Zen and the art of Alpine racing

22 06 2011

Gigathlon.

The word kind of sounds like the Wrath of God, doesn’t it?

First let’s take the back part of it: “thlon”. “Duathlon” and “triathlon” are the other two common words with this suffix. Any other contexts you can think of? Nope, me neither.

Right, then let’s look at the beginning of the word: “giga” – reminds you of storage space on computers, SD-cards and USB-sticks, right?

OK. So whatever it is, it seems to have something to do with activity, and lots of it. And since this is Switzerland, that means it probably takes place in the mountains, and probably has a few thousand participants with an irrepressible urge to torture themselves. (Taking the software-storage analogy one step further: “Kilothlon” and “Megathlon” just sounded too wimpy, I guess.)

I first heard the word “Gigathlon” when I arrived in Switzerland a few years ago. The Swiss – Masters and Mistresses Of The Universe when it comes to physical activity – invented the Gigathlon as just one more fun thing to do outdoors during an action-packed summer. It is an ultra-endurance race that spans not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE disciplines and is usually held on some (hopefully warm and dry) July weekend in the Alps.

Yep, count 'em. Five.

Altogether the distance to be covered in the 2011 edition of the race – on bicycle, mountain bike, inline skates, by foot and in the water – is 340 kilometers (213 miles), and the difference in altitude from start to finish is 11,111 meters (37,000 feet).

No, that is no typo.

There are three categories: Relay teams of five (each person responsible for one discipline), two (a man and a woman dividing the labor unequally) and one (contested by athletes whose sanity I must question).

A friend and I wanted to put together our own team of five – we had been discussing it since about this time last year. Despite weeks of querying, prompting, nagging and cajoling, we could not find three equally-motivated individuals to join us. She too lost interest and energy, and her last deed before heading off to the beach was to hook me up with a team needing a female skater.

And so lo and behold, in my seventh year here, I find myself as a registered Gigathlon participant. Our team name is: “Isches nah wiiiiit?!” Loosely translated from Swiss German that means: “How much fuuurrrrther?!”

So in nine days I will travel to a valley in the southwestern corner of Switzerland with four strangers, sleep in a tent, and skate a total of 55 kilometers over the course of two days. Saturday’s skater route is a relatively civilized and flat 35 kilometers, Sunday calls for 20 kilometers up a sheer mountain face. The relay races on both days start at the crack of dawn (with skaters heading out first) and, if successful, I will have completed my share of the work by 8:30 a.m.

Gigathlon 2010: Skaters trailed by an ambulance.

And now that there is just over a week between me and this year’s race (subtitled: “On the Rocks”), that oh-so-obvious and sneakily familiar question pops into my consciousness like a blinking red traffic light: “What on earth was I thinking?”

Along with its bastard cousin: “Who the hell am I kidding?”


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Categories : Cruisin', EuroTrash, Skater Girl, Sports that can kill

Taking South Beach at night, on eight wheels

3 04 2011

OK, folks, “cool” does not begin to describe Friday’s night skate on South Beach. I don’t think there is an adjective in the English language that can adequately portray this athletic carousing on the streets of one of the hippest towns in North America. I am still reeling.

Friday night, Lincoln Road in South Beach, Miami. I knew I was in the right place for the “official” SoBe night skate as wheeled, helmeted, spandex-clad aliens emerged from the gutters to congregate at a street corner downtown. They really stuck out among Miami’s beautiful people, all dressed up, walking their doggie-carriages and preparing for a night out in Party-Central, USA.

A SoBe mama and her canine baby.

The police who would be accompanying us on our tour announced their presence with a blip of sirens, piercing blue and red lights flashing (cops also just want to have fun after all).

As we pushed off at 7pm sharp, I looked around and counted 34 skaters and five cyclists. Escorted by no less than ten police cars.

I asked a fellow skater more familiar with the ride why the cops take two hours out of their (surely very busy) Friday nights fighting crime to escort three dozen weirdos on skates through town – closing streets, blocking traffic and otherwise making themselves generally unpopular, especially among motorists. He said they use the monthly skate events as practice for when someone really significant comes to town, like the President. (Who, incidentally, showed up last month, forcing the cancellation of the SoBe night skate because the cops had to get back to their day jobs.)

And the escort service was quite professional, if I might say so. Skaters were more likely to get hit by a speeding police cruiser, racing up from behind to block off the next intersection, than any other vehicle.

Stay right or perish.

The nice policemen and -women also transported bottles of water for the participants and were kind enough to dispose of the empties afterwards, too.

The 12-mile (20-km) route led through some of the most expensive and attractive neighborhoods in the country. One community of mansions even opened its massive iron gates for us to cruise through. Don’t bother asking the price of a property here, you definitely can’t afford it. (Even if you win this week’s PowerBall jackpot, currently standing at 218 million green ones.)

What the SoBe skate lacks in masses it more than makes up in exclusivity.

Following the sanctioned event, a small group of about 15 skaters gathered for the second, unofficial skate, which, in hindsight, can only be accurately described as a mildly insane, suicidal free-for-all. But of course I didn’t know this before I enthusiastically declared my participation… I was skating here for the first time.

Strength in numbers gave us the confidence and the adrenaline rush we needed to take back the streets on our own (who needs cops?): Careening down tourist-trap Ocean Drive at speed; using parked and moving vehicles for slalom practice; whistling, howling and whooping it up at puzzled passers-by and baffled restaurant patrons. As we passed Gianni Versace’s villa, one skater launched into her rendition of “Strangers in the Night” while three others discussed the harmful health effects of carbon monoxide. Oh, did we just run a red light? Oops.

By the end of the hour-long late skate the group was crooning Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” while evading traffic on Washington Avenue, downtown’s main north-south four-lane thoroughfare.

It appears that this is all normal weekend behavior in South Beach, and it did not elicit a single noise violation, rowdiness citation or traffic ticket. My kind of town.

Lock these people up, they are a danger to my health.

By the end of the evening, I had close to 20 miles (32 kilometers) in my legs. Not quite a marathon, but then again, I never did a marathon in tropical heat and humidity while dodging SUV’s and chatting with a Swiss geophysics professor skating next to me. My ankles were screaming for mercy and the next morning the rest of my body expressed similar sentiments.

So…. when do we get to do this again? Ooooo I can’t wait!


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Categories : Americana, Cruisin', Skater Girl, Sports that can kill

The sad state of inline skating in the USA

1 04 2011

Coming to the land of new innovative sports and the birthplace of inline skating, I thought I would arrive in an El Dorado for rollerbladers, the likes of which I will have never seen before. Especially in Florida, where the weather is conducive to outdoor sports pretty much the whole year round.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Before I arrived here in Florida, I found a group on the Internet that conducts a weekly night skate. I was ecstatic. I imagined hundreds if not thousands of skaters, collectively taking back the streets, just like they do in every European capital at least once per summer month. (Think: Skaterparties in Paris, Berlin, London…) Even in Zurich our Monday Night Skate attracts anything from 2000-6000 participants every second Monday from May to September.

The Wednesday night gang.

The first time I joined the skate group here in Hollywood, I found eight people waiting at the assigned meeting point. And I asked… “Is this the skate group? This is it?” One of the other skaters answered, “Oh, this is a great turnout.” Last night’s group was 14 strong, a real army.

This is how I discovered that the skater demographic here is um… small and not really, shall we say… sustainable.

The folks I met in the group and also when I’m out skating on my own are great – very friendly and chatty people, we have a grand time. But they are all… well… middle-aged. There are Tom and Dave, who are in their late 40s probably; Karen is a few years younger. Then there’s Harry, who I would have guessed is in his late 40s but is actually 62 (a true testament to the youthful effect of skating). Those are a couple of the regulars. I have never seen anyone at the meetings that was under, say, 35.

Then there’s also George, who looks like he’s 70, but is probably 85. He is out every morning at 7:00 a.m., skating his laps along the beach like there’s no tomorrow.

They all complained to me that for some reason young people are not interested in the sport. And even though the group officially has more than 370 members (according to their website), only a fraction of those show up for the weekly meetings. Kids don’t seem to find skating “cool” anymore.

There is no decent skate shop in a 100 mile radius and I know of no organized races within a day’s drive.

George told me that for a few years, Disney organized an annual skate marathon in Orlando, but declining participant numbers prompted them to cancel it. Unfathomable for us in Europe, like the folks at the Berlin Marathon, who have to turn away hundreds of skaters every year because the event is sold out six months before the race.

My skate friends here say that for the monthly Miami South Beach Friday night skate (the epitome of coolness if there ever was one) usually about 50 skaters show up. If the weather is good, maybe five more will come. That event is tomorrow night, and I can’t wait to cruise through the Art Deco streets, escorted by police, past curious onlookers and irate motorists. I’m sure it will be a blast.

And I will be wondering where the thousands of other skaters, who would make it truly an experience of a lifetime, are hiding. They must be out there somewhere.

South Beach at sunset.


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Daily devotions on eight wheels

14 03 2011

One of my goals on this three month vacation unpaid personal leave of absence is to get a head start on inline skate training for the 2011 race season ahead of my European friends. While they are still shoveling snow and enduring blasts of arctic weather, I get to bask in Florida’s springtime. It’s dry and warm almost every morning when I head to the coast at 6:30 a.m. for my sunrise skate. It’s my personal devotion to the dawn of a new day.

Meantime, my skates are wondering what the hell is going on. In the first two weeks of my stay here I have put in about 100 miles (160 km) or so, probably more than I would do in any given summer month in Switzerland.

Giving the skates a rest at the beach.

But I’ve found out that skating on the beach or along the intracoastal waterway here in South Florida can also be mighty tricky, with many unfamiliar obstacles and sights to see.

First of all, there is the wind. The coastline skate path is, pretty much, due north to south. So when the wind comes from the north or the south, it’s logical that when you skate the one way (into the wind) you are basically standing still. Every yard (meter) forward is unbelievably hard work. And then when you turn around to go back the other way (away from the wind) you are doing nothing less than flying. OUT OF THE WAY, EVERYONE!!

It’s when the wind comes right off the ocean, from the east, that it socks you in the head BOTH ways. Florida has these winds coming off the water probably, oh, I will say, 90 percent of the time.

Second, the sand. It’s everywhere. I don’t even want to venture a look into my ball bearings after these first two weeks. Before I leave here in June, I will owe those babies a serious professional cleaning job. Hopefully they will bear with me that long.

And third, the flora and fauna one encounters in the tropics as opposed to in the old world is so… interesting. In Switzerland, I skate past farms and quaint villages with half-timbered houses that are probably 700 years old. The cattle and horses in the meadows, happily and lazily munching on luscious green, protein-rich grass, lift their heads as I pass. Last Spring on one of my favorite routes near Zurich, I skated by one cow in the process of giving birth to a calf.

Here, I skate past all sorts of crazy-looking palm trees, nouveau-riche waterside villas barely as old as I am and… manatees.

Sea-cows are watching.

Given the choice, though, considering the time of year, I will gladly take the wind, sand and manatees. When hurricane season starts, I will reassess.


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Categories : Americana, Cruisin', Skater Girl, Sports that can kill

Just another transatlantic crossing

1 03 2011

It’s 9pm local time, 3am where I came from – waaayyyy past my bedtime. After leaving winter in Europe, the tropical air here in South Florida, though not directly stifling, will take some time to get used to. A noncommittal breeze meanders around the building as the sprinkler system kicks in at the golf course just below my 4th floor window.

Lights flicker on at beachfront high-rises in the distance, and the sound of suburbia is disturbed only by the dull noise of commuters hading home on a major highway, about a mile away.

Welcome to South Florida!

I arrive here on LX 64, a time-share inhabitant of seat 27A. 10 hours and 45 minutes wedged into a corner of a steel tube headed southwest. Right from the start though, something is different… but maybe it really is just the wind. We taxi to the wrong end of the main runway 16/34 at Zurich Airport, take off towards the northwest instead of the southeast, thankfully sparing me the standard-pattern, stomach-churning, nerve-deadening steep left-hand turn over the city at 500 feet AGL. (There are days when you wonder if thrust and lift really will deliver what they promise. Days when you think the wingtip is close enough to scrape the roofs of houses below. An engine failure here would be a human catastrophe.)

But this is an uneventful trip, as transatlantic journeys go. Vegetarian lasagna (bad choice) on my tray-table accompanied by Grammy-winner Lady Antebellum on the sound system. The Social Network entertains me for two hours and I spend time working on the To-Do list that will keep me occupied days, nights and in-betweens for the next couple of weeks.

Pick up luggage – my suitcase takes a long time to emerge from the airport’s intestines (despite the prominent tag that says “Crew”) – and walk out the big double doors that separate MIA airside from landside. Here I always get a knot in my throat, quietly wishing my father would be standing there, waiting to pick me up, like he did for almost 10 years… and that his death 3 ½ years ago was just a really bad dream. I’m always disappointed.

The time from wheels-on-the-ground to drink-in-hand is a respectable 103 minutes, but far from our record of 79 minutes. Traffic on I-95 sucks.

But now I’m here and relieved. Home. In a way.

My great adventure begins with a beachfront sunrise skate at 6am.


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Categories : Americana, Cruisin', Just another working stiff, Skater Girl, The Savvy Aviatrix

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