SUCH Bike 2022

The majority of riders will be arriving this afternoon and all throughout the night. This years' challenge has been a little tougher and we're seeing riders taking longer. This might be partly due to getting the timing right for the 5 public transport options.

Looking at the Sanetsch, wich a lot of the riders chose as their final CP, some last minute arrivals can be expected. The last cable car ist at 5pm. Cap 25, Cyril Neyret should make the last one in time, for Marcel Graber, it's a little tight.

Patrick Luchsinger, who finished earlier than he'd expected on Friday night, lucked out on the last cable car yesterday as he told me. When he had hike &biked up like crazy to catch the last one down, he got there just a few minutes late. There was nobody at the top, just an old phone not working and he was ready to turn around.

Suddenly there was a voice coming from above, telling him to enter the station and board the last gondola down. Turns out, the chap operating the cable car from the office at the bottom was dotwatching him all along and made a very generous exception. Let's hope for Marcel, that this dotwatcher is also on duty today!

Meanwhile, we have riders who started at the Sanetsch, like Franziska Schöni, cap 50 or Melissa Weber, 118 who are crossing from CP 3 to CP2 via Lake Lucerne today as their final checkpoints. Melissa is about to board the ferry, for Fran it's another few hours as she also has to enter canton Zug before the last ferry at 6pm from Gersau to Beckenried. Fingers crossed that she's gonna make it! If not, she'll have to cycle around the lake, which adds another 50km.

What a beautiful, well deserved win in 1D 23H 50M! In the first SUCH edition Dominik Bokstaller landed 3rd, got hooked on ultra cycling, returned to SUCH21 to finish second and now, he's cycled incredibly strong and wise to win! Dominik is the host of the amazing @dead_ends_and_cake race and he was among the leaders in this years RAR and APN.

Just a couple of hours later the Bundesplatz crowd saw another epic finish: Paul Niehoff and Thomas Reinthaler riding in side by side sharing the 2nd place.

They were pretty much battling each other since Col du Sanetsch, Paul had some advantage at the beginning. Thomas followed by Maxime Holdener (who had mechanical issues since Montreux) crept up from behind and it started to look like a sprint finish from Thun to Berne! In the end, Thomas caught up with Paul in Rubigen, 10km from Berne, and I'm not sure until when they battled each other out or reached an agreement.

So far everyone who's finished started in Hospental. Including the first pair Linda Farczadi and Philippe Bechet who will get into Berne soon.

It's a bit of a battle up here! Not for Dominik who is very comfortably in the lead. But there has been quite a shuffle in the top 5.

We had a message from Dominik at night, saying he felt fresh and ready for the climb and hike & bike up and down to Sanetsch via Gsteig under a beautiful full moon. Maxime Holdener and Thomas Reinthaler went for a similar route and decided to the walk up and down that beast of a mountain path, pushing and carrying your bike.

Paul Niehoff cycled up and had no choice but to walk down to keep his position with Maxime and Thomas a stone throw away. They all crossed each other up and down the slippery slope, which must have cost and enormous amount of energy. And depending on the kind of shoes a really risky business. Thomas overtook Maxime on the way down, and they were both overtaken by Sebastien Gaultier from high up in the air! So they could have just waited and slept a little bit, but to be fair it's very chilly up here and it's always easy to say in hindsight and without race adrenaline and tiredness in your brain.

I caught up with Sébastien Glauser on the stretch towards the Col. He looked fresh but told me it was a hard long and cold climb. Before he had set off, he had a 30 min nap as he realised he would just about be in time for the first Gondola at 8:30. He's still got to cover Fribourg, but he said it's only a good 10km more. And with all the energy he's saved from not having to walk and carry the bike up and down, he might even beat Thomas and Maxime!

What a tough night that was for those who pushed on. A massive front moved across all of Switzerland with varying degrees of rain, thunderstorms and hail. A lot of riders got caught up in the mountains and many decided to seek a dry shelter and get some proper sleep.

Looking at the leaderboard the route starting from Hospental has clearly paid off with the leading pack chasing each other from South East to the West, with one exception.

Clearly at the front now we have SUCH veteran Dominik Bokstaller, cap number 1, who is no stranger to a lot of you. In the first SUCH edition he landed a third as an ultra rookie, beaten only by Fiona Kolbinger (1st) and Adrien Liechti (2nd). Last year he finished second. And this year?

Dominik is cycling at an incredible speed and will probably arrive just before sunrise in Bern tomorrow morning. He's only stopped 2h28 up until now, let's see whether he can keep going without sleep until then. Especially as there won't be a cable car when he arrives at Col du Sanetsch, which either means hike&bike down at night or an additional 80km or so.

On the chase are 28, Sebastien Glauser, 70, Paul Niehoff and interesting to watch: cap 8, Thomas Schlatter. He decided to do the Western route starting from Geneva, although he thought it would be faster starting from Hospental. But since he had cycled that direction last year, he didn't want to bore himself with the same direction and similar route.

It'll certainly be an exciting battle at the Sanetsch tonight! I'm headed that way now and see who I'll be meeting on the road there tonight.

Image: David Carlier

As riders are pushing into what looks to be a very wet and fairly cold night in the mountains, may I propose a nice cup of tea and a marvel at the routing creativity via a good look at the heatmap.

In comparison to other races SUCH is quite unusual to follow because it's hard to tell who the actual leader is. Up until tomorrow afternoon it'll probably remain difficult to make out who the front pack really are.

Sure, there are the kilometres, the cantons and the checkpoints already covered. But it doesn't actually tell you that much, because the data of all the route variations is so complex and the leaderboard is just an indication.

SUCH fans and map nerds like me will probably call it the beauty of this race. This year is particularly exciting, as there seem to be a lot more routes than last year. Even though some of the starting positions might have been the same, the way the riders continued weren't.

Just have a look at the heatmap, I love it!

The ferry connecting CP3 and CP2 across Lake Lucerne didn't carry a single car at 1pm today. Instead a good 30 odd, still fresh looking riders.

Image: David Carlier

SUCH22 is about to start from a Swiss train station of each rider's choice. As there is no single start line, the routing options and therefore strategies are abundant, which makes it so exciting to watch the dots come on at 10.10am! Then it's time to take the traditional selfie showing the train station’s clock and hit the road.

There are two main strategies: either start at the closest train station to a checkpoint (CP) such as Gstaad to Col de Sanetsch or Tiefencastel to Tgantieni, Lenzerheide or in a canton or close to one that is geographically on the edge of Switzerland such as Geneva or Ticino.

My bet is that the majority will start at Hospental, canton Uri, climb up to Gotthard, ride across the border into canton Ticino, return down via Andermatt to Göschenen train station, one of the CPs.

But I might be wrong, and I'm sure even if the majority will start from Hospental, there will be plenty of options to continue from here, and not everyone will descend towards Lake Lucerne towards another two CPs- the ferry ports Gersau and Beckenried on either side of the lake. We will soon find out!

Watch out for live content on the socials:

https://www.instagram.com/such.bike/ https://twitter.com/BikeSuch https://www.facebook.com/such.bikerace

I'll be covering live on insta at 10.10 from Hospental https://www.instagram.com/neliaowl/

You can also follow #suchbike on Insta.

SUCH is a race for routing nerds, mountain lovers and in this years' edition remote public transport stations. To uphold the challenge of finding the best route riding through all 26 cantons (each one in a different colour on the map), the organisers Marc and Vincent decided to add 6 mandatory checkpoints (CP) dotted around Switzerland, all related to public transport.

At each CP, the brevet card, aka "SUCH-travelcard" will need to be punched. To add to the routing game, at 2 out of the 6 CPs of your choice riders can use the public transport to save some distance and/ or climbing. There are cable cars, a funicular, ferries and a train to choose from. (More on the routing options in a later post, I had 9 different ones planned before I decided on the final one.)

The overall distance will be around 1000 km and 10000-12000m depending on modes of transport and route choice.

Race start : September 7th 2022 at 10:10 Start line: from any train station in Switzerland.

Finish line : Bern, Bundesplatz Race closes on September 11th, 2022 at 12:00 pm (noon) with the finishers party. There are three categories : SOLO, PAIR or RELAY.