53. Gavin reviews the 2017 Red Bull X-Alps - Nik Hawks

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to a special episode of the Cloud Based Mayhem. I did a little interview where I was being interviewed by a good friend of mine, Nik Hawks, all about the 2017 X-Alps. We wrapped that up, I guess here about a month ago. And this is just exclusive to you, our Patreon supporters and folks that support this show. And I hope you enjoy it. We get into all kinds of stuff about why we did what we did and where we went wrong and where we went right. And nutrition and supplements and training and and flying and what I'd do differently if I do it again, if I'm silly enough to do it again. So I enjoy this conversation for you about the 2017 Red Bull X-Alps with me.

So Gavin, thanks for having me on to ask you a bunch of questions about the X-Alps. I'm really excited. I know that a bunch of us were following along during this year's race, the 2017 race. It was, for some of the folks who are listening, you may not be totally up on it. It was an 1100 kilometer race, just over 1100, 1138. A guy named Chrigel Mauer won it in just under 11 days. I think it's like 10 hours, 10 days and 23 hours. And only one other pilot made it to goal. You finished 14th, about 300K from the finish. And you had a Canadian right behind you, like 7K behind you. So it was a pretty strong race for you all the way to the finish line. So first off, congrats for getting out there and charging.

Yeah, thanks, Nick. It wasn't the result we were looking for. But man, it was just such an epic journey. And the weather was just terrible this year. And we were really psyched to just feel strong at the end and be able to keep pushing hard. And it's an epic race. And just hats off to Chrigel again, five times in a row. It's just ridiculous.

It's pretty inspiring, for sure. Super. 31 pilots started, only 19 of you finished. How do you think? How do you think this compared to the 2015 version?

Well, yeah, so I can only compare it to that one, because that's the only other one I've done. This one physically, for sure, was way harder. I think we had 19 people make it to Monaco last time. Last time I was eighth. And I never imagined that it wouldn't be possible to get to Monaco, even though I think the race historically has like an 11 % finish rate. So this was certainly more in line with history. But they're definitely saying this one was by far the hardest of all of them. Since 2003, certainly way harder physically than the 2015 race, although I was quite a bit more beat up, surprisingly, in the 2015 race, even though the training was pretty similar. But the Yeah, I mean, the weather was just atrocious. And actually, even scary, I would say it was overdeveloping most days, a lot of lightning and thunder, a lot of gust fronts almost every day.

And, and what was unusual about this one was that usually the leaders, the guys that get out in front, they're the ones that get out in front. Aka Chrigel, it, it's almost impossible to reel them in, because the race works really backwards across the Alps for how we typically fly in the Alps, you're kind of beaten against the wind the whole way until you make the last leg down to Monaco. And so just how weather systems work with the jet stream, whoever's out in front gets the weather first, and then it tends to slam who's ever in the back worse. So if you, the longer that gap gets, it's it gets harder and harder to reel the leaders in. And in this case, in this race, that was still the case. But the the guys that were approaching the Matterhorn when they did just atrocious wind, so no one was really able to fly the mountain line from the Matterhorn down.

So that was kind of cool, because it kind of kept it kept everybody together more. And it allowed me and the guys in the back, you know, because we love I can only speak for myself, but I had a pretty, I had an unfortunate thing happen on day three, where I was in really good position. And then, you know, the guys that I was with that morning were 180k ahead by that evening, and I just couldn't reel them in because the weather between them and me was worse. And so it kind of allowed me to catch up a little bit and make some ground at the end, which was pretty fun. Yeah.

Let's see, following you throughout the race was really exciting on Facebook and Instagram and watching what was happening on the Red Bull site had a ton of questions as we went along. So taking it from the top, the first one was you pulled night pass early, every athlete only gets one night pass where you can hike through the night. Otherwise, you have to be flat on your back. Why'd you pull it early? Was that a good decision? And do you think saving it would have allowed you to have a different outcome?

Yeah, the night pass is an interesting thing, you know, in the 2015 race, because I got third in the prologue, so the top three in the prologue get an extra one. And we used mine, my first one in that race early, and it ended up really costing us because the weather was atrocious. I ended up walking through the rain all night. And kind of smashing my feet. And, you know, really, you only get five hours anyway, and you can't you can't fly at night. That's against the rules. So, you know, at best, you're going to get 3540 K under your belt, which is, you know, two hours in the air hour and a half. And so in a lot of ways, we view the night pass is almost a penalty because that loss to loss of sleep really takes its toll. So our plan going into the race was very much we are not going to use the night pass.

Unless we absolutely like if we're in danger of getting eliminated. So, you know, who's ever in the last every 48 hours gets eliminated. So we would use it, of course, in that instance, or we would use it if I hit airspace, for example, and got a penalty that way. But otherwise, we weren't going to use it, period, or use it the last night, you know, to make some kind of hero move to try to beat somebody that you're racing hard against at the end of the race. What happened was this, we had a weather router, we had a weather team, and it was the same guy that was helping Aspard and, and who was doing really well, obviously, until he had his crash. But we started getting weather from him a few days before the race started. And knowing that the weather was just atrocious on the north side of the Massif.

So between the start of the race and getting up over the Massif, on our way down to Slovenia was going to be just terrible, no flying for sure. And we kind of proved during the 2015 race and 2017 race that I'm, you know, I'm not a runner, but my average speed on the ground is pretty fast. But knowing we weren't going to be able to fly off the Geisberg, and that's a long downhill, we just basically assumed that first day, I was, you know, at best going to be middle of the pack at the end of the day. And it was 95k from the start to the top of the Massif to get to the south side of the Alps. And so a pretty big day. And we our weather was showing that the south side, it was going to be strong north firm, but the south side of the Alps was going to be sunny, and dicey, you know, quite a bit of north firm, but flyable.

And we just, we took that weather report is way too specific. You know, it took us quite a few days in the race to really understand and interpret the weather we were getting from this Medio France guy, it was fantastic, his name was Laurent. But we were we were taking it really like exactly, you know, okay, this is what you're going to get these, these winds at 2500 meters, and this kind of sky and these kind of thermals. We were taking that really specifically when of course, it's they're just models. And and so but anyway, knowing that the weather was going to be better on the south side, we really felt like, you know, have getting there first and getting in the sky first was maybe going to put us ahead of the pack by 234 hours.

And it was just it was that day, the next day and the next day, the first three days of the race, we were really seeing wind and sky and sun. In a certain way that we felt like, man, this might be a brilliant move, if this works, and maybe it's worth doing. So knowing this was potentially coming, you know, two days before the race, I checked myself into a really nice hotel, I slept a massive amount, I really tried to kind of prepare for it. And then the day of the race that morning, we had basically decided that we weren't going to do it, you know, and I asked Gaspard, who had the same weather guy, if he was going to do it, and he was like, No, why? Why would you? It's, you know, it's, yes, it's going to be better on the south. But, you know, pulling a night past the first night and all those extra hours and no sleep, I just I don't think it's worth it, you know.

And so I and then I got a text from the race organizer about an hour before the race start that we pulled our night past, you have to let them know before noon. You know, Bruce didn't check with me, he was just really excited about the move. And, you know, and I, I leave all those decisions to him. And so I was pretty surprised. Pretty upset. And then, you know, I got him on the phone right away. And I was like, Hey, dude, why are we in such a rush? Why didn't you run this by me? And why are we doing this? You know, is it gonna matter the three or four or five hours that we're ahead? You know, it still sounds pretty bad there in the morning. And anyway, again, it's, I don't want to beat this up. But it was when we got to the past that night. So I only the other thing too, was that because I was pretty slow in the prologue, because the prologue was just a running event.

And again, I can't walk down, I'm really bad going down with my knees. So, you know, I was really fast up in the prologue. And then I just really took my time down. So they penalized us for wherever you finished in the prologue, if you were an hour behind the leaders, then you had an hour delay on the second day of the race. So I had like an hour and a half delay. So I stopped walking at 3pm, which still gave me three and a half hours of sleep, which is pretty, which is fine. That's plenty. And so we really felt like the risk was kind of worth it. What ended up actually happening is when we got up to the pass, I think I was in third place at that point, Toma and Huber had both also called their night passes. So they kind of saw the same thing. And we all got up there and it was just totally atrocious, completely unflyable, totally in the cloud.

We ended up having to walk all the way back down. So a few hours later, when the sun did start kind of coming out, it's still completely nasty. I turned around and started seeing these guys fly down out of this canyon. So not the way that Chrigel went, but pretty, pretty much every everybody, him and a few other people went the route, the kind of direct route. And I mean, dude, it was the scariest flying I have ever seen. Benoit, who was the other guy that ended up finished, he crashed into the trees. And it was just full on SIV for these guys flying down out of this kind of unlandable canyon. And so huge risk. I was really glad I wasn't where they were, because I probably would have done the same thing. For a couple of those guys, it actually paid off. They were able to stay in the air. Most of them just spiraled down to the ground to try to, you know, not die.

And some of them, some of them kind of kept going. Paul Guschlbauer, I actually ended up getting up to another launch and flying. So we didn't really get penalized for it, other than the lack of sleep. You know, that by the next morning, you know, I was taken off with Huber, I was with Nick Nanen's, Pal Takats, I was with the guy, you know, I was in sixth place. So it wasn't, it didn't really, it didn't, it certainly didn't pay off. And it meant we didn't get to use another one. But, you know, it wasn't really a mistake, other than you just can never really quantify what that lack of sleep does to you. You know, maybe on that third day, when I was with those guys, maybe if I'd had more sleep, I wouldn't have bombed out. So I mean, the real mistake was on day three, flying with Huber and Nick and those guys. And it wasn't even really a mistake. It was just, you know, kind of luck of the draw.

But you know, sometimes in the X-Alps, to go fast, you got to go slow. And, you know, it was a low cloud based day. And I was, you know, we did a crossing, and I was actually quite high, we did it with Nick Nanen's. And when we got across, this big valley, you know, it was totally shaded out. And he was able to kind of wander around and search and search and search. And I was about 100 meters below him. And we were both just frantically looking for another climb. And I didn't get one and he did. And, you know, and then that turned into, we can get into that later on. But that was, you know, that was 180k bomb out for me in terms of what the other guys ended up doing. You know, I was with their Agati, I was with the guys that did really well that day. And it was just, it was a bummer.

And that was really my race, you know, that, that, by the end of that day, I think I was in 25th.

Yeah, no, we all watched that. We're just like, Oh, my God, what's happening? Because you're in third, we're all psyched for it.

Yeah, it was, it was a bummer. I mean, it was, it was definitely, you know, in retrospect, you know, and we talked about it a lot as a team, you know, it, it could have gone our way. And then it would have been awesome. It didn't. And, you know, we learned from it. And, you know, it was, it wasn't, I don't even know that it was. It was really a mistake. I really liked talking to Chrigel, you know, a couple weeks ago on the podcast, and he talked about, you know, how you really have to gamble. And it was a gamble and we lost. That one didn't work.

Yeah, sometimes the brakes go against you. Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So that's what happened on day three. And that's, that's from your perspective. And it sounds like it's probably correct was kind of the race, at least the race for the podium. But from then on, I mean, it was like nail biting every day. Watching the progress and watching the lead guys kind of creep ahead after that big jump and watching you hustle and come back and knowing that in that race, anything is as possible. Was there one day that stood out as, as the really the hardest day for you?

Yeah, there were a couple. I mean, in terms of this, the emotional side of it, it was that day three, that was incredibly frustrating. And not necessarily the hardest physical day, there was a couple others that were probably much harder, but that day three. So you know, when I did the crossing with Nick, it was pretty early in the day. It wasn't a great day, but it was certainly looking better. And obviously gotten away better. And so when I when I bombed out there, I wasn't in a terrible position that people were flying really slow. There was a lot of cloud, it was low base. So and I was in a pretty decent spot, there was a road, a dirt road that kind of zipped. zigzagged up the back of this mountain so i packed up really fast started jamming up and then things got terrifically bad i i was you know i had all the maps on my phone and you know this zigzag was just frustrating because uh and i thought oh man i could just cut these things off and go direct and so i tried to take a shortcut the shortcut immediately turned into really steep jungle that was just covered in stinging nettles you know so it's just that like in in south america they call it the model hair like bad woman i mean it just it just shreds you and uh so i you know in no time i'm cussing and i'm like god damn it why didn't i why didn't i stick with the road it would have been faster and so but i'm just trying to haul ass up through this stuff and i've got my phone uh it's got velcro on it and i put it where my water bottles are on my shoulder so it's a pretty safe spot for the phone and but i've got a uh like a tether on it for when i fly so i don't lose it and it's a you know a little bit of string and that thing must have caught on a branch or something when i was going through all this stuff and so i finally get up and realize i don't have my phone and my phone's my instrument that's everything that's what ties to my uh vario and it's got all my maps and it's how i talk to the crew i mean you just can't do it without it's not otherwise i would have just kept going so then i'm trying to use the Garmin InReach which is really hard to use without the phone you're trying to text on that little tiny board you know and i'm texting my crew like call me and don't stop calling me i gotta find this thing that's the only way i'm gonna find it and uh and so it was it ended up being an hour and a half of just farting around in the jungle and i and it got incredibly lucky i've been walked back down through this stuff and it was like four or five foot just super thick i mean there's no way i was gonna find this thing and getting really frustrated and kind of almost like panicking

and uh and then it starts ringing literally like right when i walked right past it and they hadn't even gotten any of the text he was just watching live tracking wondering why i was motionless and and so i you know found the phone rallied back up took quite a while to get to a proper launch because by that point the south wind which always blows down in slovenia down in that that's what makes tree love really pretty tough um is it is a turn point because we're you're flying south and you're flying into the wind yep and uh and we so i i launched just as powell and aaron and huber and all those guys had tagged the turn point we're coming back out and you know so i was i'm going the opposite way those guys i'm looking at these guys going man there's a lot of wind and uh anyway got it finally got out of there it was it was really cross and dicey and uh got some height and crossed over to the the massive on the slovenia side and

couldn't really get a good enough climb to get over this canyon top landed you know thinking maybe i should just wave out and the wind will die a little bit i'm losing these guys but

here there was a couple other guys at that point that had bombed out crecia had actually crashed and one in the bushes i mean it was blowing pretty hard and uh so i waited waited waited and then i wouldn't say i got impatient it was just you know the sun was out and it was getting later in the day and the west side the west side stuff were really starting to work so i relaunched and uh didn't get really enough height flew into that canyon where you know people were getting flushed out and got flushed and where i landed was about as bad as the as it gets in terms of getting to the turn point it was just you know a monster walk and uh very clearly was not going to be able to fly again that day was not going to get the turn point that day and yeah i mean i i made 30k progress that day on a really good day so uh that was just you know i wasn't able to tag the turn point till the next day and you know like i said i think at the end of that day i was almost in last you know i'd gone from a pretty strong position to a very very

and then it was just a crawl back from there it

was something something else to watch you know a bunch of us are kind of sitting there pinging away on facebook like i mean for

us for the team for me i know i know that that was definitely you know from the i mean it was just really clear that we'd learned in the 2015 race that just a lot happens in that race and you have to stay optimistic and you can't be focused on oh my god there's a thousand kilometers left to go you know you're all you're all you're all you're all you're all you're all you're all my god i've only made the second turn point and it's day or actually i didn't make it till day four um you can't think like that you have to just think like okay look what i've covered look what we've done look how amazing this is you have to stay optimistic because you know things really can't happen and you can make big moves um but and other people make mistakes people hit airspace like they did on this race people get hurt you know people get eliminated you know so you it's a long race and you have to have that mentality but that was the day for sure that it was like

chances are over which is what we were really hoping for and so you know we had to just really shift our whole mental strategy from that point just like hey be safe have fun charge go as hard as you possibly can and and things will happen and they did you know i did crawl back but that was tough just mentally just kind of getting my head around like oh man all this training and all this preparation and there's no way i mean just getting in the top 10 at that point was looking really unlikely so in terms of other times that were you know i had some other days that physically were just manic like the day getting to garda you know i think it was 17 000 vertical feet of climbing uh they're actually getting up to garda once i flew across the lake you know it was middle of the day hot as hell i was raining sweat i've never i mean my wing was soaked my harness was soaked uh it was just you know just dripping like not dripping just showering off my shirt my my shorts um felt great you know but just uh you know and i took off flew back across the lake landed and i was like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired and the trees walked another 25k did another 2 000 meters i mean that was a ridiculous day physically but uh but it was also really fun you know i think it was four or five flights that day and a nice evening glass off and uh

devin was that your first tree landing did i remember yeah

that was that was the first one yeah that was kind of funny flying into that canyon so that was kind of the route that most of them had taken and what i didn't do is right when i left garda actually launching in the cloud and it was just kind of or a graphic cloud it wasn't like the kind of cloud that they get upset about you flying in but i i just went for it right away across the lake rather than you know most of the guys had gone north topped up and then crossed the lake got a little bit more height so but just kind of eyeballing it and knowing how much wind there was down the lake i felt like i could just get out over the lake turn it downwind and slam it into that canyon with enough height to get through but as you saw in the video when i went in there i was right off the ground and i was like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired of the canyon and when i went in there i knew that i didn't have the height to get to the end of the lake i was i was gonna land in the lake if i you know so that was kind of my only option was to stick it in there and then as soon as i got in there i was like yikes it was there was a ton of wind coming down out of the canyon so like from both directions and uh and it was just immediately like okay there was that little road and you see it in the video um there were some bikers sitting on a bike there but you can't what you can't really see is there's some

phone lines and so it was impossible there was no way to actually just spank it in there and so when i kind of went over towards those bikers and realized like yeah there's i don't have a chance i have to go under the trees and you know i was pretty pretty set on just trying to find a place that was going to be safe and you know that was a beautiful canopy but no i'd never had land in the trees what i didn't see was that wall uh you know of course as i came down through the trees i was like you man i'm glad i didn't hit that wall but yeah i mean it certainly probably looked more more dicey than it was it was actually really funny after it i got back on the road pretty quickly and started walking up and you know met up with ben and bruce shortly thereafter and you know the adrenaline's kind of pumping and you want to tell your story and bruce just wanted nothing of it he was like okay here's where you're gonna go here's the next launch like god man i just landed in a tree shouldn't we talk about this a little bit you gotta go so yeah it was uh yeah but no i never have landed in a tree you know there are those that haven't those that will

and you got it got that box checked what was uh so that was the hard day um what was the what was one of the easier days or was there one well

i wouldn't say there was a an easy day but the um the most rewarding day for sure and this is what's so hard about live tracking is you know you just don't see the skies you don't see everything that's going on but when we got to the uh ash out turn point so i had a magnificent day uh i had day five or six you know i flew from basically gerlitzen uh to the ash out turn point and right up over almost right over the top of the gross glockner glacier and you know i went on facebook live for a while i mean it was just easy awesome tall really good flying quite a bit of headwind but uh the route that we took there was you know i think that morning i was still kind of in the air and i was like oh my god i'm in the mid 20s and uh you passed a lot of guys that day so that was that was a big day for us and got to the ash out turn point and rallied and got a nice little evening flight across the river uh to kind of head into towards the laramouse turn point and that was a really interesting decision point so everybody that was in front of us so tom dorlado and michael gerlach and i think jesse was right in there that day so there was like seven or eight or nine guys we were all kind of clumped together and we were all kind of clumped together and we were all kind of and i was kind of at the tail end of that but just barely and uh and they were they all took the in valley so the the route towards innsbruck and the weather report we were getting from our guy was the next day was basically unflyable you know 40k headwind um no thermal strength almost 100 cloud uh and so we were trying to decide okay you know should we if we go the in valley what which is what everybody did you can basically fly in the lee and there was a chance of getting a flight if you went that way but it was 25k extra distance on the ground and and and it's just it's kind of shitty going that way there's a lot of airspace around innsbruck there's not a lot of launches i don't know my gut reaction was that that was the wrong call he actually even called tom dorlado before he launched that day or that night and he said like hey man have you given any consideration to go north i think that's the move and he's like no all those guys are going that way i think i'm going to go that way and so uh and and bruce was we were all kind of on the fence and i was just really thinking about it from the ashram going you know i was like god you know even if it's 40k headwind that's that's a lot of headwind you know it's going to be tough to fly but kind of like the creagle thing it was like i i want to i want to risk this because if if we can't fly it's 100k on the ground and uh and and at that point you know that that was just going to be not not the way to catch up and so i was like man we got we got this is time to roll the dice now you know who cares we're in the back we got to do something yeah so that i didn't actually make up my mind until i was in the air i i started flying and uh ben was with me he was flying right behind me and uh and there was no thermals it was right at the end of the day we were actually like it was like 8 40 you know sweet you got to be on the ground by 9 p.m and uh so i just made the decision in the air like not i'm going to take the north route and which is an easier way to walk and it's shorter but it also gave us the option if there were some north in the wind you know in other words when the bavaria winds start blowing which

every day it meant you know even if there were no thermals we could maybe kind of do some ridge soaring flights and make some progress and uh and it was also a way that i really knew i've flown through there a lot and so just kind of last minute decided to go that way and which really was risky but also you know and i think it basically meant that you know flying in the lee the end valley where everybody else went we were removing that as an option so i think bruce was

for whatever reason it just felt right and uh and jesse followed me so he went that way too that night he and i camped in the same you know little parking lot and then the next day uh he and i both launched from a pretty similar place he kind of got lost he was ahead of me but he got lost so i launched first he was behind me maybe a half an hour it was just blowing his tits off just 40 exactly what the forecast said you know it's 40k right on the nose was pretty wild and

but i stuck with the with the plan and jesse dove in towards where everybody else had gone and he basically didn't move the rest of that day i mean and none of those guys did they were just walking and uh and anyways i made did this 10k flight and when i landed it was like man i i don't think there's that much wind the wind seems to be less you know like hey guys find me another launch because if if it's 40k there's no point in burning all that energy to go up you know you're just

yeah is that kind of how it works

i'm just gonna interrupt you there for a second yeah so you're flying along and you land and you're immediately assessing the conditions and then reaching out to the crew like hey i don't i don't have eyes on all this stuff what's next is that how it works yeah

yeah totally so that so basically you know ben is my ground guy and bruce is my air guy and so bruce is constantly in touch with our weather guy and then he's also doing his own weather the two of them are working together real closely on google earth to try to find a lot of them we've picked out in advance but you know you just can never predict where all the places you're going to be so yeah so they're they're really compiling as much data as they possibly can so i can constantly be moving you know so even if i'm not in touch with them uh we'll have planned it out before i launch like hey if you go here here's what you're doing if you make it here here's what you're doing here's you know so we kind of have all those options covered so basically i'm just packing up and i'm hitting the road and um trusting that they're going to get me to the right place whether that's walking or getting to another launch and so um at that point it was still pretty early in the day there was quite a bit of sun but it just seemed like the winds were backing off it seemed like the winds were going to be less than what they were saying and so we just made a collective decision like get me up to another launch by the time i got to that launch it was quite cross but it wasn't too windy and it was really cloudy almost 100 and i thought okay you know maybe i'll get 8 10k out of this i mean i didn't have much expectations but we kind of were able to cut

it was faster still than staying on the ground and walking around and staying on the flats you know kind of the bavarian and the german flats and so launched and flew 35k it was it was one of the most a miracle i mean that's nothing but on that kind of day i couldn't walk

in it yeah

i mean half the time i was you know i could see the van below me i mean i never got high half the time i had one of the biggest blowouts i've ever had in my life you know it was it was kind of rough but

there was no sun i mean literally none it was like i don't know where these thermals were coming from but it was like there was always just another climb i'd be going oh i'm gonna land nope i'm not gonna land i'm gonna get another climb and um and you could kind of ridge soar in some places and just really patient really fun half the time it was kind of raining lightly but never dangerous um you know and i was getting texts from like crecia was on the ground swiss you know at one point i flew over him and he sent me a text and he's like dude that's a ballsy move that was awesome but it actually wasn't that ballsy it's like everybody on the ground thought it was unflyable including myself and it wasn't it was pretty flyable and uh so again one of these risks things so there was that flight landed rallied again with ben through this fly infested swamp terrible area and launched again and got almost to garmish on that pretty close to garmish on that flight and then rallied up again and that time we made a huge uh oh i mean it ended up working out but that was one of the times one of the rare times where the guys totally screwed up they they're using google earth they thought i could get off at the top of this lift it was a little it's like the little tiny ski area above garmish and uh and so it was really steep really hard work to get up there and i got up there and it was completely flat surrounded by trees there was nowhere to launch and this is one of those like god i wish i could have this on video or that the the people watching could see this because i just rallied around rally i couldn't find a launch and this was just going to be a sledder it was the end of the day you know just just to get a few more hours

and i was like oh my god

okay yeah and uh ended up walking down underneath this chairlift and there's nowhere it's just total trees i

can remember seeing that it's like what's he doing walking down the mountain like come on dude

fly oh my god you should have seen this place i was it's just it's criminal that i didn't have a camera on this because i finally got down to this one little spot and at some point in history they had cleared this little tiny runway of trees but it was it wasn't like to go it's hard to describe it is basically flat so out of this thing there was and i ended up just leaving my gear and walking it all out and trying to eyeball it to see if i could actually fly out of this thing but basically i had to launch on this little tiny hill take an immediate 90 degree left hand turn and then i'd be flying maybe five to ten feet off the ground through basically down through these trees that was almost flat and then take another there was a little ditch point if this wasn't going to work i could bail right there and then but if it wasn't going to work i could take another hard right turn 90 degrees

and then i could just see this little window that was going to be just about the width of the wing if i got through that then it looked it looked like i could make the glide over these trees that were like 100 feet tall it was just like okay i think i can make that i think that's going to work so i ran back to my gear and laid out and meanwhile they're calling me constantly they're like dude what are you doing you know and i just ignored that and uh anyway did a forward launch because there was no wind whatsoever i mean you know i was i was basically down in the air and i in the trees and uh and it worked it was just the coolest like those kind of things are so fun you know i mean in in the end it was we probably wasted i would have gone farther if i just stayed on the road and walked but it's it's always more fun to fly and and so anyway that night we we almost got to the laramie's turn point the next morning had a little flight got to the laramie's turn point and you know instead of walking 100 and some 125k you know we didn't end up walking that much and made a huge jump i almost had toma by the way that night and yeah

this was the race for him huh yeah

yeah it totally god that guy moves fast on the ground it's unbelievable but um yeah so that you know that that was one of those where god i wish that kind of stuff could be seen by the folks watching the race because it was just magnificent those kinds of experiences it was really cool day so

as you're going through um obviously you guys are kind of working through some pretty difficult problems together like when to fly when not to fly where to launch from you know and i'm sure at some point everybody's blowing up at each other but what were some of the you've you've talked about having a ton of fun in the race what were some of the funniest moments in the uh in the race oh

man you know i it's it's really hard to say because you don't you don't interact that much with other teams but i i feel like we've got something really special with our team because we never stop laughing i mean there there are times where it's pretty intense for sure um you know like the last day there was definitely some grippage going on with the canadian behind us because that dude moves fast he's incredibly tenacious i mean i just couldn't shake him this whole race and

yeah and

uh and i mean like the night before this is this is terrible to admit but i got to do it because i got to give props to him but the night before you know so he and i and the pole had big a pretty big day and i chose a different route up the sandrio valley on the north side they were on the south side i got slammed by a bunch of wind at one point and was horrified to learn that they were both ahead of me i just couldn't believe it i was you know i'd been flying well and yeah i thought our route was really strong and and you know bruce was like no they're not tearing you up but they're both ahead of you and uh and so that was just a magnificent day i won't get into it but some of that is in that video that i put up just you know it was tall it was beautiful it was fun it was good flying i at one point i top landed and had to launch off this cliff that was like two thousand feet straight down it was really cool stuff happened that day but at the end of the day i've landed 2k in front of him he just a tenacious pilot he was scratching forever and had he known that i was coming up over his back he probably should have just landed and walked he would add me but um he was scratching and scratching and scratching forever and i didn't try to scratch at all i just was you know i was watching live tracking when i was in the air and i was like i got him and uh and i landed like 2k ahead of him which is usually you know that's enough of a margin all you got to do is just keep live tracking on and make sure you stay ahead of him you know there was only one way he and i could go and the next day sounded totally unflyable and so i don't know at one point but i thought he was just going to be you know like walking fast like we normally do but it was very clear as soon as i hit the ground and you know it was 2k ahead of him and then when he stopped flying and packed up he was running i mean he was in a trot and i like i said i can't run my knees are trash so

i i was like i i can walk really fast forever but i'm not a runner and uh so i started running and you know two hours into it he still was trotting along he's still running i wasn't putting any distance on him and and uh and so i texted him and i was like hey dude i don't know that 14th and 15th really matters like why don't let's have a gentleman's agreement here i'm not gonna you know i'm not gonna let you catch up but i am gonna stay ahead of you but you know does it matter if we're five or 10k farther along we're not gonna catch anybody like let's just walk and have a nice time the race ends tomorrow at 11 a.m and uh you know please stop running and he was like you know if you let me catch up i'll have a beer with you but nah this is a race

nice oh good on it it was

really cool and i even fired back at him and i was like god damn it you know up yours and uh but but then i thought about it i was like yeah right on cool man that's cool that's awesome it's hard i mean so i ran that night until 10 30 you know until the shutoff and then in the morning i mean it was literally like standing on a starting line in the morning at five o 'clock we were ready to roll yeah and uh sure enough he ran and then we started going up over the pass to doma dosila and you know it was really obvious that we had him and uh and then you know the only thing that could be dicey was that if he went to try to fly because it like i said there was a lot of headwind but it was sunny it looked flyable and there were places to launch and you know constantly going back and forth to bruce and ben like are you sure he's not going to go to a launch like are you sure are you sure we shouldn't go to a launch and they're like nah you got him you got him you know it's it's way too risky he might try because he needs to he's not going to catch you on the ground he needs to try something but don't worry you got him and then he did he went up you know he broke off the road started going up to a launch and holy shit we were nervous it was like oh my god if this works and he flies over our head at the bell it's going to be so depressing but it ended up you know it ended up they were totally right but there were there

were moments like that that were pretty serious but for the most part you know every single time ben drives me in the car he he honks his horn flips me off you know and that sounds harsh but it's hysterical it's like we just never stop giggling and i think uh it's a pretty precious it's really hard that your support crew it's a really hard job you can imagine them and they get they get no sleep uh it's there's a lot to do there's a ton of logistics but you know from from the experience of the 2015 race one that really helped so these guys were super tight this time they were just totally on it and i mean in terms of on the 2015 race you we needed pages after the race to write down all the mistakes we made and you know and just to try to clean it up for this time and just because we were rookies we didn't know sure and uh this time you know really the mistakes we made you know there was that early one you know with the night pass that that could have gone our way i don't even know if that was a mistake and then you know me bombing out and again that's that's just paragliding that's what happens you know i mean other than that you know that they were just incredibly tight and we i can't isolate any one time that was more hysterical than another but i just promise you we we just never stop laughing partly is because they give each other constant shit and they give me a ton of shit that that's our that's our conflict resolution you know we you you need to have a plan for conflict resolution but i i see a lot of the other teams just i don't know in a way i think they're taking it too seriously it if you if you take it really seriously it just piles up and you just can't you know if you start placing blame on on others or you know it's that dynamic is way more important and way more it's funny you know you think the race you know the takeaways are you know the flying and the beauty and being in the alps and that stuff's all great but for me it's that it's it's the team it's it's uh you know that at the end that's what we all cry about it's not it's not the uh it's not pulling it off or you know even being healthier and those kind of things it's just like man you guys are you guys are my best friends and and i i can't believe that the that it's over it's depressing that it's over because of your you're you're not with them anymore that's what hurts at the end of it it's not actually the end of the race it's that that bond and that what you create during that time and the trust that you put in these guys and and the hell you go through is you know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know it's i haven't been to war but it must be similar yeah

i mean sebastian younger talks about it yeah certainly certainly one of those things you get a bunch of hard circumstances and hard dudes and or girls and it's it's pretty good time was it uh was it this race or last race where they fed you cat food in the last

one they kind of did it again this one but it was a tired joke by that point but uh yeah the last one it was that was an awesome night so it was the night we pulled my first night pass uh there was a river coming down the road and these downbursts i mean we could not have pulled a worse day to pull my night pass it was just the worst weather and about 10 10 30 that night uh it was raining really hard and i called the team and i was like you guys got to get back here man i i gotta get in the van and just wait this out this is ridiculous and uh and so they drove back and i jumped in the van and there was this girl that uh was just you know a fan of the race that had been riding along with me on her mountain bike and we'd just been chatting for the last couple hours and she was just you know fascinated with the race so you know so she got in the van too just to get out of the car and she was like rain and uh you know i changed out all my stuff and i was kind of grumpy and you know tired and my feet were hurting and uh so i was like hey you know uh bruce can i have some dinner because bruce does all the cooking he's an awesome cook and bruce can i have some dinner yeah no problem you haven't they put out this like it was i knew something was up because they put out you know they like proper you know here's the fork and the napkin like a proper table setting you know we don't have time for that and then and then just a can of of

whiskers cat food it's just so funny and the girl was like what the hell and immediately i knew what was going on and ben was like stop being a pussy get out the door it was classic so i mean just to have the just to have that all planned in advance like knowing that at some point i was going to be a jerk and this was going to be how they were going to diffuse the situation it's conflict

resolution it's a good way to do it totally totally it was awesome so every race it sounds like or every every pilot in the x-elps has some pretty scary moments was there anything this time that stood out as like wow that was that was truly terrifying not

no not really and it was kind of the same case in the first one you know i i in in the first one there there was a day where you know i i basically should i should have died yeah i got caught in on the lee side of really strong like 60 mile an hour winds and valley winds um and you know at one point my barrio was minus 20 you know i mean just just just just terror terrifying air and uh and kind of got lucky on that one um so so i shouldn't have said so the first one it was interesting at the end of the race at the first one you know sitting around in monaco that night with i think it was Paul Guschlbauer and ferdinand uh Aaron Durogati a couple others and uh everybody had a story that was pretty terrifying you know it was it really kind of set me back because the euphoria of being there had kind of clouded and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die bad experience and maybe a couple others that were that were a little bit nerve-wracking um but you know for the most part even in that race even with that experience i felt like you know that that that can happen just normally and normal flying that's just part of the game that we're playing and it wasn't you know i think what's different about the X-Alps is that you you get in a mindset where um and you've done the training and you trust in that training you get in the mindset where you can handle stuff that's way beyond recreational flying but you can handle it safely and i never really felt like in this race i never felt like i was really out there on a limb um there there were certainly a lot of days that were kind of over developing where you you're like man if i was not in this race i'd land now whereas i pushed it maybe another 20 minutes or something so you there you know judging judging when when the gust front's gonna hit and when the lightning's gonna start is impossible and so and that's just that's a game that's not gonna end well if you keep doing that over and over again and i'm sure a lot of people in this race had that happen but for the most part like the day getting to gurlison you know it was just completely blowing up you know flying was starting to get way too easy there was lift everywhere um you could see big areas of rain uh around around me you know to every direction and as i got across i flew across the gurlison valley and it was getting really shaded out and uh you know top landed next to this little tiny house and you know 10 minutes after i landed it was raining pretty good that's kind of close but but it was you know the wind hadn't hit you know so there were there were things like that but probably the diciest thing i did wasn't actually scary it was hysterical in in some ways but there was another launch i was up there with ben uh we were going up the uh i can't remember the name of that valley we were going heading up towards the timels yacht and uh and we were rallying up to try to get to the it was really unstable and we knew it was going to get worse and later in the day we're like we had a really narrow window to fly and uh and and i'd actually been up this one in 2015 training this this one kind of ridge line but i'd gone way higher we were trying to find a launch that wasn't so high so i could get off the hill quick and there was nothing there was just there was no way to go these huge tall trees we found this one place that looked like it had been logged at one point a little bit so there were still big trees but there was there were some big gaps in them and there was this little kind of like ramp and then and it was just completely covered in small twigs so you know and then at the end of the ramp there was like a 10 foot cliff and then then just basically trees and uh and but the angle of this thing was that there was no air coming up you know we were kind of being blocked and so to get off i basically had one step so to get off this you know i was basically standing right at the top of the cliff kind of one step back from the top of the cliff and it was only a 10 foot cliff

i probably wouldn't have died if i didn't launch but it would have been really messy and and the glider would have gotten ripped and it wouldn't have been nice and uh so first we tried to clear off all these kind of branches so it wasn't going to get caught in my lines that took forever because there was a million of them and then just as i was about to pull up and basically if i made it off the cliff then i had to bank right 90 degrees and then immediately left to miss these two trees but it looked pretty possible it didn't look that bad and uh but right before i pulled up i just changed my mind and went nah because i was going to do i wanted to do a reverse and make sure there was no twigs in my lines but if it was a reverse then and with no wind coming up with a 10 foot cliff it just didn't seem like that was going to work and so you know ben's standing there holding up the wing and uh right at the last second right before we were kind of ready to go i ducked under it and just yanked and did a forward and i we had agreed that he wasn't going to say anything unless there was a major problem with the wing like you know a big huge branch

in something and so all i heard from him was you're fucking crazy

as i kind of lopped off this cliff and did the right 11 and it worked you know it was totally fine but um and it wasn't actually like i said it wasn't that scary but that's what i love about that race is it puts you in the craziest positions and um and you it's just funny your brain starts operating i mean maybe some of the other guys they operate like that all the time but for me it's kind of the in the ramp up to the race you know you just you get in this zone where you got it and and everything's going to work and you're going to be fine and you know i don't always have that when i fly most of the time i well not most but a lot of the time i don't at all you know where you just like oh i don't know this doesn't feel right or man it is really rowdy today or you know there's there's times where you just have that kind of like true grit where you're like yeah bring it this is rough right on and there's times where you're like this is rough and scary i don't like this and and for some reason with the race it's like you're you're definitely more in that ladder mode where you're like yeah i got this this is cool that

brings up a question what if that's one thing i've heard you say a couple times is is the mantra like i got this was that something that you thought about specifically for this race is like some default thought patterns you were going to have or was that just do you think the race kind of brought that on and you weren't super conscious of how you were managing the mental aspect i

think both um both in the 2015 and this race in june kind of the month before i went through a lull where it was more scary than the whole kind of bill belcourt concept of bringing it you know that you you just have to be super calm i mean i i've just always believed in paragliding you know to not get hurt to keep it safe you've got to be really mentally strong you've got to really be confident and i'm naturally a confident person but you know there are there are times where those lulls come you know maybe after a really scary flight or a near mistake or um and in the 2015 race i just i went through this week where i was flying down in south france kind of the line down to monaco and it's just dicey down there it's you know no one flies down there typically except in this race and you're you're dealing with a ton of value in and lots of high tension power lines and very few places to land in some areas and it could just be it can be pretty scary down there and i was just having flight after flight that was really scary and i i started thinking like what the hell what am i doing there's no and it also saps a lot of your brain energy you know so it's like it you you get you don't realize it but your brain's getting tired you know we think about the race as being this major physical event but um i think a lot more of it is just is you know you you have to get sleep you have to get recovered you have to get your brain uh you know before the race i'm

it's kind of it's pretty tricky to get all that but you know like Chrigel talked about that that there are times where it's really on and you have to be really focused and so when it but so when it's not you have to be really focused on being not focused you know you have to be you have to give your brain a break you got to relax you got to back off you got to enjoy you got to look around you got to laugh you know that's that whole part about not being so serious so yeah so anyway then

through these i went through a lull where i thought holy shit man this is not the frame of mind i need to be in for this race so i think it was a combination of you know just going to bed thinking like tomorrow i'm not going to be like that you know tomorrow i'm going to bring it and uh and and also just i think it's the natural cycle of paragliding you know there there are days where you're just a lot more confident there are days that you can bring it easier and there are days that that uh you know when it's really rough and spicy and sharp that you're loving it and you're like yeah come on bring it i got this and and you know you have the trust in your wing and you have the trust in your training and there are days where you're like i'm gonna land i don't like this this isn't working for me you know in the x-ops i in both races i never had that i mean it was i never had the feeling like oh god i need to land it's always like yeah right on beat me up bring

it i mean there's significant pressure there's a really clear goal like those things really help um keeping your mind right to to achieving something yeah

i think you just have to believe i it'd be interesting to talk to the guys that flew out of that canyon day two because i i i have not seen flying that dicey before and then actually when i got in the air um i was out of the canyon so at least i had places to land but i mean it was terrifically bad and flying in fern is always really scary and uh i mean there's just huge holes in the air you're just a total rotor and uh it's not nice so but it would be interesting to talk to them because a couple of those guys just dialed down out of the sky just you know just spiral right to the ground started walking again so clearly it was beyond some of their you know margin levels that were that they were comfortable with yeah

so one more question that's kind of really specific to this race and i want to talk about some prep stuff for for this edid beforehand and maybe what you're thinking after one of the points that Chrigel brought up in the conversation you had with him was that he was with him was how he chose his glider um and safety versus performance with that in mind like how do you feel about wing choice um in general did that change the way that you thought about your wing

yeah that that's really interesting it didn't change the way i think about it um i i guess i found that quite surprising and and it's obviously you know he he's he wins uh and i and i also appreciated i didn't appreciate that uh no one's been in the top four on a two-liner that also really surprised me so you know for me it was more of a factor in the 2015 race that you know i on that on the first day at the 2015 race we had you know awesome weather and uh a really good flying day and i could just i was the only one in the race on a two-liner in the 2015 event that i know of anyway you know the the xeno the zed alps wasn't around then they didn't have the xeno and i think everybody was on a three-liner except me i was on a the the four are they sorry i was on the ice peak seven in 2015 so normal weight glider which that that was a bummer carrying that extra weight but uh you know i could just really see it that day that i had a hotter glider and it really helped and the reality is is i'm not as good a pilot as Chrigel and uh gaspar and some of those guys that do a ton more racing and have just a lot more years so for me that was just a decision that i made because i've flown that glider so much and the glider i fly in some valley which is just rougher than anything in the alps so to me that that that was just the right choice then you know i think his you know then then this this race i used the climber but there was uh you know i i think that there were a lot of guys on the zed alps on the xeno the lightweight xeno in this race and Chrigel beat them all so you know i

was so bad it was just better to be on a on a safer easier to handle glider anyway but yeah i i thought what he said was really interesting because it's probably not a pilot in the world that's more comfortable on a two-liner so clearly he's on to something clearly i probably need to rethink my strategy there uh if i am stupid enough to do this again and uh yeah so i it's i found that really fascinating and i'm going to follow up with him on that in our kind of bonus talk yeah

maybe next time you'll be on the uh the hook four yeah right uh it's funny okay let's let's shift to um kind of pre and maybe some post post training stuff your physical training was obviously thorough seemed like it was pretty similar to the year before but it also seemed following you up into the race that you were doing and you know the year prior to the race for two years you're doing something different for flight training can you talk a little bit about any specific flight training you did for this race and if you think it was worth doing or if you should done more of one or another thing

yeah so i was a little hamstrung this year because i had a mountain biking accident last september so basically a year ago and uh really major surgery rotator cuff surgery and stuff was october 4th so we officially start my physical training october 1st that gives us you know nine months and a few days before the race this year the physical training was very similar to what we did in 2015 but we had to work around the shoulder uh for you know so instead of doing a ton of ski touring and you know november and february and february and february and february and february and november and december i was doing a ton of time on a stair mill it basically just meant my training was a lot more boring but but yeah ben arranges all the physical training and he just kicks ass and uh you know from that side of it we felt really strong we did change a lot in terms of diet which we'll get into here but and and supplements and stuff that that worked really well uh this time around but the the from the flying side because i was because of that surgery i basically couldn't start flying again until march

just you know i i had plans of brazil and colombia and mexico this winter and and had to you know skip all those so definitely came into the season a lot more rusty i mean i think even right now i've got you know 150 hours this year which is way below my average so and way below what i really wanted to have going into the race so um how much did that affect me that's kind of hard to tell you know i felt pretty tuned up when the race went but you know certainly uh you know mistakes were made in the air and had i'm you know just hours add up so for sure i was probably uh behind there what i did do uh very specifically this time around that i didn't do enough of in 2015 and that was just because what i learned in the 2015 race was how important ground handling is i've always had an emphasis on ground handling anyway i know how important it is but in the race um you launch and land in some really tricky spots and so i tried to put a lot of emphasis on ground handling and then i also tried to do um quite a bit more acro training and if i could have done anything more uh i would have done a lot more acro training it's kind of tricky for us where we are we don't have water and so all the acro training i did was with Cody Mittanck and we did it over the desert and uh he has now changed his philosophy on that he doesn't really like that we're doing that over the dirt and so we were we

it was pretty safe but it's just still not very safe so before if i do it again in 2019 that's what i would focus on the most would be more acro training and you saw it with pal tackett you know he he's just a acro legend i think in that in that race the more wing control skills you have the more SIV the more acro and the more ground handling i think that's way more important than time in the sky

that's that's another question i was going to ask you is that there's a bunch of different types of paragliding athletes in that race there's world cup racers and general adventurers and acro pilots and endurance athletes it sounds like you're saying that that you think the guys that have maybe the most advantage might be the acro guys if you were to decide to do it again is is that what you'd focus on or would you put a bunch more racing experience into your in your quiver

i mean i ideally you do it all and you know we we have we have a lot of people that are we have the template to follow which is Chrigel and you know he is one of the best in all of those things you know it was surprising for me to hear that he feels like he's not a very good climber compared to some of the top guys on the world cup but you know this this isn't meant to uh be a slight against anybody but we could look at some of the you know real contenders and kind of look at their strengths and maybe their weaknesses you know somebody like aaron for example so he's been you know world champion uh twice in the last five years i mean he's he's the only person that's done that he's won the Superfinal twice he's young he's incredibly strong he's incredibly fit i think in the 2013 race was the first time he'd flown over 200k uh in a day so i mean he's he's one of the best uh certainly yeah certainly one of the best racers probably even better now than Chrigel in terms of like world cups sure uh but then but Chrigel still beats him pretty handily and he has the last three times and so and then you have somebody like pal tackett who you know more recently got it he did the xops back in 2009 i believe too so i mean he's been a cross country pilot all along but he's got you know just he's by far the best acro pilot of any of us in that race by far and uh and he's also become a really solid xc pilot but what you could see him focus on the last couple years

he's been doing a lot of races and a lot more bivy flying and he clearly he his preparation for this was i think he even told me that his physical training was not that intense he was really more focused on becoming a really good cross country pilot and for him that was the racing side of things and Chrigel mentioned that in his you know when i talked to him that he i asked him you know what what do you have that the rest of us don't and part of it was his attitude and this gamble philosophy and you know he's been doing a lot of races and he's been doing a lot of races and he's clearly a lot of it is the training you know just flying in absurd conditions so he's you know so he can handle it in the race but you know he's done all of that you know he was one of the first guys to do the infinity he won the world championships three times i keep saying world championships and that's he's won the world cup three times um they're two different things but you know he he has it's kind of all those things so like a Paul Guschlbauer uh third now twice

in his four events i mean so he is crushing you know and makes really good decisions and is very strong is very fast on the ground very fast up mountains but he has very little racing experience and so you know i think for each one of us we have to you know we have to carve out time to take on our weaknesses and you know so like for for somebody like Aaron Durogati he's got to you know i would suggest that he's got to do more bivy flying and he's got to do more you know try to do more racing and he's got to do more racing and he's got to do more racing and he's got to do more big long flights you know and and get off the bar and fly slower and go back to climbs and you know do stuff that you would never do in a race in a like a world cup you know that's all about speed speed speed and short and they're not very they're you know it's very rare for a world cup to go more than like two and a half hours or three hours you know so you know he's got to learn how to fly 10 11 12 hours um because that's that's kriegel's genius is he can stay in the air all day so

it brings up this this point there's it's almost like we're missing some important parts or or an important part and that's the decision piece um it seems like it's a huge part of the success in the event did you find a way or did you think about a way to practice making big decisions before you started it this time

yeah so basically what what i worked on really specifically was when when we when we looked at our 2015 event and we kind of wrote it all up after the race we what the mistakes kept coming down to over and over and over again was gavin bombing out or gavin flying too fast or gavin being impatient you know because i i have more of a race mentality and i i haven't done nearly the world cup experience to there's a lot of the guys in the race but you know i i i flew the x-ops like it was a world cup and you know when you look at the guys who do really well you realize that slow is fast you know it's all about staying in the air and top landing when there's a little bit too much cloud and waiting it out and you know we'll basically top landing all the time and or and going back and topping out climbs and there these are things that i don't naturally do very well and we see it that's that's kind of an american thing uh it's kind of funny we see that in racing and we're we're just impatient pilots and uh and so this year when i went over to europe and even before that when i was back in sun valley we quite a good spring for flying my whole philosophy was just to fly slow and anytime i was anytime i was kind of unsure about something unsure about the weather or maybe too much serious or the wind or anything i would top land instead of you know trying to eke it out and bomb out and walk back up i would top land and wait it out so i think from that perspective the the key there is recognizing when it is good and and putting down the hammer and flying it's not just about the really fast you know you can't you you know they're they're too slow too um but i think that i didn't do anything to answer your question i didn't do anything mentally specifically in that regard like to just kind of prep in terms of being uh bullish or stubborn or uh really solid mentally but i did what i did was just try to really change my flying behavior and uh and i think that really paid off i think that was that was that really worked interesting

i mean it's kind of a woo topic it's really hard to to lay out let's hit some more concrete stuff so you had the the physical training was the same was there anything prep uh nutrition you said some supplements weather geekery gadgets like anything that you found this time it's like oh that was really useful and i'll incorporate that into future races or future flights and that was that was different would you learn yeah

that was really cool so we we basically in the 2015 event i had a lot of problems with swelling at night and i had a lot of trouble sleeping so i would just wake up and just lakes it wasn't like wet you know i would literally wake up in a lake of water that was just from sweating and so my feet blew up uh which meant my feet wouldn't fit in any of my shoes which led to really really really bad blisters you know and basically it was kind of like when we looked at it at the end of it it was like well jesus i just lived on goo for 10 days and tons of coke and you know just carbs basically just sugar coca-cola yeah coca-cola yeah right good to point that out yeah so i mean it was just it was you know i i tend to eat pretty well but it wasn't you know we i wasn't eating like that in the training and so suddenly we were in the race and it was just you know your heart rate so high a lot of the time that you just don't it was hard to get down real food and you know obviously big dinner and try to be pretty big breakfast but in between it was just living on sugar and uh so that was the first place

you went to a guy down in pocatello that does a lot of works with a lot of olympic athletes and we did massive lab tests so tons and tons of blood tests and his kind of specialty is his hormone stuff but basically we we we went into this one with the idea that we would make me a lot more fat adaptive and use a lot more protein and a lot more fat and you know carbs still have their place in a race like that for sure but the big difference is like in an ultrathon you know you for a lot of 20 hours 16 hours 24 hours whatever you need whatever you want if you've done the training you know i mean you just you just need calories and you need sugar and you know you can do that coca-cola and goo and all that kind of stuff because it's going to end but our philosophy going into this time with 10 days or 12 days this was 12 days basically it was just an hour under 12 days um that you just you know you just think about it like that's not how you would eat if you're just living so um we really tried to go you know most of the days were kind of six to eight thousand calorie days um that's pretty hard to replenish but what we were what we really tried to do from the very beginning of the training was make me a lot more fat adaptive so you know things like mct oil and just a lot of fat and a lot of protein and and then during the race we used you put me onto this um some of the supplements we used were just wicked so one of the things i got from the doctor in pocatello were these magnesium sticks they're like deodorant

um that's just basically pure magnesium there's a couple different ones there's one before you start and there's one as you're going along so you know it's basically impossible to keep your magnesium levels high when you're working that hard so this was just a way to get magnesium into my body immediately through the skin rather than taking pills so your stomach had to churn it out so that was huge using peter defty's vespa was huge so these are like you know basically drinks you know drink mixes uh that you that you just fire off and we would do three or four of those a day so basically during any of my big climbs and that's this is a mix that's just basically fat and it's made from wasps and it's delicious and i just noticed a huge difference there's like the little goo

packets and it's it's more water than goo for sure or a little watery yeah yeah yeah

i mean the the goos you know just take a lot of water to digest yeah um and so they're they're they're working against you and they're working against you when it comes to hydration and so the vet vespa was i almost felt like that stuff was like cheating uh so that that was that was great uh we used a lot of stuff from on it just you know liver cod oil and joint oil and mct oil and you know i just loading up on that stuff they've got this stuff called total primate care uh there's a morning and an evening packet and that's like just good stuff kelp and cod oil and stuff for your joints um you know i found since i've been on that stuff now about a year i haven't had a cold you know so i stuff like that really helped whereas in the last race we were i was just eating advil like it was bananas you know i was living on advil you know four or five morning noon and night not

good for your system not

good for the system because the swelling was so bad but what we've discovered is that was just murdering my liver and that was bleeding that was actually helping the this time no swelling whatsoever i slept like a baby every night i my feet didn't get bigger uh you know it was just clearly we kind of nailed that significant improvement significant improvement sleep i slept great i worked with ian dunican who you put me in touch with i'm actually going to do a podcast with him about sleep that was really useful uh yeah i mean i think that one of the huge things i saw that one of the massive differences in the 2017 season was that i was able to sleep in 2015 race was the preparedness of the teams when i went in you know you spend a week there at the infusional in the camp before the race kicks off and when i went in 2015 you know pretty much right away i was like half of these people haven't prepared right you could just tell by looking at their bodies you know there was like okay you know i know all these guys are good pilots but i basically wrote half of them off right from the beginning i just thought that they're gonna they're gonna crumble you know come day five six seven eight nine we're gonna see people drop and that's exactly what happened and in this this time i was like holy shit these guys are fit i mean there was it was just a whole nother level people are really and that's it was interesting talking to creagle before the race i had dinner with him one night and you know he was talking about back in 2009 even 2011 you know it was just he and thomas they could handle it just the two of them and he said he made the comment that it was truly more of an adventure race then it was people were moving a lot slower and you know you'd wait five you'd wait an hour for your buddy to catch up with you and you'd be like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired and you know it was it was more like a backpacking race across the alps and whereas now it's just every it's just getting really fast you know you've got these guys that are ultra thoners that are also really good pilots and they're taking it really seriously and people are training really hard and uh and so you know going into this time was actually quite intimidating you know you've got all these young guys that looked really fit and uh and then you could see it prologue how fast these guys were and so yeah that that's pretty interesting there's a huge spread now in age and you know me being one of the oldest right by far uh 45 45

okay was there anyone older yeah

the couple guys claudio the argentinian guy i'm not maybe i

don't know i might have been it all right yeah and a bunch of dudes who is the youngest do you know nelson defrayman

was the youngest in 2015 i believe but all those guys are pretty young nelson stanislav um ben walker is young i don't know i think he's 28 there there has to i'm missing some guys here but i think there's a couple guys kind of in their mid-20s

20s okay so going up against 45 that's that's a significant difference in in physical prep but i mean it looked like looked like you had it that there wasn't a uh a big problem with keeping up the pace on the ground no

yeah no i was really quite surprised at the end you know red bull keeps statistic and statistics are you got to kind of be wary of those because you know they're it's all it's all depending on that device that they give us tracking us accurately uh you know like when it when it says that we've flown a thousand k that's counting all the circles that's counting all the turn turns which you know in a database like x contest doesn't count any of that stuff so that's not really how we count flying but for the ground stuff i think they're pretty accurate and when you looked at the stats at the end that was pretty fast so yeah that's interesting you know like tome is really the only guy that runs consistently and he's kind of jogging but he can do it all day you know i mean he really can move fast on the ground what was great was uh that i was stronger at the end you know like i didn't get slower as the days went by i got faster and i felt better and that was different than 2015 and um and and it was harder this year we did a lot more time on the ground so i'm encouraged by that you know it was it was encouraging at the end of the race to go you know i think i think that's the cool thing about paragliding is that we you know it's it's not a young person sport necessarily you know and and we we see it in the results and so you certainly see it in the world cup results so you know if i decide to do it again and we're basically not going to make that decision for a year now but uh you know if i decide to do it again you know i think my body could handle another one that

that's encouraging yeah it feels good so that brings up the question i mean you got a bunch of folks listening to this podcast i know every time i i hear your name you're talking about the X-Alps um you're i'm guessing you're going to inspire a bunch of folks to uh to get out there and do that race or races like it if if those guys or girls were to come to you with uh requesting advice what advice would you give them kind of in general for these X-Alps X-Pyr whatever it is type races i

don't know of a better thing to do with your time so the juice is worth the squeeze all right you know when i when i first started the watching the X-Alps when i was a very new pilot i think the first one i watched was 2007 um i just thought this is the coolest thing i've ever seen like i mean it's way cooler than an ultrathon it's it's it's it goes many days it's dicey it's got all the elements of just just insanity and so uh i i didn't know that i i just couldn't back then i couldn't even perceive that people could do it uh it just blew me away and so you know a few years later i started flying a lot more and it started being like this little like god i wonder if i could do that so i guess what i would say to people that are that are you know if you're thinking about it you know seriously the first thing is it's going to take a lot of time you know so if you don't have a lot of time then i wouldn't consider it it's just it's just too dangerous you you really need the hours but if you if you have the time uh and you're thinking like god i wonder if i could do that i would say give it a go

half of it is getting in uh it's not a slam dunk to get into this race and so uh and you have to remember that it's for red bull this is a marketing event uh you know this is a big you know there's the journalists and the cameras and the helicopter and all that stuff a lot of that i think all of us from the athlete side find really annoying but you know they have to do that and we're happy that they do because it means that we've got an event to go do but um you got to be thinking about that a lot how you're how you're going to get into this because it's you know you either have to you got to have a name uh you got to have results you get you know they won't take you if you if you're not you know a proven mountain athlete that doesn't necessarily need to be paragliding but they want to make sure that you know how to navigate and operate in remote terrain even if it's the alps it's not remote like what you and i think of it as remote but you can get into terrible places in the alps and you can die so um so it's the whole yeah getting in is the first thing i would so like ben's wanting to do the alps and i'm like i'm not going to do the alps next summer and so i'm coaching him right now because i would be his supporter be kind of fun you know like turning the tables around yeah uh you know ben's probably 150 hour pilot at best you know so he's way lower hours than the guys that are going to win that thing and so you know he's not going into it with the idea that he's going to get top five but he wants to be safe and he wants to have fun you know so that's where i would start is it you know the borns to fly or the x-berg or the the x-peer a race that's much much easier to get into than the alps and i'm it gives you something to focus on it gives you something to train for and the training i'm doing with him is basically the same training i would do um for the X-Alps so once you've got the getting in handled um then it's basically a lot of the stuff that you and i have talked about you know like in the ground handling podcast you know so his weekly training regimen he's handling all the physical stuff i'm not doing any of that but from the flying perspective it's you know listen to podcast uh watch you know watch ground handling videos

ground handle as much as you possibly can especially when it's not very good weather you know like like in other words when the ground handling is tricky um and then you know you got to get it you got to become a jedi with your wing on the ground that's that's step one and then you know as much sib as you can and then basically you're wanting to fly with a lot of purpose that every flight is a training flight and that's something we hit on on the podcast again and again with other guests but you know that you're not just flying around you know that you're you're doing stuff that's uh that's purposeful you're top landing you're you're trying to fly when the conditions are weak you're um trying to extend flights you're you're using your instruments you're setting up routes you're setting up tasks you're flying tasks you know and then if you have the time you're going to comps uh you you learn way more in a comp than you can when you're at home so um the more comps you can go do the better that's going to teach you how to fly fast which is really important that's also going to teach you how to switch gears which is really important so you know slowing down when the day is not on going switching from survival mode to race mode faster than other people you know things like top landing uh in a in an adventure race you have to have that dialed and that is really dangerous and it takes a lot of time to practice and so you know we're not going to have ben where i would like to have him by next july and for that because of where he lives he lives in albuquerque the flying you know you get one day every 10 if you're lucky um so we're not going to have the hours we're not going to have the places to for him to top land so that means you have to make different decisions when you're in the race you know you you can't just do fly on the wall type stuff that means he's going to have to fly down to the valley and put his shoes on and and do a lot more walking you know he he knows how to walk he knows how to walk yeah he can hustle he's fast so yeah i mean i i think it's all those it's all those things it's all the things we talk about on the show but i you know like uh like you

know i think it's all those things it's all the things we talk about on the show but i think it's all those things it's all the things we talk about on the show but i think pal

attack it said you know in those races sometimes fast and slow i think that that's the big thing is just having the mental fortitude to not rush to to be patient that's

hard to do at least for for me that's pretty tricky yeah i mean that's why it's so fascinating is it requires so many things you have to be a good ground handler good acro good racer good mental game good nutrition i mean everything's got to add up for you to win um yeah that that's what makes it fascinating so yeah

and it i mean and i think that i think people probably uh you know the a real luxury that i have is the time and and you know a lot of them don't like nick nanans who crushed it this year he did so well you know he he hasn't flown in the alps much and he's got a full-time job and so you know he came over two days before the prologue you know so he hadn't scouted any of the course which creagle doesn't either but that's you know that's different and creagle's flown a lot in the alps you know and he did really well so you don't you don't have to necessarily do it by that recipe but that's the recipe that i would suggest but it's it's just nice to have it is really nice to have the time but you know especially for the physical training you know they the the reality is in the race that the the weather isn't going to be good all the time and you know if you can handle the miles on the ground that you're you're gonna you're gonna do much better and there is no real way to do that except to train unless you're just killing in jorne and you you know you

just you're you're you're uh you're that kind of level you know yeah that's

that's not the racer so last last two questions i've got are not on the race what if anything is next on your list it sounds like that the x-ops decision is up in the air um but what else is what else is in the works that you can talk about yeah

well so uh eight days ago i had a little girl uh congratulations again yeah thank you that was uh totally unplanned and really exciting and so um yeah i'm a dad so i'm on this kind of next journey and uh being a father which is really exciting and uh so yeah right now i'm basically basically how i'm approaching the next race is this this next year i'm gonna try to fly a lot i'm really excited about maybe trying to break some state records and i'm excited about flying some new areas i'm really excited about flying home you know sun valley is still a place that we just and so uh i'd like to be home a lot more and flying as much as i possibly can so then if we decide to pull the trigger next july when it comes time to apply you know i'll at least have that box ticked i don't have to worry too much about the physical side um you know i'll just keep doing that as i normally do but no big expeditions you know the big one was alaska last year and uh i just think you know now being a dad and taking care of this little one uh you know it'd be hard

for a huge project like that so i don't have any huge missions like that planned this year but i do have some big ones planned the following year but uh can't talk about those yet changes

your priorities having that little kiddo yeah

totally which is pretty exciting i do people keep telling me that it's great because it probably means i'm gonna live a little bit longer

maybe so maybe maybe she'll keep you alive that'd be a nice little gift right totally cool i think that covers most of what uh most questions i had for the 2017 x help thanks a ton for taking the time to to answer them it's pretty exciting to go back and to think about you know while you're talking what we were seeing on the screens and uh yeah super cool thank you awesome thanks nick i appreciate it thanks for your time man that was fun i

hope you enjoyed that uh as promised we've got a special episode with Chrigel mauer coming up sorry i haven't put that up yet uh still working on that edit and a little more questions for him and uh hard to pin him down of course because he's busy and he's got kids and a lot of things going on there they just episode i'll see you guys over there in decentis with terrible weather but anyway we're going to get that up here shortly stay tuned i think you're going to enjoy it and we'll catch you on the next episode cheers