Race Report | Evan’s Adventure at TREK Bike Attack

So you want to ride the Trek Bike Attack at Lenzerheide in Switzerland? I hope you speak German because there isn’t a spot of English on the website and there are tons of secrets that will help you get through it. I had to learn about it the hard way, and if you don’t want to be one of the suckers standing alone at the top of the mountain while everyone else is in bed, then maybe you should follow along.

I was invited to the Bike Attack by a guy I didn’t know, but he is a friend of a friend in America. Gareth is an expat from England living in Switzerland with his wife and toddler and has a fairly large crew of other “blokes from the UK.” I thought that this was maybe an enduro race or a dh race, I didn’t really care, I just knew that my friend in America said these guys were cool. So I signed up and sent my money.

If you are like me, then you don’t even know what this race is. If you have seen the Megavalanche, well, it is like that, but with no snow. It is a mass start race that descends 2000 meters across 18 kilometers of trails and it’s no joke. If I spent more time practicing German and less time riding bikes, I would have known this. Lenzerheide is gorgeous and it is a perfect place to bring your family. There are plenty of things to do off the bike, which is good because there is a lot of down time. The lake, the hotels, the restaurants, hiking … all are top notch and for perfect for friends and family.

The schedule is like this:
Friday – Register and practice/pre-ride the entire track
Saturday – Practice in the morning and then qualify on the upper part of the track which is almost exclusively downhill
Sunday – Race the entire track

This all sounds very simple but in reality it isn’t, and coming into this event with no proper preparation was ignorant. Luckily I had my crew of “mates” to laugh together about our mistakes, failures, and share some beers! So what advice would have been the most helpful? It comes down to these categories: practice, bike set-up,logistics, weather, and race day info.

Practice – If this is your first time racing the Bike Attack, you need to see the course. It isn’t a DH race, it isn’t an enduro race – I really don’t know what to call it. All I know is that it’s serious. Serious rocks, serious jumps, serious consequences. The top of the course looks like the moon and the rocks are all sharp like knives and ready to slice tires off of rims. I only took one practice run from the top and I front-flatted within a minute. The middle section of the track is routed through the bike park and it is mostly just berms and jumps. It is not that difficult, but by this section of the course you are tired and arm pump will be a factor. The lower section starts with a climb and then descends again through the woods with several bits full of roots. There are a few other climbs scattered in the lower section and while none are awful, come race day, they will feel like mountain stages of the Tour de France. You will want to have some familiarity with the entire course so that you know when to carry speed and when to hold back.

Bike setup – My biggest mistake was changing my tires before I left Stuttgart and headed to Switzerland. My test bike (Liteville 601) was already set-up as tubeless, but I didn’t know this. I thought that the tires were going to be too aggressive for the terrain so I put on some lower profile knobbies and didn’t have tire “milk” or CO2 to re-seat the bead, so I just put tubes in. The knives in the course were unforgiving and after my second flat I gave up and just put 2.5 bars of pressure (36 psi) in my tires. Luckily for me, the Liteville is setup with 190mm of rear travel and a 180mm Rockshox Lyric up front to take the sting out of the course. A dropper-post is necessary for the climbs and fresh brake pads are a must. I knew I wasn’t going to win, so I settled on trying to make it clean to the bottom without any mechanicals and it still took me almost 44 minutes to get to the finish. I don’t care what bike you are on, this type of riding is brutal on all of them.

Logistics – Most races start and finish near the same spot … ohhhhhh, but not this one. Not only does it NOT end in the same town that it begins, it ends on the other side of a mountain. I’m being a little dramatic, but getting back to the where you park your car is a bit of a mission. You can ride back (bad idea), try to catch some sort of gypsy shuttle, or have a friend park their car at the finish and run your own shuttle. There is normally a lift which can take you back to the top of the mountain and then ride back down, but it was out of service this year. I saw many unsuspecting suffering riders climb back over the mountain throughout the weekend.

Weather – The gods were kind to us and we had beautiful weather. The only complaint is that it was a little bit warm. The boys from the UK all shared a unique smell which turned out to be sunscreen. Apparently all people from the UK will actually melt in the sun and we had to take extra care of Gareth since he is a half-ginger. The sun had baked the mountain and turned the track into a ribbon of dust which required goggles for at least the top part of the course. If it had rained, well… I don’t know what I would have done. The track would have probably killed me since I had no traction in my over-inflated tires and any mud would have made the day unpleasant and nearly impossible to see without tear-offs. And if it were cold, well, the waiting around could easily chill a person to the bone.

Race day – There are actually two race days. Saturday is a qualification day and it is only on the upper parts of the track ending at the bottom of the bike park. It is effectively a DH race. I saw that some people used a DH bike on qualification day and now I understand. The qualifications start at 15 second intervals so you have more time to get up to speed with not too many people around you and there are no meaningful climbs. You are assigned you start time for qualifications and based on how you finish, you are then assigned to a starting block for the finals on Sunday. You are also told what time to show up at the gondola to get to your starting block.

This is where things get interesting. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed at 6 in the morning to head to the mountain. I had everything I would need to sit and wait at the top until the 1 pm (13:00) start. I wasn’t happy about it, but this is what was on the instructions. I showed up at 7:30 in the morning to get to my assigned block number four. I was surprised to see a steady flow of racers coming DOWN the gondola wearing sweatpants and flip-flops. When I finally arrived at the top (an hour later because of the long queues), I found that nearly half of the bikes were already in place. Have you ever been to a beach resort in Europe? Well, it is like that. These fuckers woke up at the crack of dawn and brought their bikes up to the top on the first gondolas so that their bikes would be positioned at the front of the blocks and then went back down!! I sighed … frustrated and dejected … and I put my bike in the starting block behind all the others whose owners were probably snuggled up back in their beds. And I still had another four hours to kill until the race started.

Back to the guys I was with – thank goodness I had a crew with me because we were all in the same position. We went to the mid-station where it was warmer and enjoyed the view and beautiful weather. It didn’t really matter how anyone placed in the race because just to make it to the finish line is an accomplishment. But we are all competitive people and want to do our best and surely could have done even better if we had known what we were getting ourselves into. I compare events like this to childbirth … not because I’ve actually given birth, but because women seem to be willing to do it more than once. There were parts of the race that were exciting, parts that were scary, and there were parts that I wanted to throw up and die. As I was pedaling up one of the last climbs in my easiest gears, I promised myself that I would NEVER DO THIS AGAIN!! But once I was at the finish with my mates and a nice cold beer was pushed into my hand, the pain faded. We all started to imagine how much faster we could have been if we only knew all the secrets. Well, there is always next year.

Words & Photos: Evan Phillips