Zurich, Switzerland

From New York, I flew to Zurich to do some racing and training with my friend Franco Marvulli. Franco is a ton of fun and a great person all the way around. When he sent me an email asking if I wanted to to come to Switzerland after the Skyscraper Classic to stay with him and his family and do some training and racing, it didn’t take long to respond.

The first part of the plan was for us to land in Zurich and then head to the track for the Tuesday night racing. For those of you that don’t know, Tuesday night racing in Zurich is epic. Think of your ordinary Tuesday race at your local track (if your track is a 100 year old historic monument), then add a field of international caliber riders and Six Day racers, and sprinkle in three to four thousand paying fans. Oh, and add a big dose of sausage barbecuing and a long line of customers. That’s what the Tuesday night racing is like.

The historic Zurich Rennbahn.

The track is truly something special. It’s a 333m concrete bowl but the banking is pretty steep and it’s a wide track. It’s hosted world cups and world championships and the council of volunteers that keep it going do a stellar job. We got there and I built my bike, still in the box from the flight. Then, it started to rain. And rain. Everyone said that the rain would pass and it did but racing was delayed an hour, which meant that the program would be shortened. Consequently, I only could do a couple of keirin rounds and a points race.

Getting off the plane and jumping into a race has never been my strong suit but somehow, I do it every chance I get. It was clear from the keirin that I didn’t have any leg speed (I kept getting thirds) so for the 72 lap points race, I geared up. It’s a heavy track and I was sort of warned against it but if you don’t have leg speed, you need more gear (and maybe more cowbell). I raced okay with the bigger gear. Not great but not badly. I kept attacking and following attacks but couldn’t stay out long enough for any big points gains. Also, it wasn’t easy when you don’t know the style of racing or who’s who and that’s something that I’m working on. I ended up with 5 points, which was good enough to be in the money. It was fortunate, too, as I had no Swiss Francs with me and this was money that I used for the whole week. It was pretty special to be part of the racing at such a historic track and I look forward to coming back for more. After that, Franco’s mom made us a really wonderful dinner and Franco realized that we would have to go to Austria the following day to meet with an important sponsor. So we packed our stuff and got ready for an early morning drive.

Hills of Austria.

I’ve never been to Austria. Given the length of the drive, 750km each way, I can’t say I was particularly excited but once we got going, it was a lot of fun. Driving through Switzerland, then Germany, then Austria was neat. We drove through a valley for almost the whole thing that I can only describe as something like going from the middle of Vail pass to East Vail, except repeated for 6 hours. And with castles. Tons of castles. We saw over 30 castles and all were like the Disney style castles, not the medieval style ones. It was incredibly surreal.

Eventually,we got to our destination and after introductions and some brief meetings, I left to go on a bike ride while Franco dealt with the more serious business. I found a couple of small roads that went up and just started climbing. Before long, I was up into the surrounding hillsides on narrow roads that led to hill top farmhouses. I would climb the 10km or so, descend and find another road. It was crazy. All of these roads and no other cyclists around. At one point when I was climbing, I heard some clunky sounding bells and I figured that an old church was probably at the top. I turned the corner looking for the church only to run into a herd of dairy cows. Austria was awesome.

More mountain roads to train on.

Eventually, I made it back as Franco was finishing and we drove back to Zurich through a crazy rainstorm. Franco is sponsored by Skoda and they supply him with a turbo Skoda Octavia RS wagon. The closest thing we have in the US is maybe an Audi S4 wagon. Anyway, we were able to make good time on the Autobahn and reach home without too much trouble.

Following that, I did some good training on the roads around Zurich for the remainder of the week. One day we did a ride around Lake Zurich, checking out all of the lake houses and hillsides. It really opened my eyes to the beauty of Zurich and the surrounding countryside. Another great thing is that it didn’t take a lot to get out of the city and into the country into the lakes and farms. One day we rode into Germany and back across the border over a river through an old fortress city. There is always something about the roads of Europe that constantly remind you how old all of these countries are; something that I miss in the western US.

Just another day in Switzerland.

Finally, the time came for us to drive to Italy for the Sei Giorni delle Rose, the Six Days of the Roses, which is the first Six Day of the season on the calendar. Once again, we loaded up the Skoda and headed for the border. We made a stop at one of Franco’s main sponsors, Assos, on the way and then headed into Italy. It was beautiful. We passed by some gorgeous lakes and mountains. After nearly six hours, we got to the hotel just in time for the riders meeting which was at the track.

Next installment: The Sei Giorni!