two to myself, some tunes from The Sound of Music may or may not have filled the air.
That’s not to say it was easy. While my strategy of immersing myself in each body of water I came upon kept me from overheating, the expected beast of the elevation proved to be, well, a beast. Aside from that, the biggest challenge was trying to navigate past a herd of cows making themselves comfortable in the middle of the trail.
As the miles ticked away, I switched from strolling mode to racing mode — as much as any mid-packer is able to. I wanted to burn every match I had and leave it all on the table. With reckless abandon, I screamed on the downhills and into Mühlebach, the last aid station. From there, the push continued, descending into the valley toward the town of Fiesch. My legs were beginning to fade from the effort, and I slowed down to avoid cramping at the finish.
Racing into the town of Fiesch, I passed people who were enjoying the end of their journey. Descending the final downhill still a few hundred meters from the finish, all alone and shouting to absolutely no one except myself, I must have been quite the spectacle. I began to catch up to another runner who was going through a sprint of his own, and we pushed each other towards the finish line.
Finishing 3 seconds behind someone I had never met, would never meet again and knew nothing about, I exchanged a fist bump with him and felt gratitude for the encounter we had had that brought out the best in me. It was the Swiss Alps 100 in a nutshell: sharing an unbelievable experience with people who you’ve never met and likely will never see again, except for that one unforgettable day.
As I looked through my photos the next day, I counted over 170 of the course—from my pre-race rationed bags of Tailwind stuffed in my vest to the post-race cantaloupe I shared with Andrew. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have quite a few more words to go until the full story is told.