Team Imboden Bike - R`ADYS - Winners of the APEX Race

Bernhard Hug (& Rob Howard) / 29.06.2012

Team Imboden Bike - R`ADYS were the winners of this year’s APEX race in Switzerland.  It was a very tough race, and they beat Team Silva of Sweden, who won that race last year and were second in the last World Championships. So it was an impressive victory. The team are a new(ish) name and a rarity in that they have no on-line presence (gasp), but their win was the result of many years of competition experience. So, who are they?

This year’s line up was lead by Bernhard Hug (39) and included Andrea Huser (39), Marc Pschebizin (39) and Jan Beguin (41). All are Swiss, except Marc, who is German. 

Perhaps the most experienced of the four is Jan Beguin who was with the former Swiss powerhouse team ‘Salomon Swisse’ some years ago, but all of them have raced around the world for the past decade or more, taking in many Salomon races  (X-Adventure & Raid World Series) as well trips to the major events in Abu Dhabi, Patagonia and elsewhere.  The exception is Andrea Huser, who only turned to multisport some 5 years ago, and is a former MTB Marathon European Champion.

It’s fair to say that the individual team members have been very successful racers, but not at the highest level until now.  As Hug puts it; “We've been around for a while raced against each other with each other in many different teams - many top 10 places in lot's of races ... but nowadays if you don't win people don't know you ... so we've mastered this final step too ;-).”

Here is his account of the team’s race.

After our 2nd place last year I had to find two new man for the team because they have focused this year on other sports. The Apex race with its really hard running stages (with a total of approx 13,000m elevation gain and loss) so you can only do it if you like to run downhill and can master the discomfort of sore muscles, joints and feet that come with it. So it was not easy to find two other strong guys.  Andrea was set.  She is just amazing and made for these sort of races.

So by the end of last year I had convinced Jan and Marc to join the team and try to win the race ...

Our preparation was not very long. We only met once before the race for a short training session and we discussed everything else by email and phone.  We could risk this "non professional" preparation because we've all known each other from other races.

Shortly after the beginning of the first long running stage Marc had problems with cramps and he could barely run downhill. So we lost our lead and were about 15 mins behind Silva. After the second long uphill we caught up with Silva, Raidlight and FJS. Jan did a great job navigating and we were able to take the lead by maybe 15 mins.