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I’m sprawled on a lawn chair in a wind-whipped canvas tent atop the Swiss Alps,
6,000 miles from home, 9,000 feet above sea level, and 3 inches from a glorious mound
of bread slathered with cheese spread. I’d grab some grub, but my legs have staged
a sit-down strike: “Hell no, we won’t go!”
A couple of ruddy-faced volunteers—surely extras from a Swiss Miss hot-chocolate
ad—scurry over and start massaging the two slabs of dead flesh extending from my
hips. Hans attacks my left slab, Heidi my right. Would I like some pain? “No,
thanks,” I reply, “I’ve had plenty of pain today.”
No, you American dork, pain—as in the French word for bread. Oh. “Yes,
please, I would like a whole truckload of pain.”
I eat the bread, slurp some hot tea, and start to feel my legs again beneath the magic
fingers of Hans and Heidi. Aid station, sch-maid station. I much prefer the Swiss moniker:
“Center of Reanimation.”
Reanimated, I teeter out of the tent toward my dirt-encrusted mountain bike. It’s a
gusty, chilly afternoon on the 9,140-foot Pas de Lona, but the scenery warms me. I’m
surrounded by jagged, snow-flecked peaks whose slopes plunge toward steep green valleys
dotted with rustic wooden chalets, old stone churches and cows adorned with clanging bells.
This is the heart of the Valais, a spectacular 100-mile-long valley that snakes through the
Alps in French-speaking southwestern Switzerland, near the French and Italian borders.
It’s an outdoor playground for skiers, hikers, paragliders, and-especially on this
sunny August day-mountain bikers.
Ridin’ the Raid
Today is the Grand Raid Cristalp, an
80-mile mountain bike ride through the Alps between the postcard villages of Verbier and
Grimentz. Some 3,000 riders from around the planet tackle the annual event—now in its
10th year—and thousands more are turned away. It’s one of the world’s most
famous ultradistance mountain bike events, a subspecies of off-road riding that’s big
in Europe and is slowly catching on in the U.S..
For the top riders, who finish in about seven hours, the Grand Raid is a race. For the rest
of us, it’s a personal challenge just to complete the route by dusk. To finish, you
must get to each of the course’s checkpoints before the designated cutoff times.
On a nippy race day morning, I slip my little plastic card into a machine that records my
start time and begin pedaling up Verbier’s quaint main street with hundreds of other
riders. We cruise past shuttered ski shops, sidewalk cafes getting primped for the lunchtime
fondue crowd, and trim chalets whose window boxes burst with red flowers. Soon we begin
climbing to the summit of 7,130-foot Croix-de-Coeur. As the dirt road switchbacks above
the tree line, we’re treated to views of a glacier, craggy spires, and a line of
riders snaking toward the stark cross at the top. I summit, glance at the toy town of
Verbier far below, and head down into the next valley.
The Grand Raid’s grueling but gorgeous route winds through nine villages and six valleys
for a total of nearly 15,000 feet of climbing. About 30,000 spectators line the route,
shouting hup-hup-hup!, which is French for “Get your rooty-poo, candy ass up that
smackdown mountain!” The fans bask in the sun, tootle on giant horns, and ring cowbells
as we chug through the Alps on singletrack, fire roads, and a few paved back roads. All
around, my fellow riders converse—okay, curse—in French, German, Italian, English. You
could close your eyes for a second (preferably while going uphill) and imagine you’re
that Lance guy in that Tour de France thing.
Whine tasting
The miles—sorry, kilometers—click by. I grind up the climbs, careen down the
descents, wobble through the singletrack, ogle the Alps, soak up the “we’re all
in this together” vibe, and inflict my high-school French on a few bewildered riders
(who shout “Shut-up-hup-hup!”)
Sure beats working.
Around mile 70, though, I’m starting to whine. We’ve been hike-a-biking for nearly
a mile up a steep rocky section toward the Pas de Lona, the course’s highest elevation.
Right now I’d trade this personal-challenge crap for a hot tub and a beer. But I
didn’t come 6,000 miles and climb 9,000 vertical feet to quit here. Finally, I reach
the top and see the aid-station tent. Yo, Hans and Heidi: Reanimate me!
I descend the last 10 miles to the finish line, surrender my little plastic time card, and
head for le tub chaud.
For my 11 1/2 hours of effort, I get a little bottle of Cristalp-brand water, an XXL wind jacket
whose sleeves brush my knees, and a yellow certificate imprinted with my name and finishing
time. I long ago drank the water and lost the jacket, but that certificate’s mounted on
my wall. Forever.
Is the event hard? Yes. Is it also wonderful and unforgettable? Yes and yes. Would I go back
to Switzerland in a hot minute and do it again? Hell, yeah. Bring on the
pain.
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