Hi there everybody, welcome to this special bonus episode with Chrigel. Just got off the phone with him in Switzerland. These were basically all of your questions. You guys submitted a ton of questions both before the main show and then after. And he was kind enough to get back on and share a ton of great knowledge. We talk harnesses, we talk instruments, we talk progression, training, acro, skills. We talk all kinds of stuff. Of course, a little bit about the X-Alps and a few of you had questions about that. Food and hydration, blisters, what he would change if he could. This was a blast. You're going to enjoy it. I loved it. And I don't have any housekeeping. This is just a bonus for all of you, all those of you who support the show.
Spread the word. Let everybody know that this kind of stuff is out there. And see you at Cloudbase. Enjoy. Chrigel, welcome back to the show. Really excited to ask you these questions that came in. Via the Facebook and social medias. Fans of yours and fans of the X-Alps and folks that have just been listening to the show. So, I really appreciate that. Yeah, so welcome back. Thanks for your time. I understand you've just had a big move with your family to a new place in Switzerland there. I know that's always a major challenge. So, congratulations. And I thought we might start it off with the Dolomiti Man. This is kind of the first big event you've had since the X-Alps. I know you had some pretty massive recovery after the X-Alps.
So, why don't we start there? How did the Dolomiti Man go? Yeah, after the X-Alps, I was really damaged. I had to recover for quite a long time. Longer than the other editions. And I also stopped my training. But for the Dolomiti Man, the special thing was it was very short, but very fast. So, as fast as possible, for sure. And, yeah, we were unlucky with the weather. The wind and the clouds was too strong in the altitude.
So, we had to shorten the race, the paragliding discipline. So, that was just the lower part. And it was running for 13 minutes uphill and flying down all in one. It was 15 minutes. Quite short race, but for sure very, very hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of vertical, really fast. Yeah, that's another kind of high-speed flight. Well, cool. And how did the next couple of months go? We were talking about, before we started recording, you're going to be giving some presentations in Switzerland, I believe, about the race. And also, maybe a little bit about your life in November. Maybe tell me a little bit about that. And also, can we see that online? Or how can the rest of us watch these presentations?
Yeah, actually, I
prepared the presentation for November.
Because many people ask about how it was on the
X-Alps, how I do. And generally, what I do. My sport and my work. And I prepare a presentation about two hours to speak about all my work, all the adventure races. And it's hard work, but it's a very, very nice part. Because I see all the Moyes and pictures
I did in the last years. And it's a lot of experience. I watch now. And to bring all this experience in two hours presentation, it's very difficult. But also good fun at the moment. Yeah, that would be a blast. Well, hey, before we actually get into the questions, it would be very remiss of me to not. I said this a little bit in our original talk. But a couple of my fly buddies here, Nate Scales and Matt Beechinor, really wanted me to hammer home that the invitation here is not just one of these. This is a very real invitation to get you out to the Rockies. We have put together, if you can come, we can cover everything. Even your
flight. So we've got a house. We've got a truck. We've got a retrieve driver. We've got everything you need to come here and show us how to fly these mountains. So I hope one of these days you'll take us up on that. Okay, well, cool. Well, let's get into it. We've got a whole bunch of questions here. I just want to rip through them in absolutely no particular order. The first one is actually what I'm pretty curious about is harnesses. We had a question come in about what you prefer to use. Do you use a seat plate? Do you not? Obviously, for the X-Alps, you're just using a hammock harness like we all are and very, very lightweight. But what do you prefer? What's your opinion on it? What should people be using, especially for competitions and racing? Give us the lowdown, the Chrigel view on harnesses.
Yeah, that's a good question because I start with normal harnesses. It was very heavy with the board. And then for the X-Alps I did 2009, I started to think about the weight. And there was some prototypes. There was a lot of harnesses around and we could see that it was just working well and was more light. So we were still working with advanced, very light harnesses. And I finally think to have good comfort and good feeling with the wing, it's better to have a plate. And
if you want to go really light, then it's more efficient without a plate. And for sure, it's not easy to tell to anybody. It's the best because I feel that when I fly a harness, it can make the bigger difference than when I change wing. So it's very important to fly a new harness with the same wing to feel the difference. And then finally to decide about myself, what's my feeling and what I like. And then I choose my harness. But finally, I do different categories, different disciplines in paragliding. So I need different harnesses. And my heaviest one, it's the competition harness with two reserves, 11 kilo.
And the lightest one, it's the F-Lite. It's almost nothing, less than 100 gram. And so, yeah, it's a question for what I need the harness more than how I feel really in the harness. Okay. Last time we talked a little bit about your choice of using a three-liner in the X-Alps versus, you know, when you're racing in New Zealand. I had some people that asked me if you could clarify to talk about it a little bit more because there's, you know, with the release of the Xeno by Ozone, I think a lot more people are flying a two-liner now than ever before because of the Xeno. Are we heading back into a 2011 type scenario or not and why?
And how much, you know…
For those people that are considering moving up to a two-liner, how much more dangerous are they? You know, how much different is it flying a two-liner than a three-liner? My experience also with the Xeno is that this wing is especially good. So it means it's very easy to fly and a lot of fun. And finally, the canopy is so stable. So it's so not often that you have collapse. So it's my experience was that. I had 50 hours with the Xeno without the collapse. And it's never happened with the three-liner because the three-liner are not so stable. And maybe you can't feel the collapse come later. And it means what's the question? My question is what's more safe?
And I say with the three-liner, maybe I have more collapses, but they
are less aggressive. And with the Xeno, it's maybe the collapse more aggressive, but there are less collapse. So in general, I would say about one year experience, there is not big difference. And finally, you can see how many wings are flying in the world. And not every pilot is a good pilot, I think, with the Xeno, but not everybody fell down. So it shows that this wing is very good. And I think the two-liner are more complicated in really tough conditions, but 95% of the conditions are well. That means 95%. 95% of the flights are safe with the Xeno. And in this 95%, also, you have the advantage of the performance, of the feeling, of the stability, of the speed.
And after one year of experience, it looks very good for this type of wings. But I think it was very important to get the finger of attention with the real two-liners because they came too dangerous. And after some expectations. After some accidents, the development was more in the direction of safety. And now we have two-liners with a lot of safety. And this makes really sense. So in the future, I think we have more and more two-liners, or it means hybrid two-liners, which are very performant and also safe. And maybe the image of these wings are a little bit too good. It means sometimes it sounds that everybody can fly this wing.
And for sure, if the level... If the level of the pilot is not good enough, this kind of wing can be also very dangerous. And we have to take care not to forget that it's a real high-performance wing. It's an Ed Ewing. And it feels easy, but it can be also dangerous because it's a high-performance wing. Sure. On that note, where do you see... I know you've been involved in the past with testing and developing for Advance and others. But where do you see... Where do you see wing technology going? You know, are we going to see another big jump, like with the shark nose technology? Or are all wings in the future going to be light? Where do you see that heading?
I don't know exactly, but I think that many companies work on the wings. And, you know, as more it's focused on the one, for example, these paragliders, as more they can bring... Success. It means that the wing in the future is more light, more performant, and more fun to fly. I think we can have all these points in one product. Maybe it's the same with the kites. Years ago, there was four different winds. There is a need
of five or seven sizes of sails to change in different wind conditions. And now they have one wing. Sure. You're talking for kites, right? Yeah, because there's so much deep power now. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing. Yes, yes. Deep power and stability and technology. And maybe in 10 years, we have one wing to do everything. To do
acro and cross country and hike and fly. And then maybe... Then you can take one wing in the morning and you can do everything. That'd be cool. Yeah. Okay. Switching gears a little bit. I'm just kind of rolling through these. But mountain weather, your ability to read... We just had Hansa on the show, who you know, of course, through the X-Alps campaigns. And then he makes a living as a meteorologist. And he was bringing up the three main different kinds of weather being synoptic. So the stuff that we're looking at in the models. And then the localized weather, more geographical. And then...
The thermic weather. The stuff that changes as the sun passes through the sky. But you seem incredibly
adept at reading mountain weather and using it to
your advantage while you're in the air. Knowing that seeing Cirrus come in and top landing just in time and then carrying on afterwards. I realize this is just an hours thing and intuition. But how do you teach... Some of those skills about reading mountain weather to your students? And learning that and kind of getting more fingertippy with that type of
stuff? Yeah. That's a good question. I think that I started to fly... Generally, I live in the Alps and I never had weather forecast, really. And I started to fly without weather forecast. So when I had time beside my work, I tried to fly in all the conditions. So later on, when I went into a more organized work or when I was trying to go really far for cross country flight, I really tried to analyze the weather forecast to be more success. And I never had a really good feeling with the weather forecast because they are often wrong. So I really tried to feel what the weather does during the day.
And then when I see or when I feel... When I feel that it changed something, then I really think about what I can do. Because we can't change the weather, but we can change strategy. And I really tried to do this. And maybe because I started to move in the Alps, to fly in the Alps without really checking the weather forecast, I get a good
feeling about it. Now I really try to understand the forecast and the different models. And also when I do the hiking... When I do the hike and fly competitions, I have to know what's happened in the day, in the next days. But then finally, the experience of moving in the Alps without forecast helps me a lot. Okay. When you, again, thinking about your students, let's assume that maybe a lot of our listeners are probably in the boat of maybe a hundred hours a year kind of pilots. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot, but not as much as the weekend pilot. So maybe a little bit more than the weekend pilot. Not much more, and maybe one or two trips a year. Where should these kinds of pilots be focusing most of their time in your experience?
What are the kind of foundational stuff that's really key and maybe often missed? It's always a mix between training and practice. And for sure, if you have more time, you want to go more progressive, successful, then for sure, it's better. You have to have more practice, but also you need more training. Focused training means safety training or theoretical stuff like weather forecast, planning, all these things. But also ground handling, it's a very important part, especially if the weather is not good for flying, but maybe good enough for ground handling. It's good to have one hour in a month of ground handling. Maybe in limit conditions, it means around wind of 25 to 30.
This wind, you can really go to your own limit, and you make some progress. It means not only on the ground, it means also after in
the air. So it's not always a flying experience. It's very important. It's also all around, which you can bring you in a better position. And sometimes the normal people, they forgot this practice. They just like to fly, but they're wondering that they can't make progress. Sure, that's great. How do you view your acro training with your cross country? In other words, how important is it to become a pretty proficient acro pilot
to flying well at distance? We saw that kind of highlighted this year with Pal Takats, and he did incredibly well. And he's obviously an amazing acro pilot. But I've been trying to push. I've been trying to push people into acro for a long time, feeling like it's a really important discipline. But I know you've got a lot of acro background. How do you view those two? I don't think it's really important, but it really can help. But in acrobatic, it's more important to have a really good feeling. It means if you don't like this cheap course, it's not efficient to do acro training. Because you feel bad. Maybe a little bit angry, and then it's not professional.
So it's better to focus on your own wing in cross country and do maybe trying to fly some precise landings or take off in different conditions. It means ground handling in strong wind. And to find out what really is your goal and to focus how you can go there instead of doing different disciplines. It means also you have to have a good feeling on the aerobatic. You also have to change wing. And the wing makes a difference. So sometimes
people try to do acro with the normal ENB or CE wings. And they feel it's really difficult, for example, to fly a SAT or a helicopter. And if you take a big acro wing, which is made for aerobatic maneuvers, it's a big difference. It's much more easy. And you have to really think about that also. Instruments, Krigel. What do you use in comps? And what do you use when you're thinking about weight, like in the X-Alps? And then tied to that, do any of the instruments you use, do you use an app that has a thermal mapping tool? Do you use that? And do you
use SyncTone? And if you do, what threshold? First of all, I hate SyncTone because it makes... It makes me nervous. It means I like to have a sign when it's climbing. The beep makes me positive because I know it's going uphill. So I like to have this sound. But if it goes down, I hate this. So I don't want to know that it goes down. And I mean, if it's climbed, I can change my turn. And sometimes I can optimize. But if it really goes down... For sure, you can fly with more speed or less. But generally, you can't really optimize the sync. You understand?
It means the climb is much more important to optimize than the sync. And therefore, I also try sometimes to fly with a thermal assistant. This I get easy from my ExitTrack app. And yeah, sometimes it helps, especially in the flats. But in the mountains, often... It's not important to have this. And my question is how much help I can use. So it means too much technique makes me unsure. Or I don't know the word. When you check different things and not focusing on the main thing. That means too much technique also can lead me to not focusing on the really important
thing. It means thinking about the thermal and the flight direction, for example. And I really like to have easy instruments. But for the competitions, for sure, these big triangles to calculate all this, you need assistance. That's always a mix between the discipline. And in
fact, I need... For sure, I have my cell phone with the ExitTrack app and the Exit Tracer. It's a very good variometer with solar. And so I have the sound and the navigation. And if I go cross country or really competitions, I have my Flymaster, which also makes the live tracking. The live tracking, which I need, it's very interesting for people at home or also for my own safety. And finally, I also like to have the Navitr. Because Navitr, they show me everything on one instrument. And yeah, so I play always a little bit. So for the X-Alps, just to summarize, for the X-Alps, you're just using phone and Exit Tracer. And the phone, you use... You use the ExitTrack app.
Yeah. And then for the competitions, you add another dedicated vario and the Navitr. Big one, yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, that's true. Okay. In X-Alps, I really like to optimize everything. So I have my cell phone, which I have the communication, the ExitTrack app for the navigation in the air, and the OSM app for navigation on the ground. Okay. And finally, we also have to carry the Flymaster. And so I had two instruments, because it's an electric instrument, so you never know if it works or not. So it's good to have a backup. But yeah, in competitions, I add a big instrument like the Navitr. Sure.
UD4. Great. In the last one, we talked about this a little bit, but people are really curious about your work. I'm assuming that your living is made from paragliding.
Paragliding. Paragliding. Is there any way, can you parse that out for us in terms of what percentage is guiding, what percentage is sponsorship, what percentage is racing, kind of how you, yeah, how many areas are there and how do they kind of divide up? Yeah, it always shifts a little because of how much people they ask me to do, for example, coaching. Or how much companies they ask me to do presentations in the wintertime. But in general, it's 20%. So it's 20% sponsorship in competitions in summer, 20% tandem flights, 20% coachings, and 20% speeches.
And yeah, it depends on the weather. It's always the problem of paragliding. But I like to switch in between the nature. And yeah, I play like this for five years already, and it's
good to have this. And how do you, the next question is kind of tied into that. You said in the show, the main show, that you fly about 300 hours a year. How do you manage your work, which is paragliding, those 20-20-20-20s, with your
family? That's one of the main questions we get. It's not just really for you, but people that... Yeah. People that have families are often really curious how professionals like yourself also have families and you have enough time. So the exact question was, do you have dedicated downtime for your family, or does that just happen because of weather? How do you manage it? And I guess it's kind of a long question, but how do you manage the kids and your wife with flying? Yeah, it's not so easy because... Of all this work, and I have fixed days where
I play with the kids, where I say it's my Sunday. Actually, it's Friday. And I have my plan with the holidays with my kids also. So I try to focus on these days and weeks, and so they have to fit. Otherwise, it's very difficult, especially when I sit in the office at home and the kids like to play with me. So they have to understand. They have to understand that I stay at home, but that I work. It's my work. And
when they were young, it was not so easy to explain to them. They grow up, and it's more and more easy that they understand. And generally, my family has to understand. My mother, everybody around me, they learned how it works because, you know, it's not often or not usual. You know, just the sports guy can bring... It's funny for all the family. Yeah, I go in like this step by step. I was working for Advance in test pilot, and so it was something in between. And now I stay completely self-employment. And yeah, it's okay. Chrigel, your Lee and rotor skills are legendary.
And one of the... We got this question a lot. How do you... How should people approach
that kind of training? Because you talked a little bit on the show about... You know, going out in the snow and flying behind cornices and that kind of thing. But how do people kind of put their toe in the water to develop those skills? Because especially in the Alps, flying in the Lee is critical. You just have to do it. But it can be quite dangerous. So how do you... Yeah, how do you approach that with your students, I guess? The biggest problem for me is to go step by step. It means when I don't know the steps. It's a big danger. So if you fly into a Lee, which you don't know if it's a big step or a small step, it's the problem. Yeah, we're honest. And finally, I check my feeling because not every day I have a good feeling.
Sometimes I feel really comfortable
and I can push my limit more. Or it means if I take a big step, a step which normally is too big, I can manage on a really good day. And if I have a bad day... It means I feel bad, I'm a bit angry, and I don't... Sometimes I say, I don't like to fly. But because I have to fly, I go. And in these days, the steps have to be really small. Because if I take a big step, for sure it's not good. And this feeling, I say it's my stomach feeling. And everybody has this, but we really have to learn to trust or to listen on this feeling and to trust this. And to go only steps with a good feeling. And yeah, it's the only way I can explain.
Yeah, intuition. Okay, a specific X-OPS question, I really like this one too. Did you know
after day
three that you would win, given what you saw the others doing? And then if so, or you thought you maybe had a good chance, did you set any kind of pace accordingly or do you always just go as hard as you can? No, when I was lead, I really think about to take care of my energy with my body. Because I had the feeling that when I stay in front, the others have to push. And if they catch me, I'm still in front, so I can a little bit slow down. And if they catch me, I can
start to push again. This was my tactic. And you know, when I can stay in a lead, I can really enjoy, for example, the decisions I do. I can do it more precise because I'm not in a hurry. And if I take care about my speed, I can take better decisions, and it helps me to be more efficient. But when we analyze the tracks, I was really on an edge that, for example, Ferdinand Kasper, he catch me almost. But finally, he did small, unprecise decisions, and it stops him immediately. And finally, I was a bit lucky that he had to end, to stop his race,
for sure it helps to be more relaxed in the race. And I was really on the border with my knee. So the injury on my knee was not too funny. And I know that when I push too much on the ground, maybe I have to stop too. And I was very careful with walking on the flat. Jump in here a little bit. What is the single most underrated technique when flying XC? So I'm assuming this question is looking for, you know, is it better thermaling? Is it better gliding? Is it better headspace? Is it better training? Is it better SIV? Maybe it depends of the pilot, because not all the pilots are on the same level. And it's also my work to find out what's the next step for a pilot X, not for everybody it's the same way, the best.
And I think generally to have fun, to set some goals, to follow these goals, it's a good way. And for sure, it's good to enjoy the flight. But to be more efficient, it's good to set goals and to reach these goals. Because with all the reach goals, you have better motivation or a better feeling. You're more proud about yourself. And then you can set the next bigger goal and to try to catch that. And for sure, you have to know that many details play in.
So it means especially the weather. If you set a goal, it's maybe just 30% you as a pilot. 70% is the weather decide if you can reach this goal or not. But with all the experience you do in this flight or in this reaching the goal, you can
analyze if it was you or the weather or something else. And as more experience you get, as better you can say how you can reach or how you can set goals and how you can reach this. You mentioned fun in there, how important it is to have fun. What do you do for fun other than... I know you're quite into backcountry skiing and I don't know, many people probably don't know about all the other stuff that you do. What's your non-paragliding life look like? Yeah, I actually do a lot of endurance training. So hiking up, do trail running in bad weather. I like to run without bag just for two, three hours, hiking trail up and down and just to enjoy.
And if I go flying, I try to go. Specific flying on acro training or cross country or carry people with me in a tandem. And for all this flying goals, I take the specific wing and I try to find the best spot with the actual weather forecast. And yeah, sometimes I really take the best decision of the day and then I really happy about sometimes I miss. I can learn from it and yeah, that's the fun. 5XAlps, what have you learned about food and hydration and blisters? That was one of the questions.
We did a race or we did a really good talk with a guy named Matt Wilkes who's kind of an expedition ER
doc. And they did that fun thing on Kilimanjaro a couple of years ago. He was the expedition doc for that and he wanted me to ask you that. Is that really changed over the years of the races or do you just eat whatever you
can? Yeah, I push more and more to the limit and I know that I really have to take care of what I eat because of pushing more to the limit. And normally it's important to eat as much as possible, but as faster you go, as more you have to take care what you eat because of the body, that the body can take all the food. All the energy in. And when you, for example, when it's very hot and you push too much on the ground, you have to drink more than four, five liters. For myself, it goes up to seven, eight liters a day. And then it's very important to have not only water that you also take and salt and sugar. And it's also good to have some special salt.
It means you take some, you know, the water. From the pasta when you cook pasta, it's very good to, to drink this, this, um, and so there was small points where we are just during the years, but yeah, the most important is to organize when I go out, when I go away from my support that I have not too much to carry, not too much food, but that I have enough. And for this also, I took more and more of this, um, carbohydrate powder, which I can do. In the water during the walk, it's around 200 gram and I can drink and eat with this more than thousand calories. So it's a very efficient light, uh, weight food and yeah, things like this.
I learned, and I was very lucky
to have no blisters, my feeds, my socks with my shoes almost are perfect. What I did it's in the normal shoes. They have a very cheap, um, in less. How do you say that? Yeah. Yeah. Which you can change the souls. Yes. And what I did is
I organized or I buy very good as souls. It means they, they, they are made especially for my food on one part. And on the other part, they have a really stable shape. It means when I do running or hiking down, especially the soul say in shape and not make some blisters. And I tried a lot. Of, um, which socks on which souls works well. And when I found out this, I changed the souls in older shoes and it's perfect. That's, that's excellent. Yeah. That was my feet look like somebody beating on them with a hammer and the first one in 2015 and we, we got it sorted this year, which makes things a lot more pleasant. That is, that is a lot of pain.
Um, talk to me about speed bar and, and speed to fly. Uh, I, I saw you made a comment. You know, near the end of the race, when your knee was hurting really badly, you said it was, it was hard because you couldn't use full speed.
Um, I, I think the speed bar, you know, even for the really good pilots remains a little bit of a mystery to, in a sense, you know, the you're, you know, in competition, you're just hammering bar because everybody is, um, but break it down for us a little bit more and take some of the mystery out of it. Yeah. Finally, the question is how much it's enough. How much you have to pull and in, you know, in, in short cross country competitions, most, most of the pilots fly full, full speed because you know exactly where to fly and where it's the best core of the terminal and
then the full speed, it's the most efficient, but in cross country, especially in, in, in, in, um, adventure races, when you fly long flights in a day and you fly most of the time alone, then it's not full speed. The most efficient. So I changed my tactic to half speed or maybe three third, uh, three, four percent and yeah, because then it's more relaxed to fly. It's less work on the bar or on the B risers and you can hold this speed for, for a long day. It means it's, um, more relaxed for your body, for your feeds. If you go in high, um, in, in very strong wind conditions. For example.
If you go down in the valley breeze or in the fun, you have to push more and to know where is the limit of your equipment, your glider, your body, you have to know exactly what you can do. And it's also good training. For example, in windy conditions, you have to know what is the limit. So you have to learn this in weak conditions. And you also can train this in normal conditions where you say, okay, I do a speed bar training and I fly from each term to the others with full speed. Maybe it's not important, but I train this feeling and like this, you can improve your, your feeling, your reactions on the, on the bar. And then if you have to use it, you know how it works.
Okay. We're getting down to the last ones here, uh, or maybe even the last one, uh, who are your mentors in the sport and, and why we all have mentors. Do you, I can't imagine that you do, but I'm sure you do. Yeah. You know, in Swiss we have Roger Federer, the tennis player and he's very strong all the time and he was very successful and everybody talks about he has to stop because he will, he will, um, not be successful anymore. And he was, uh, for a long time he was very successful and he always say, you know, I just have fun to play and I really
understand what you
mean. And as long as I have fun. I like to compete because in my situation, they are people, they say the same. I have to stop because, um, I can't do more than to win, but I feel that I really have fun in the competitions and all the competitions are a new game, new weather, new situations. And so I have my mentor, uh, Roger that, that he really say he, because he has fun, he likes to play. Hmm. I like that. Cool. Um, finally, your brother. Uh, you've done some amazing flights and some really cool videos, uh, with your brother. You guys have done some huge stuff together and then of course
he's, uh, amazing competition pilot. Are we going to see him in, in these kinds of races in the future or is that, that not his bag? I push him, but he don't really like to walk. And, um, I remember when I start for X-Alps training for X-Alps, I was 26 and I was watching out for a new adventure. Um, for, for a new life, it means I want to push myself in another direction. It means the enduring sport. And then I was motivated to train with the goal to do X-Alps. And in this period, the level of the athletes was not really, really high, but there was Tomoko Konea pushing on the ground, but there was not so many others.
They really push hard at the moment. My brother, it's eight years younger.
So. When he likes to start or to do X-Alps, he know what's the level. And when he compare, for example, flying or running, he compare with me. So he compare with the, with the best and then it's really hard to, to find the motivation to start, but maybe sometimes he will start and then we will see what he can do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Chrigel, that's it. Thanks so much. I, I'd love to hear before we close, you know, what are you, what, what kind of mode are you in? between now and in 2019 do you even think about the next race for the winner or um yeah tell me tell me about how you approach that you've done it five times you know i've just done it twice but it's it's uh you know i i i imagine at the end of the race you know i i always think okay i can take a nice long break but it it's never that far away is it yeah yeah no it's especially when i think about the break then it's too late for 19 so my opinion it's to have two years time to be better yeah so i i i really happy to to focus on i have the big goal the x-ops 2019 but i know it's a long time uh until there so i focus on small goals and for example next year there's xpeer starting from the atlantic to the mediterranean sea crossing all the pyrenees and it's also a beautiful adventure race and to do this i know i have to do the training and for this i i plan some ski touring races in the winter and now my training is um with the dolomite man and next week is um red bull elements it's also a super small or super short i can fly race and i do training for this it means my trainings during maximum one and a half hours at the moment but very intensive and then for the winter i do a break and then i start with a good ski touring training and then power training and then i
hope to be ready next summer for the xpeer and then i check if everybody fits well if i stay healthy i do the inscription for red bull x-ops 2019 and if i select it i think about
to start if you're selected i hope they do i think you're kind of a shoe in there um yeah cool that that that's i okay that i i gotta ask you one more question about the about the uh you mentioned the xpeer and the um x-alps uh i'm going to have christoph weber on the show here pretty shortly and i know he hasn't you know alhannis used to be the race director but it's really mostly just to get his perspective of how the race has changed and you know the new rules and you know what what would he change what would you change about the race if you you know you're going to be able to you've seen it you've seen it now five editions um you've changed you've seen it change from you know you could go all night to having a night pass uh you know there are teams flying with you know have four different cars and a whole bunch of people and a bunch of guys in the air uh you don't do it that way but you know what's your opinion on that and what's your opinion what where would you like to see the race go would you like to see it rewind a little bit or are
these steps they've taken good steps i see two views one view it's my view it means the athlete view and the other view it's the event the organization view and for the organization it's clear to to have an era a race an event which they can sell and for this it needs for example turn points where they
can visit the athletes that they can sell these turn points and it also makes it more interesting maybe for sponsors or fans but it's not just for the fans it's for the fans it's for the fans it's for the in athlete view this is the big bullshit yeah to to to focus i'm really on the limit on the on the on the nature on on everything else then to fly down in the town to sign a board yeah but i think that makes it also unique this race that that you have these two sides and if i can kind of can can do an adventure race where i go alone without any support um to try to myself all the day all the night it will be very a good adventure but for sure it's very close to cheat it means in this in this rule every athlete have somewhere some friends they help with food and and things and maybe it's very difficult to control these um rules but i also like to have a team because the preparation it's very interesting in a team to race in a team i feel very good but everybody have to know by self how much help
you need if it's one car or three cars for us it was good to have one car three people and so we stay really flexible everybody had have to run or to fly by self so it's difficult to have more help and yeah actually i i say i'm the athlete and i go to a competition with some rules and i try to focus on what we have to do instead of thinking what's the best to do yeah and what about the night pass thing just curious because i
i i wasn't around when you guys could go all night would you prefer that they didn't have that that you could just go and have a night pass i think it's a bit um marketing things because if if i can use the night pass it will be an option when i don't have to announce it before the night so to say 12 in the day what you have to do or where you stay in the evening that's very difficult but if you change the rule to to to have a night pass but you can choose for safety it means if you're not ready at half past 10 to stay in a hut or in a accommodation then you can use it then it's very helpful but to to use it for for pushing it's very dangerous or for me it's very dangerous because i know if i don't sleep enough i will have to sleep and i will have to sleep and i will have to sleep problems on the next or the next days to have the right um fitness for my decisions and everything so it's for me it's not an option to push all the night during the race maybe then last night for sure you can do but yeah it takes it out of you Chrigel thanks so much is there uh is there anything you'd like to add before we sign off i really really appreciate it i think people are going to be thrilled with this no for me it's it's very interesting to hear all these questions maybe in a few weeks or months they have you have more questions and then we can speak again great because um yeah i like to help
other people like this and to
spread my
experience so thank you for calling me and putting all these informations together and i am i like this yeah awesome well cool well i i look forward to seeing your presentation in november and uh we'll put that up for those of you listening all the questions that we just asked those will also be in the show notes and uh thanks Chrigel talk to you soon and good luck with everything thank you kevin yes thank you cheers good night bye