Ironman Switzerland Race Report and Travel Tips

Ironman Switzerland Race Report

NOTES, LOGISTICS, and TIPS
(If you're primarily interested in the race review, please scroll down a few paragraphs where it's highlighted in red)

For me this whole thing started when we were planning a vacation to Switzerland nine months earlier.  Next thing I know I'm registered for Ironman Switzerland. I've lived there, my wife and kids are Swiss, I was really looking forward to this beautiful venue. Zurich is an awesome city but to really appreciate what Switzerland has to offer, you have to get out to the Alps...or do an Ironman ;-)



We stayed at a hotel called Engimatt. It was just perfect, highly recommended.

Quick tip on packing for an Ironman abroad: PACK LIGHT!  You'll have your bike too and you'll go home with more stuff than you came with.  Utilize hotel laundry or do it in the sink and dry it on the window sill/balcony.  Trust me on this, you'll thank me later.  Pack what you think you'll need...then take out at least 1/3 more, but probably more like 1/2.  Most important piece to bring: electric plug adapter, about $5.  



I pack my bike and wheels in these awesome bags. There's no oversize charge because they meet the check-in specs. You do have to feel comfortable taking your bike COMPLETELY apart and reassembling it. It takes me about 45 minutes to tear it down and 30 or so to put it back together.



Note: At the time of this writing, July 2011, WiFi is not easy to find in Switzerland. If you do find it, it's seldom free.

From SFO it's an 11 hour direct flight on Swiss airlines.  We landed in Zurich on a beautiful July afternoon.  Landing at the Zurich airport on a clear day is just like landing in a post card.  The airport isn't exactly in the city of Zurich but it's only about 10 minutes away.  After baggage claim you can easily buy a train ticket from an English speaking agent.  You'll want to buy a ticket to the Zurich Main train station.  This was about $8.  The trains to the Main Station leave every 20 minutes or so.  The one German word you should know is "Gleis" (rhymes with "price") which means "Track"  There are over 50 tracks in the Main Station (or Zurich HB) and they're labelled "Gleis 12" for example.  

If you're not in a hurry or totally exhausted I recommend spending about 1/2 hour to explore the airport.  It is exactly how all airports should be: efficient, clean, and friendly.  The food choices range from sit down to take-away. Remember, the train leaving to the Main Station departs about every 20 minutes so if you miss one just hop on the next one.
 
On tipping at restaurants: Tips are included in Switzerland.  When my change comes, if the service is decent, I simply round up to the nearest Swiss Franc (1 Swiss Franc is about $1.25 at the moment) and leave that bit of change.  On the other hand, you will not offend anyone by simply taking all your change.

If you want a light, quick meal go to a deli-looking counter and ask for a Bratwurst and burli or a Shublig and burli for about $7.50.  They hand you a tasty sausage that you eat like a hot dog without the bun.  The burli is a round, fist sized piece of bread that's hard, crunchy on the outside and soft, tasty on the inside. If you wanna buy some groceries to tie you over for awhile there's a "Migros" in there which probably has the best prices for food and drink.  
If you love chocolate, nobody does it better than the Swiss and while in the airport go to the Sprungli chocolate store!  Buy some of those little bite-sized morsles (called Luxemburgerli), but only get what you can eat that day, maybe a kilo or two ;-) Swiss chocolate is very fresh with no additives/preservatives and won't last long before it melts.

After getting your train ticket and enjoying a meal, go down two escalators to the train platform which is clean and efficient.  Be advised: Swiss trains are NEVER late, ever.  Under very, very few instances would I recommend renting a car in Zurich.  Besides narrow, confusing streets and signs, there's hardly any parking at all and none that's free, even at a $300/night hotel.  The public transport is clean, reliable, and super easy to figure out.  Plus you can get pretty much anywhere with it.

Once at the Zurich Main Station, depending on how long you stay, I would recommend buying a week train pass for "Zone 10" which covers all of Zurich trains, trams, buses, and beautiful boat rides on the lake!  
The airport itself is not in Zone 10 is why we didn't simply buy the passes there.
We only stayed for 3 nights, so for us it made more sense to buy 24 hour day-passes for Zone 10 at about $9 each.  Conveniently, we could buy these at the hotel front desk.  You can also get Multi-Zone or even All Switzerland train passes.  These can get quite expensive and a cost/convenience analysis would be in order vs car rental.  

Cell phones: you'll have to do fairly extensive research here.  Only AT&T at the moment works here.  I simply called AT&T and told them what date range I'd be here and they put me on the Int'l plan for phone/text/data.  Figuring out how to call a Swiss number was a slight chore.

Once at the Main Train station it's easy to get overwhelmed.  Relax.  You can call the hotel and ask them which tram to take and they'll give directions, something like "take the #13 tram to Waffen Strasse and we're across the street."  While at the Zurich HB (Haupt Bahnhof, aka Main Train station) definitely get a Zurich Tourist map with public transport on it and study it.  It took us one day of exploring and having fun to figure out the trains/trams/busses.  Again, relax.  You have 24 hour tickets.  If you get lost, you can't stray too far.  Zurich is geographically small.  BTW, once you have the tickets you just get on board.  No need to punch/stamp them or show them to anyone.  It's the honor system.  They do random checks.  

RACE DAY stuff

If you've never done an Ironman event, the organization is incredible. It's not cheap for a reason.  They really put you, the athlete, first.  

You will of course arrive several days before the race to acclimate to the time change.   For me it takes a solid 5-6 days.  None of the so-called remedies have worked for me. If they work for you, great.

The weather in Switzerland several days before the race was awesome.  It was sunny/partly cloudy and between 65-75 deg F.  It often rained and stormed quite hard at night, only to clear to a warm,  slightly humid morning.  Swiss summers tend to be pleasantly warm but can easily bake or freeze in the same week!  They were calling for warm temps and scattered showers for race day.  That made me a little nervous.
 
We checked into the hotel Friday morning and promptly walked to the race venue to test the distance and get the route down.  It turned out to be about a 20 minute walk.  Not bad.  The Ironman Village was being diligently built up Friday morning. Registration and packet pick-up was exciting as the reality of it all sank in.  The Ironman Store was "conveniently" located at the end of registration.  Oddly, they were selling Finisher stuff already.  I didn't really like that the back of the jacket was screened and not embroiderd, nor did I wanna jinx my race so I didn't buy one.  At the finish line they gave us a cool Finisher polo shirt and towel.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Bike check-in is Saturday before the race.  It's orderly and very "Swiss-like." If you don't know what that means, let's just say the Swiss are perfectionists to the friggin hilt.

RACE DAY arrived and I hardly slept.  It was a clear, pleasant morning.  Athletes were silently making their way to the venue, many thinking about the long day that lay ahead.  

The swim course takes place in Lake Zurich.  It's two clockwise loops that are not the same distance.  It's a mass land start that swims straight out about 800 meters to the first right turn buoy.  Then it's about 900 meters parallel to shore to another right turn bouy.  Roughly 800 meters back to shore where there's this little island we had to run across and head back out for the second loop.  The second loop was a shorter, strange little shape that you have to see on the web site to understand.  The water was 21 degrees Celsius or 70 F.  We were told previous year's water temps have been as low as 15C or 59F.
As I just learned how to properly swim in December, 2008, I'm happy with my 1:29 swim time.  T1 around 3.5 minutes.



The bike course is two loops.  While Zurich isn't in the biggest part of the Alps, there are still some arduous climbs.  After completing one of the notoriously most difficult races in Ironman, St George, I highly underestimated this ride course.  The ride starts with some long, fast flats where I quickly noticed drafters.  As with most triathlons, they were very clear that drafting was not allowed.  But unlike most triathlons, the Swiss enforced it!  I saw at least 10 penalties handed out including to one guy that was on my wheel.  The flats are long and kind of lull you into thinking "This ain't so bad." and of course then it starts climbing seemingly forever.  The course winds through the countryside and some super nice little towns where fans are cheering you on every step of the way.  The community support is amazing.  I heard that 150,000 spectators show up!  After coming swiftly out of the mountains and back toward the lake, there's a steep climb around Mile 53/109 known as Heartbreak Hill.  The name is worse than the climb but the fans gather by the 1000's here and the vibe is indescribable!  Soon it's back out for another loop of bicycle bliss.


 
I was hoping for a 6 hour bike but made two mistakes here that I think cost me: 1) I should've rode one lap of the course earlier in the week, or AT LEAST driven it; and 2) I underestimated the ride.  As I'm a fairly strong cyclist, I didn't kick up the bike training like I should have.  Ended up with riding it in 6:23.  T2 was about 5.5 minutes.



The run course is four loops of just over 10k each.  It's all in Zurich and therefore really spectator friendly.  The crowd is really cheering you on the whole way, it's kinda cool.  It's all pretty much flat and after a challenging bike this was nice.  You leave T2 and start the marathon along the lake.  Since the loops are only about 10k, the organizers had to get creative winding us through the city.  I think they did a really good job as they take us through several tree lined parks with trails and over the lake on a bridge to another tree lined section near the Old Town of Zurich.  For me, I think the 4x10k format was good from the mental aspect of the race.  I never really got too far away and it therefore seemed shorter ;-)

I wrote this report in the 6 days following the race.  I tried to write it while the course, the pain, and the glory are all still fresh.  As I recall, there were 5 aid stations on every loop.  They were all fairly evenly spaced except that last one going back toward the finish line:  There's a station about 1 or 2 kilometers before the finish line.  Then you go through the Village and back out another 1 or 2k before the next station.  This doesn't sound like much...until the 3rd and 4th laps where it's an eternity.  They had fruits, water, coke, and some fluid called ISO which I did not like at all.  My marathon consisted of salt tablets, water, coke, and orange slices.
 
About 3/4 into each loop they slipped a colored band on my arm to signify which lap I was on.  By my 3rd lap the pain and fatigue was getting quite large.  This is where my mind starts playing little tricks on me and thoughts of quitting didn't seem all that bad.  By the fourth lap every inch of my body cried out to stop running and my mind took over.    By the end of the fourth lap I was giddy.  The crowd was phenomenal.  I ran the last 100 meters with both arms up, shouting I LOVE SWITZERLAND much to the crowd's delight.  I was delirious at that point and was really trying to shout I'M GLAD IT'S OVER! and that I FINISHED!

I really hoped for a four hour marathon and still think I can do it.  I ended up with a 4:45.  I have two excuses for my lack of performance here, and they really are only excuses at the end of the day, aren't they? 1) The last 6 weeks before the race I battled a nagging upper respiratory infection; and 2) While I continued and kicked up my swim training, I only maintained my cycle training, and only ran marginally around 25 miles a week.
My total time was 12:45.



After the race my legs are just ground up meat.  The word "pain" just doesn't seem adequate.  On the other hand, the food provided for the athletes was just amazingly delicious.  I mean, they could've served dirt covered bugs and we woulda thought it was the best stuff ever.  But they had a really good spread and an even better dessert selection!  There was also a barrista making delicious espressos, lattes, etc.  After that it was off to the wonderful showers they had that just rained down a waterfall on you, no drought going on here!  Finally, off to the massage tent.  
 
If you go to Switzerland but don't plan on staying in Zurich the whole time:
-Quick recommendations for other places to visit in Switzerland.  I lived off the beaten path in eastern Switzerland, you can do this small tour in one day: Early train to Wasserauen.  From Zurich you'll have to change trains in Gossau to the AppenzellerBahn.  Take a gondola ride up or a fairly strenuous 1.5 hour hike up the nearby alp, called Ebenalp.  You can stop halfway and snack at a mountain farmhouse.  They have Swiss beer, very fresh milk, cheese, and bread that are just amazing.  Near the top of Ebenalp, DO NOT MISS the wonderful alpen restaurant Aescher.  Sit outside and have a tasty lunch of rösti and dessert.  After that, hike the 5 minutes up to the Ebenalp.  Look/hike around.  Take the gondola down and then get back onto the train to nearby Appenzell town for some shopping.  After that, if you have time, drive or take the Post Auto bus to the nearby town of Stein and take in the quaint Swiss cheese factory where they make famous Appenzell cheese.  
Other visually stunning places to visit include Cellerina/St. Moritz in the south east; great hiking in Grindelwald and the Jungfrau just outside of touristy Lucern in central Switzerland; breathtaking views in Brig/Matterhorn to the west/southwest.    



-As I sit here in my hotel room in London I reflect with satisfaction on my time in Zurich.  I hope I've inspired someone to try Ironmam Switzerland, or at least to just live vicariously through my adventure.  In any case, stay fit y'all!