Europe’s most famous mountain bike race 'The Grand Raid' is a must do event for any mountain bike marathoner and this year’s 25th anniversary edition was no different with more than 2500 entrants heading to Switzerland to compete. Myself, Julian Paphitis and over 850 fellow nutters had registered for the 'Cours extrêmes' - 79 miles long and with 16200 ft of climbing.
We lined up for the start in Verbier in good company with numerous current and former World, European and National champions from around the globe. This is a UCI sanctioned race and a top 20 finish would mean automatic qualification for next year’s world XCM championships so competition would be fierce. Favourites were Swiss National Champion and last year’s winner Urs Huber and the reigning World and European Champion and Olympic XC medallist Christoph Sauser.
Drone cameras hovered overhead to catch the action as the countdown began, we were about 200m down from the head of the race and looking around at the other riders, their bikes and their kit we could see that the majority of these were not your average weekend rider, it was going to be a tough day out.
As the claxon went we were straight into the first climb, 2600ft of fire road climbing to the top gondola station (this was the warm up!). We soon realised it would be difficult to stick together so we shook hands about half way up and would not see each other until the finish. Passing the first checkpoint, we made a cliff edge traverse (this isn’t a race for anyone afraid of heights) to a walkers tunnel to get to the other side of the mountain. Speakers blasted out AC\DC at full volume in the tunnel whilst a banner across the tunnel entrance read 'Welcome to Hell' - never a truer word had been written.
To summarise - the climbing was relentless and the singletrack steep and technical and by the time I had started climbing the last and toughest mountain, i had already carried my bike more than I ever had before in a race. I now had (only!) 4600 ft of climbing to contend with. After a steep section to tire the legs, the bottom section changed to a gentle road climb, this soon changes to fire road and then to steep rock strewn singletrack. I had now been climbing for well over an hour when the track ran out. The mountain side now turns to scree and the gradient rises to 40%. Impossible to ride, there is no choice but to push, haul and carry your bike over the scree and rocks, this is what this race is (in)famous for. This went on for over an hour, finally crossing the top of the pass the kicker is that you realise this isn’t the true summit; it will be another 30mins of climbing before reaching the very top.
I dont stop knowing there is a 10km downhill run down to the finish, this should be great fun normally but now cold and tired the steep rocky sections take their toll and i take them very gingerly, the forearms are pumped out from all the braking and im wet from the stream crossings. It takes me 30 mins to complete the downhill before I finally make the small climb to the finish and the cheering crowds.
I crossed the line in 10 hrs 14 mins coming in 124th out of 280 in the Senior 2 40-50 age category. Julian crossed the line in 10 hrs 51 mins coming 41st out of 87 in the Senior 3 50+ age group. The winner Urs Huber completed the race in just over 6 hours!!!
This was by far the toughest thing we had ever done on a bike or otherwise, there is only one word to describe this race - Brutal.
A full report of the build up and event will appear in the next edition of Tracks.
Now where do I sign up for next year’s race?....