Badlands
Photo: Instagram @Alex_Hotchin
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What is ‘Badlands’? An invitation to fun? Or something more ominous perhaps?
‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. ‘Once upon a Time in the West’. ‘Fistful of Dollars’.
The Spaghetti Westerns were all filmed during the Sixties in the Tabernas Desert near Almeria. I love a good western, though let’s hope it’s not pistols at dawn as we race one-another across the terrain.
Badlands, run by Transiberia, is 700 km of Southern Spain’s finest ‘gravel’ roads. We will be racing through these remote and barren mountains, facing 16,000m of climbing, with 85% of the set route off-road. With all the climbing we will reach the Europe’s paved road pinnacle, literally and metaphorically, the Veleta Pass at 3,212m. The race starts on Sunday September 6th at 08:00 in Granada (and finishes there too). The 2020 edition is the inaugural, which brings me both excitement and anticipation for the unknown: I ride and race to go to new places, see new views and feel the toil of new mountains.
The race has captured the imagination of many, with a large start roster of nearly 200 riders. Notably, Christian Meier will be here, clearly ultra-endurance racing is well under his skin. This will be our third race this year together. For the first time I’ll be on the same start line as Lachlan Morton, a current World Tour Professional, and experienced ultra-endurance racer. On the more amateur end, my friend Hippy will be going off-road for the first time, so expect some epic grumbling on Twitter (@firsthippy), a worthy follow for comedy gold.
Turning to the terrain, in the beautifully crafted Race Manual the organisers state ‘40c tyres are perfect’. Smooth roads and beautiful vistas await. The promotion film sells itself.
Are 40c tyres perfect? They say Granada is wonderful, but I didn’t stop on my way down, I like mountains. As I do, I arrived early and drove my camper up high into the Sierra Nevada. I pulled out my 40c gravel bike, the Canyon Grail out of the van and went riding. The Grail is fast, if the off-road is smooth and the distances not excessive. The tarmac up to Pico Veleta soon ended and the path went from dust to rocks. Within a few metres my mind went to the hardtail I had in the van, my Canyon Exceed. The bike I raced in Kyrgyzstan, Morocco and just last week in the Ariège. My faithful. Perhaps the organisers meant that the temperatures will be 40C!
This musing leaves me with the question: What is gravel? Is it a certain grading of rock size, between 5mm and 15mm? Is it 40c tyres? Is it drop bars? Is it an XC bike? I asked the question on Instagram, receiving a wide but similar theme of answers. Gravel isn’t a tangible thing. Gravel starts where tarmac ends. It’s the enablement of freedom, the freedom to ride further, into the unknown, into adventure. Away from cars. If gravel isn’t any one thing, then it’s everything. It’s whatever you’re on and whatever you’ve got under your wheels. It doesn’t matter if you measure the tyres in millimetres or inches (mountain bike industry please move into the 21st century). It doesn’t matter if you shave your legs or let them grow wild. Though, I go wild now.
So yeah. I’ll race my hardtail again. Why? Because I think it’ll be both fastest across the terrain but importantly most forgiving on my body. Maybe it won’t be, but I won’t know till I’ve got across these ‘Badlands’. I’ve raced most types of bike and had many experiences. I know what a beating my body will take if I try to race 700 km of mixed terrain flat out on a 40c rigid bike. And with the esteemed company, it will be flat out. This stuff is hard enough already, no need to make it harder. I don’t want to be off the bike recovering for 4 weeks, like I was after Italy Divide in 2019. I have my eyes on a road race, the Two Volcano Sprint in Southern Italy on October 18th. I also want to be still riding and racing when I’m 60. So, my bike choice this week: I’ll go for comfort and speed.