A conversation with Nathalie Schneitter, women’s winner and 10th overall at the Silk Road Mountain Race 2026.
Nathalie calls herself a cycling chameleon for good reason. Over the years, she has raced across very different disciplines, from cross-country mountain biking at the Olympics to winning two E-Mountain Bike World Championships, and now finding her way into ultra cycling.
After this year’s Silk Road Mountain Race, we sat down and talked about her race. I was curious about the way she approached the race across Kyrgyzstan, how she managed sleep and recovery over nine days, and how the APEX1 worked for her along the way.
When does a day actually end for you during a race that never really stops?
A day doesn’t really end at a certain time. It ends when I decide that continuing is no longer productive. I normally have a rough idea of how long I want to ride and where I might stop, but in a race like Silk Road you have to stay flexible. Terrain, weather and your own condition can completely change the plan.
One thing I do quite consciously is use every minute of daylight on the bike and sleep mainly during the night. I respect my natural bio-rhythm rather than fighting against it. For me, riding through the night and then sleeping during daylight doesn’t make much sense. Especially in technical terrain, daylight makes me faster and safer, and I believe that respecting my body’s natural rhythm is ultimately faster over a race this long.
The important thing is not to push until I am completely destroyed. I know from previous races that I function much better with around four and a half to five hours of sleep. So at some point I have to make the decision: this is enough for today, now recovery is more valuable than another hour on the bike. That can be surprisingly difficult in a race where stopping always feels like losing time.
You mentioned that small routines were really important to you. What did the whole process look like once you decided to stop, from setting up and getting ready to sleep to packing up and getting going again the next morning?
Once I decided to stop, I tried to follow basically the same routine every night. I would find a place for the tent, set it up, get out of my wet or dirty cycling clothes and into dry clothes, prepare my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, and make sure that everything I needed during the night was inside the tent.
I also tried to take care of the bike and electronics before sleeping – charging what needed charging and making sure the important devices were protected from the cold. I learned that lesson the hard way when I once forgot to take my electronics and powerbank into the sleeping bag and the cold drained all the batteries overnight.
Then I would drink a Recovery-Shakeand try to get to sleep as quickly as possible. In the morning it was the reverse: wake up, eat something, change back into my cycling kit, pack sleeping bag and mat, take down the tent, load the bike and go.
It sounds simple, but when you are exhausted, every little task takes longer. That is why having the same routine was so helpful. I didn’t have to think about what came next.
What did those routines do for you mentally, and what did you need to actually recover properly?
Mentally, the routines gave me structure. During the day there are constantly decisions to make: navigation, food, water, weather, clothing, the bike, where to stop. At night I didn’t want another twenty decisions. I wanted an automatic process. Drinking my Recovery-Shake and brushing my teeth are the routines signaling my brain and body it’s finally time to relax.
And I have learned that I genuinely need sleep. I tried the more extreme sleep-deprivation approach at Hope1000, where I averaged around three hours a night. I was fast and got the record, but afterwards it took me a very long time to recover mentally.
Since then, four and a half to five hours has become my sweet spot. With that amount I feel like I can get up the next morning and actually be myself again – and, most importantly, make good decisions.
You mentioned that you approached the first 1,000 km quite conservatively, while you felt you were one of the fastest riders over the second half. How much do you think the way you managed yourself and your recovery contributed to that?
A lot. I think that was one of the biggest reasons why my race developed the way it did.
I knew that 2,000 kilometres in Kyrgyzstan was completely different from anything I had raced before, so I didn’t want to race the first days as if I already knew exactly how my body would respond. I rode quite conservatively, slept consistently and tried not to accumulate too much fatigue.
After roughly 1,000 kilometres I realised: OK, I’m still functioning. I’m still strong. And from there I could gradually switch more into race mode. In the second half I felt like I was moving through the field rather than simply surviving it. Leaving Checkpoint 3 at Km 1600 I felt like the real race is just starting.
The last day probably showed this best. After nine days of racing I was still able to ride 255 kilometres with almost 6,000 metres of climbing and really race my bike. Of course I was exhausted, but I still had something left to fight with.
Stopping to camp sometimes felt inefficient in the moment. Why was it still worth it for you?
Because you have to look at efficiency over 24 hours, or over multiple days, not over 30 minutes.
Putting up a tent is annoying when you are racing. You stop, unpack everything, inflate the mattress, change clothes – and you know that other riders might still be moving while you're doing all of this. In that moment it feels terribly inefficient.
But the tent gave me proper recovery. I could get warm, change into dry clothes, eat in a protected environment and sleep properly. Then I could get back on the bike and actually ride fast.
I think in ultra racing there is a big difference between moving and making progress. You can save 30 minutes by not setting up camp, but if you are exhausted and slow for the next six hours, you haven't saved anything.
Can you take us back to the second-last night, when you camped at almost 4,000 metres? What was happening in the race, and how did you approach that night?
That was probably the clearest example of this whole philosophy. We had been warned about this huge hike-a-bike – around 13 kilometres with 1,400 metres of climbing – but what I hadn't realised was that the descent on the other side was basically unrideable as well. I reached the top around 2 a.m. in a snowstorm. I started descending in complete darkness, basically following the arrow on my Garmin, and after about an hour I realised I had only descended around 150 vertical metres.
At that point I thought: This is stupid. I knew that my competitor Kerry was ahead of me and of course part of me wanted to continue chasing. But I also knew that stumbling down this mountain in darkness, exhausted, wasn't going to make me fast. So I put up my tent at around 3,750 metres and slept for about three hours. At the time it felt like I was giving away race time. Looking back, I think it was probably the race-winning decision.
At the time it felt like I was giving away race time. Looking back, I think it was probably the race-winning decision.
How did you feel when you got going again the next morning, and when did you realize that something had changed in the race?
I felt surprisingly good. There was daylight, conditions had improved and suddenly I could actually see where I was going. What had been painfully slow and quite dangerous during the night became much more manageable. Then I started moving quickly again. Kerry had had an extremely hard night and was recovering in the next town. That was when the dynamic of the race changed. I had spent the night thinking that I was losing time by sleeping, and suddenly I realised that the opposite had happened: I had recovered, and now I was the one moving. That was a really important moment mentally. Until then I had mostly been chasing. Suddenly I was racing for the win.
When we met, I asked you pretty directly whether you thought the tent had been race-defining, and you said yes. Why?
Because without the tent I don't think I could have recovered consistently enough to race the way I did. It wasn't just about sleep. The tent gave me a small protected space every night. I could get out of wet clothes, put on dry clothes, eat, organise myself and shut the race out for a few hours. In a race where you are exposed to the elements almost constantly, that little bubble was incredibly valuable.
Looking back now, what would you do differently next time, and what would you do exactly the same?
The biggest thing I would change is the first night. I only slept around four hours because I thought I should keep moving, and the next morning I immediately noticed that it wasn't enough. My brain was still in sleep mode, I was inefficient and I needed caffeine tablets to properly wake up.
I would also try to be even more disciplined with small things when I'm tired – especially electronics, keeping things warm and not making stupid decisions because I'm exhausted. On the final climb I lay down for a four-minute powernap while it was snowing, still wearing Lycra. I was so tired that I didn't even realise how bad that decision was.
What I would do exactly the same is start conservatively, protect my sleep, carry the tent and trust my own rhythm rather than copying other riders' sleep strategies. And I would keep some flexibility. The last night proves that too: when Kerry got close, I slept only twice for 45 minutes and then raced all the way to the finish. Normally that would be completely against my strategy. But because I had managed myself well for the previous nine days, I still had the capacity to do it when it really mattered.
That is probably my biggest lesson from Silk Road: recovery isn't time away from racing. It's part of racing.
Photos by Stephen Shelesky