Stories from Züri Escape: surveying fails, cemeteries on AirBnB, and Kierkegaard
Short stories from the field: people, places, and cemeteries, with some reflections on all this.
Everything everywhere all at once - dealing with FOMO during ultracycling coverage
Riding an ultra vs shooting an ultra
Sections
Before any ultracycling shooting, I have only two expectations. First, it will be a great deal of fun (type 3 fun, we’ll talk about that next time); second, it will be harder to cover than to ride, both physically and emotionally. This second point improves with experience, but only slightly.
When you ride your bike in an ultra, the challenges are far from easy, yet they are simple: you start with a plan and a route already, and you adjust the strategy as you proceed. All along the way, you have very few worries. Finding water, food and shelter, and managing the fatigue, the bad weather, mechanical issues, and sheer bad luck. Clear priorities, simple stuff. The beauty of cycling, clearly visible in the cool t-shirts “ride, eat, sleep, repeat.”
Basically, it’s harder than riding because you have so many things to do. This is why ultracycling is cool per se, but ultrashooting needs a different approach if you hope to enjoy it.
As a media crew, on the other side, you are not on your own: you have the responsibility to document the adventure of many riders (all of them, ideally). As we saw, you have to investigate, guessing each rider’s next stop; you must wait, coordinate with the team, elaborate the three-level plan (what’s your next move? What does that imply for the following 12 hours? And what for the next couple of days?), and then update it regularly; you must take care of your own logistics (fuel, food, vignettes, international roaming), your basic hygiene, and the rest of the team. A ton of silly stuff that is not shooting, yet still necessary.
Then you also have to do the shooting itself, which opens another whole set of processes: finding intel about the rider and their story within the race and prior to it, if you don’t know them already; backing up the files, editing, interviewing, sending files, creating content. All of this while you’re on the road, the usually with shitty internet.
Then, if you are not busy with any of this, you can do stuff which is not strictly necessary, but it’s worth doing: for example, B-rolls and behind-the-scenes; or a shower; or writing notes for some future article.
This is why ultracycling is cool per se, but ultrashooting needs a different approach if you hope to enjoy it.
FOMO - the king of them all
My special enemy, though, is not chaos. I thrive in situations where you must improvise and have to take decisions without really knowing what will be the consequences, trying to guess how the tracking map will look in the next few hours. Not afraid of that.
What I fear is missing stories.
Since riders will be doing anything, anywhere, anytime, there always will be a story within reach. And it’s very hard to stop and say – wait, I have to sleep, we’ll see tomorrow. Riders who ride, riders who sleep in improvised shelters (fascinating, and I have a few items to add to the collection: hotels – check, benches – check, cemetery – check, but still many creative places to find).
With a list so long of riders to catch, FOMO, fear of missing out, is my main enemy on the job – the king of all challenges. I had the same feeling as a kid (don’t we all?), forced to go to bed while the adults kept talking and having fun: am I missing some good joke? I want to hear again Aunt’s funny story! Please don’t have fun without me.
At the end of the day, there’s always one more rider to catch, one more spot to check. How can you say no? It’s only 60 or 90kms away, a couple hours driving: how to resist?
If you’ve been to Disneyland, you know what I’m talking about: wanting to jump on all rollercoasters, see all the shows, explore every corner of the Far West area – all at once.
But hey, where is all this fun in an unsupported race across a continent? In his book, James Robertson writes that an ultrarace is basically nowhere. You just have a couple riders here and there, hundreds of kms between each other; along the way, few people notice, none care.
However, we can go one step further: if the race is nowhere, it means that it can be anywhere. Therefore, you can’t afford to sleep and lose time. And that’s a big issue, one I fell right into during VIA chapter I, in 2024.
If you let the ultrarace get you, it’s easy to lose focus and, eventually, to be less effective. A couple examples. For a whole day, during VIA I, one of my cameras was set with SAF, single autofocus, instead of CAF, continuous. I realized it only at night, when this became more problematic. I don’t know why or how it happened, since I use SAF very rarely. Luckily, the shootings aren’t as dynamic as the word “race” suggests, otherwise I would lose several pictures. If I weren’t so sleepy, I would have noticed earlier.
Another mistake due to the lack of sleep has a direct impact on this article. During VIA I – yes, there I made all of the rookie mistakes, or at least a lot of them – I sent myself whatsapp voicenotes: commentaries, funny quotes, and so on, mainly for IG stories, and to write an article afterwards. For reasons unknown to me, these notes were set to delete after 24hrs. I found out when I was back home, two weeks after the race. Gone.
During that assignment, I slept 2-3 hours per day, plus a few 15-minutes powernaps when possible. When I ride ultra, I usually sleep 4 hours minimum, and even more if it’s more than a couple days.
Unsurprisingly, that wasn’t nearly enough. The truth is, you cannot be efficient when you sleep 2-3 hours for several days. After a few days, true to my rookie pedigree, I was struggling. As a rider I can manage myself a bit better, and stop before it’s too late. But as a photographer, I fell in the trap. A couple times, I had to stop to take a quick nap, even if we were in the middle of action.
More about "photography/philosophy"
FOMO and Checkpoints
The checkpoints (or Refuges, as VIA names them) and the finish are the most dangerous trap when it comes to FOMO: they are a goldmine for stories and “letting go” is particularly hard. If it’s hard to feel the race on the road, at the Refuge it’s everywhere, you can literally touch it. Losing any of these precious moments would be a crime. How can you dare to sleep?
You get all riders, which makes it very democratic media-wise. It’s where they take a break, both physical and mental. So, it’s also where they unleash all the stress, opening the gates for all sorts of emotions. When cycling, we are all the same more or less. But when you get off the bike, and you’re exhausted, that’s when your self is most exposed – the most interesting things to tell. Countless interesting tales.
Plus, they do all sort of stuff off the bike, which makes for interesting situations. Washing, reorganizing the bags, repairing, interacting, and so on. In these places, pictures and stories come alive.
Bonus: riders usually follow a pattern, so you can sort of plan your shoots, wait for another rider to do the same thing in a better light, or even play with the scene. It’s Disneyland when you can do whatever you like.
But that’s not all: volunteers themselves are a great subject for storytelling; without them, the race simply couldn’t happen, and most of the time their stories are as interesting as the riders’. They’re the landlords of the place, so it’s interesting to observe their management. Or simply to hear their stories, like Sister Kerstin, the gravel-riding nun who mocks “Gucci Gravel riders” and enjoys a few laps on the Velodrome.
The locations themselves are also interesting: during Chapter II, the headquarter of The Cake Movement, in St. Gallen, was fascinating – something that our colleague Elias, assigned to the place, perfectly took advantage of. An astonishing historic building, its wooden walls painted in bright yellow and red immediately make you feel in a special place. The welcome is warm, the cappuccino one of the best. The shower was hot, something riders really appreciated during these days of cold and rain. Us three, unfortunately, we had to take a quick shower and take off to the next chase in Freiburg (Luckily, in 2026 I could quench my thirst for pics in that building while working on Backyard Gravel).
Back to FOMO and checkpoints. During VIA I, I spent 3 nights at Velodromo Francone, sleeping on the camp beds with volunteers and riders. At day, I chased riders along Val di Susa; coming back at night, a different kind of fun started. No more wait-and-see: riders were already there for me! The fact that we were 3 or 4 photographers/videomakers (the Velodromo was also the race HQ for a couple days) didn’t diminish the fear of missing out. While a colleague is shooting this, let’s try that. If he’s shooting the refueling maneuvers, I can go for the behind-the-scenes chat between volunteers. When nothing happens – but wait, something is happening at all times.
As a result, after three days at Velodromo I am already exhausted. My teammate and passenger Ryan Le Garrec, having covered the race from the start, is also quite exhausted; he compensates with experience, and knows when it’s time to stop. I don’t know yet, and this costs us some time.
The last day it’s time to leave and reach the front of the race in Pistoia, but I am too tired to drive safely all night long. We just have to postpone and rest a few hours, which will cost 100k extra, since Chris started riding in pitch black and he’s already near the Apennines. Overall, it doesn’t compromise anything of the coverage, but it teaches me a lesson, as Ryan points out.
At the finish line, history repeats, but the rhythm is very different. The finish of Chapter 1 and the start of Chapter 2 was the town of Giovinazzo, offering endless shooting options with its ancient city center and typical white walls. At the end of Chapter I, riders would enjoy the rest and the summer, looking for local food and waiting for their families and friends.
Most of all, at the finish, there are heavy loads of emotions unfolding. One by one, riders stop the GPS, and a whole world falls apart – the world where you are alone for most of the day, riding through the landscape barely seeing it – and is replaced by something new and unknown. Crying is the normal reaction, and every emotion is heightened by the fatigue.
Then, after a couple days of rest, it becomes a holiday: the faces relax, the bodies recover, and there’s yet another mood to shoot. Giovinazzo and De Proloog, the finish of the first and of the second chapters, are worlds apart; yet the pictures show the same feelings.
At the finish line, fear of missing out becomes peaceful concentration. You rest more, you feel the end of the task, and you can finally enjoy chatting with riders without worrying about external support.
On the other side, Giovinazzo has a completely different feeling when Chapter II starts from the very same square, buzzing with last-minute bike check and personal rituals. And again, so many things to shoot. Let’s start for another round.
FOMO and being effective: letting go
This is probably the most important lesson of that very first ultra. From there on, and especially during the second chapter of VIA, in 2025, I adapted the sleeping routine for the “shooting mode” rather than the “cycling mode”. We slept 4-5 hours per night, with a couple full nights of 6-8 hours along the way, and random power naps when possible. We supported each other, but also stopped each other when one of us felt it was too much. It has been way better, and I think we did a better job overall.
The hard stuff has been learning to “let go”, to stop before we were too tired. Because maybe doing a 2 hours detour for the next rider pays in the very short term, but the price is very high for the following days. If you do it, it has to be really meaningful.
Since then, I am able to manage my energies much better, even when I cover races alone. Each time I see a rider approaching on the tracker and it’s time to rest, I make an effort and try to weigh the long game, not just the next hour.
During Three Peaks Bike Race, in 2026, I was alone in Col de la Loze for 4 days: on thursday evening, I had to decide: either waiting for the last riders into the night, and then skip the dawn; or skip the few night riders, hoping that dawn would be more fruitful (both about light and riders).
See the screenshot here (I am based at the green mountain icon, low right, where Col de la Loze is. Riders climb the parcours anti-clockwise starting in Brides-les-Bains, up-left, where you see the crowd of dots):
- Thursday evening I see four riders coming up. The climb takes 2 to 4 hours depending on the rider. It means I could stay awake for 273 (sure), then 113 (maybe), but besides that (235, 320, 267) it would mean a sleepless night.
- it was way better to sleep early evening and wake up early, since a crowd is coming. Even 235, who was already on the parcours at 21.30 pm, is on top at dawn.
(source: Dotwatcher.com)
Thursday 21:30
Friday 05:00
Instinct, experience and a few clues made me decide for the second option. It was a hard decision not to hear Aunt’s last story. It paid off: I lost a few riders but I covered many more before breakfast, and with a great light.
More thoughts about ultrashooting
The game of investigation, pt. 1: looking for riders amidst chaos
How do you actually find riders, and what do you do when you find them?
Everything everywhere all at once – dealing with FOMO during ultracycling coverage
How do you choose to shoot when every rider is doing something, all over the place?