New partner, new job, new trainer, hardly any nutritional problems anymore – five-time ultracycling world champion Nicole Reist has almost become a different person for her last record-breaking project at the Race Across America. She had already resigned in June.
The stubbornness is gone – but Nicole Reist still has big plans.
Urs Nett / Nicole Reist Ultracycling
Anyone who sits on their bike in the middle of the night every day has to know exactly what they’re doing for. For many years, this wasn’t a serious question for Nicole Reist. She was constantly searching for her performance limits. After the state where head and body fit together perfectly in one of the toughest sports. She got up between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., even earlier at 1:30 a.m., trained, worked from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m., then trained again and was in bed at 8 p.m.
This is what life is like when you tackle ten-day cycling races like the Race Across America (RAAM) with almost no sleep, as Reist did, winning every ultracycling race she entered for over twelve years. Then life is planned out meticulously, without distractions, without questions.
Last winter things suddenly changed. Reist was still sitting on his bike in the attic or in the basement between 3 and 4 a.m. But she no longer did it with the same conviction as she had in the previous eighteen years. She tried to push away her doubts, but felt that her body could no longer carry on like this. And the head doesn’t want it. Reist says: “I was no longer willing to subordinate everything to sport.” The result was that there was less time for recovery, although this becomes more important as we get older. Maintaining or improving the level would not have been possible.
The speed record from 1995 is the goal
Now Nicole Reist is sitting in a café in the Zurich Oberland and talks about how she simply puts her legs up on Sundays, goes climbing or rides her bike with friends – including a coffee break! A year and a half ago it would have been difficult for her to imagine such a relaxed day. Without hours of training, the 39-year-old would have become, in her own words, obnoxious.
Reist doesn’t talk about her life as a sports pensioner. Although she announced her retirement in June, she is now training again for one last, one-off project: She wants to finish the RAAM with a speed record in the summer of 2024. Seana Hogan has been doing this since 1995 at 21.3 km/h – on a route that was around 200 kilometers shorter than today’s and had around 10,000 meters less elevation gain. In her three victories, Reist has never come close to this record; in 2018, she achieved an average of 19.3 km/h in her fastest participation. Everything will have to come together in their endeavor.
The toughest bicycle race in the world
Race Across America, approximately 4,800 km, 50,000 meters of altitude
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Start: Oceanside/California
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Rocky Mountains / Colorado
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Appalachian/Pennsylvania
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Destination: Annapolis/Maryland
Travel seems completely changed. Still focused and ambitious, but the dogged, almost eerily machine-like quality is gone. The change began in 2022, when she had to sit at home doing nothing after an accident at RAAM and social life became more important. Reist is with a new partner who runs three bike shops, is herself very committed, supportive and, above all, has an affinity for bikes. “That makes everything easier.” The partner also acts as the leader of the support team at the ultra races.
In addition, on the first day of work in 2023, Reist was terminated from her long-standing job as a structural engineer because the architecture office closed. The Zurich Oberland native thrived in her new workplace: larger projects, more unusual houses and more responsibility. This gave her new perspectives on life outside of sport. “There are other worlds that are opening up.”
Nicole Reist on her way to her third Race Across America victory in 2022.
Noah Diesing
She becomes slower and slower until she has communicated her decision
Last winter, these changes in her personal and professional life made Reist question the meaning of the privations she had endured for almost two decades. Priorities shifted; Reist no longer wanted to cancel every friend’s birthday party because of sports.
After months of doubts, she decided to end her career in June 2023 during the 3,600-kilometer Race Around Poland, which also counts as the Ultracycling World Championship. But she shied away from telling her support team the decision in the middle of the race. But Reist’s partner told her after a short sleep in the motorhome that she knew she had made up her mind. And that she now has to inform the crew. Reist had become inexplicably slow on the bike. “I didn’t notice it myself,” she says. Once the team received the news well, things went better again and Reist won her fifth world title.
After the retirement announcement, her sponsors approached her. They wanted to know whether the decision also had financial reasons. He had that. Working 100 percent and training 50 hours a week pushes a soon-to-be 40-year-old body to the limits and beyond. The sponsors offered to support her on a larger scale for the last year, and the new employer agreed to a reduction in her workload to 60 percent. And just like that, Reist was semi-professional for the first time in her career.
She invests the time gained not in training, but in recovery. Cycling in the middle of the night is a thing of the past. She reduced the training effort to 35 to 45 hours, and Reist also works with the new trainer Torsten Weber, who drives long-distance races himself, to provide fresh inspiration.
“It’s extremely exciting to get to know a different training approach again at my age,” says Reist. Her endurance foundation is strong, Weber relies on intensive interval training. “Sometimes I’m more exhausted after two hours than I used to be after a ten-hour workout.” For the first time in her career, she is actually investing time in regeneration measures such as stretching. “I feel how my body recovers better and is more efficient.”
“Today it would be unthinkable for me to live like that.”
This is also due to the last big change: after many years of gluten and fructose intolerance, she can now eat anything again. For eight years she underwent one intestinal cleansing after another, working with specialists to find solutions for her leaky intestines, which had plagued her even before her sports career. “I never felt really healthy, even though I had to perform like that,” she says, “I couldn’t give the body what it needed.” Due to the changed training and eating habits, Reist has gained eight kilograms. These are reserves that the delicate athlete can put to good use.
Nicole Reist at the Race Across America 2022. On the way to overall victory, she fell 300 kilometers from the finish.
Youtube
Did Isa Pulver also play a role in the decision to run again? The Bernese woman won overall victory at the RAAM this year, meaning she was also faster than all the men. In 2021, Ms. Leah Goldstein was the first to achieve this, but at that time, among other things, no European participants were allowed to enter due to the pandemic. Reist also had her sights set on overall victory, but Pulver’s triumph didn’t play a role in her decision. “I always had the plan not to stop until 2024.” It’s just that she wouldn’t have made it through this year under her old living conditions.
Looking back, is the “old”, radical Nicole a little suspicious to her? “For me, it was always good the way it was,” she says. Competitive sport, especially in marginal sports, often means taking unusual paths. “Today, however, it would be unthinkable for me to live like that.”
If all goes well, she will finish the race in 2024 the day before her 40th birthday. And then? “Then I’ll put my feet up,” she says. Do sports without thinking about performance. You can almost believe the new Nicole Reist.
