On Friday August 28th, 2020 I was participating in the Chasing Cancellara Ultrafondo in Switzerland. I was among the 500 entrants racing from Zurich to Zermatt (280 km and 6500 meters of climbing). Here is what has happened:

The season 2020 is unique and bike races/events are not happening. As I am trying to get my loyal sponsors some attention and give them something to write about, I decided to go for the World Ultra-Cycling Association record for the fastest 1.000km. On the way there of course there will be other, shorter records to be broken, on the top of my list is the 24h WR on the road, held by Christoph Strasser (896,2km) and my own 12h WR from 2007 (458,7km).

We started thinking about virtual ultra-racing during the lockdown for Covid 19 Pandemic and it seemed such a lovely idea. Gave us something to work toward and kept us motivated in times we weren’t allowed to ride our bikes outside. Somewhere in mid May the restrictions in Slovenia were lifted so we could start riding our bikes outdoors again. Still with the season 2020 in the air, not knowing if any of the ultracycling races are going to be held at all, this was the event I was looking forward. Fulgaz and RAAM organisers were doing their best to bring a proper ultra race to the virtual platform. There were some glitches for Windows based system, but during the Test week all worked pretty good, with some drop downs here and there. Of course I was a bit worried about those, but never ever thought I would be complaining about the race course, which I love in real life.