“a compliment when people say i’m crazy”
People in the Region
Winner of a Deca Ironman – in world-record time: extreme endurance athlete Eva Hürlimann from Krattigen made headlines with this achievement last May. Afterwards, she felt no pain whatsoever. We visit the 43-year-old hotelier, “amateur athlete” and mother of three teenagers in Krattigen.
Her name is also part of her hotel’s name: “Eva’s Seeblick” is the small guesthouse high up on the edge of the village of Krattigen. It has been only three weeks since Eva Hürlimann’s victory in the Deca Ironman in Brazil when she sits down for an interview with our editorial team on the hotel terrace in June.
Eva Hürlimann, congratulations on your world record and your victory in the Deca Ironman in Búzios, Brazil. You spent around nine days swimming, cycling and running almost non-stop, with only short breaks for sleep and food. Yet you don’t look as though you’ve been through such an ordeal!
Yes, someone once wrote that I look more like a yoga teacher (laughs)! But for me, life isn’t just about sport – there has to be room for everything. I also enjoy the good things in life, I love cooking and I’ll have a glass of wine now and then. There are athletes who push themselves too hard and suffer stress fractures or inflammation. I’ve never had anything like that.
What was the competition like?
There were two women and eight men from eight countries at the start. Four men and I reached the finish line. I was faster than all the men. Once again, it showed that women tend to have an advantage in ultra-endurance sports.
You’re smiling in almost every photo, even during the toughest moments. Is that something you do consciously?
No, that’s just my nature. When I’m feeling good, I’m a cheerful person. I’m also grateful to have a body that can do this and people around me who put up with all this “madness” (laughs). I take it as a compliment when people say I’m crazy! You should do what you enjoy, even if it might seem a little mad. That’s why I don’t keep putting my projects off.
How did you cope with the monotony of the competition?
You had to stay very alert and focused, so it wasn’t actually that monotonous. We completed every discipline in laps: 38 km of swimming in a 50-metre pool, where you get into a flow. You just take it one length at a time. Then came the cycling, with more than 200 laps of around 8 km on a closed course with lots of bends. I kept looking forward to the next lap. I approached the run in the same way – 422 laps of a 1-kilometre course. That made everything manageable. I had drinks, and my partner was beside the course bringing me food. I knew there was simply no other way to organise the event. Each team had a tent beside the course where you could take a break, eat or sleep. I appreciated knowing exactly what to expect. On the bike, my favourite discipline, I knew precisely how to approach every bend. There was a real sense of flow there too.
Speaking of sleep: how did you manage that during the competition?
It was my first continuous event, where each discipline is completed in one uninterrupted stretch. After 15½ hours of swimming, I spent four days on the bike and then around four days running. I deliberately didn’t sleep at all for the first two nights, but I felt fine. After that, we tried power naps of 20 to 30 minutes. But I almost felt more tired afterwards. So we switched to sleep breaks of one and a half to two and a half hours during the night. Around midday, when it was very hot, I took a short break – that worked well.
How did you feel physically after returning home?
Very good. I didn’t have any muscle soreness and could only feel that my muscles had been working hard. For a while, I had some fluid retention in my legs and had to keep them elevated. But above all, I was very, very tired. I had a lot of sleep to catch up on.
You run a small hotel here with six apartments and two rooms, and you have three teenage children. How did you organise everything with the hotel and your children?
That was a major challenge. I can only relax and focus on the competition if I know my children are doing well. I was fortunate that my mum came over from Seftigen, stayed here and looked after them. At weekends, we managed with help from their school friends, my brother and his wife. I managed the hotel remotely via an app. We didn’t have that many guests in May. I even corresponded with them during the competition. You stop to eat now and then and put your feet up – plenty of time to send a quick reply.
Exercise addiction is a much-discussed topic at the moment. Are you addicted to exercise?
Definitely not. During the period when I took a break to have my children, I didn’t do any sport for five years, and I was perfectly fine. Of course, if I do nothing at all for a few days, I really look forward to getting active again. Not long after Brazil, I was already looking forward to cycling around the lake again – it’s good for both mind and soul. Sport helps me stay balanced. But I don’t have a training plan, and I train no more than eight to 15 hours a week. I prepare for competitions with interval training.
Jürg Alder
In Focus
Extreme Athlete, Mother and Hotelier
What 43-year-old Eva Hürlimann from Krattigen achieves in sport is almost beyond imagination for most people. As an ultra-triathlete, she completes several Ironmans back to back – meaning five or ten times 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of cycling and 42.2 km of running. She has set several world records: in 2018, she completed five Ironmans in five days; in 2019, ten Ironmans in ten days; and in 2023, she became world champion in the continuous triple triathlon, in which each discipline is completed separately over three times the standard distance. In May this year, she competed against eight men and one woman in Brazil and won the continuous Deca Ultra Triathlon, a non-stop tenfold Ironman, setting a world-record total time of 206 hours for 38 km of swimming, 1,800 km of cycling and 422 km of running. From 2011, the qualified nurse, who grew up in Pieterlen as the daughter of a care-home manager, took a five-year break from competitive sport to raise her two daughters and son. In 2016, she competed in her first Gigathlon in Central Switzerland – and won it.
Eva Hürlimann does not consider herself a professional athlete, as sponsorship only just covers her expenses. She also runs the “Eva’s Seeblick” hotel in Krattigen and earns additional income through motivational talks and coaching. At competitions, she is supported above all by her partner. When she is not training, she enjoys cooking, spending time by the lake in summer and heading to the mountains in winter.
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