Written by Epic Cycles staff member and brand ambassador Molly Weaver
Ultra racing is a continuous series of peaks and troughs, one minute you’ll feel like you’re riding better than you ever have before, and the next you’ll think there’s no way you’ll make it through even one more kilometre. The highest of highs, the best moments of your life, followed by the inevitable lows. It’s part of what makes this sport so special, the transformative nature of the rollercoaster of emotions cannot be underestimated. The gifts the good times bring you, the strength gained from navigating the bad.
No matter the result, the personal victory or lack thereof, you will always come away as a slightly different person, with an abundance of lessons learned. Here are some of mine from The Atlas Mountain Race:
1) Comparison is the thief of joy – once you’re on that start line you are the rider you are, you have the bike you have, and you’ve packed what you’ve packed. Stop obsessing about what everyone else is doing, it won’t change anything except your own confidence. Save your energy for the important stuff.
2) Take your time at the start – these events are long, really long, and they’re not won on the first night, but they can be lost. Ride your own ride and stay calm, almost everyone is going off way too fast! It’s easy to get sucked into the stress and franticness when surrounded by hundreds of other riders fighting for their place, egos flying around, but focus on what’s best for you. The first 100 kilometres of AMR were intense, the pace insanely high for an ultra of this length, so I let the peloton ride away from me and trusted that I’d be seeing most of them again when they blew. If it feels unsustainable for you then it is, slow down.
3) If it ain’t broke don’t fix it – I convinced myself on the first night of riding that my saddle was too low, despite the fact I had triple checked it when I built my bike, and I have a secondary seat collar so there’s no chance it had slipped. This led to a rather infuriating series of stops to put it up and down multiple times in order to return it to the exact position it started in, which was correct all along. A waste of mental and physical energy, and of course time.
4) You won’t get less sick during an ultra – this might seem like an obvious one given that you’re pushing your body to the very edge in every way, but I let blind optimism and a sprinkling of naivety tell me otherwise.
I had been unwell in the leadup to the race; I was drained and my breathing wasn’t great from the very start, and rather predictably this only got worse throughout the days and nights in the desert.
Should I have started AMR? Debatable, but ultimately I’m glad I did. Should I have anticipated my decline and altered my goals accordingly? Definitely. Work with the rider you are in the moment, not the rider you wish to be.
5) Don’t sweat the small stuff – when inconsequential things go wrong they can play on your mind, but you’ve just got to laugh it off and let it go. I dropped my Albion Burner while I was riding at some point on day two without noticing, and spent way too long beating myself up about it and analysing all the ways that this was going to be a problem, then I told myself to forget about it. I wasn’t going to be able to do anything practical to change the situation, it wasn’t a massive issue worth my mental energy, so it was time to move on. Any illusion of control should be left at home, rolling with the punches is a better strategy than micromanagement.
Not that it’s relevant to this lesson, but whilst sitting in a café eating breakfast two days later a lovely rider returned it to me. A little moment of trail magic.
6) Test your kit before you leave – Yes, all of it. It’s easy to remember to check over the big things, but the devil is in the details. If something is essential, no matter how small, make sure it works. I took a pump with me to Atlas that looked to be in good condition, and I thought was working fine, so I didn’t bother to double check. Luckily someone borrowed it the day before the race and discovered it was broken so I was able to take an alternative, otherwise that could have been a very long walk if I punctured out on the trail, and possibly the end of my ride. Scratching for an unavoidable reason is hard enough, so to do it over something preventable like this would be a bitter pill to swallow!
7) Adapt – when you’re in the bubble of an ultra race it’s hard to maintain perspective, and you can lose sight of the bigger picture, but there’s often a way forward if you take a moment to look for it. When things go wrong, which they almost certainly will, action has to be taken. This can be something small, a minor inconvenience that escalates in your own mind, or a major change of circumstance when you’re already at your limit. If you go in with the attitude of adapting and overcoming, this action is far more likely to be positive.
I travelled to Morocco with the plan to race at the front end, it was no secret that I wanted to fight for the win, but that wasn’t meant to be. There was nothing I could do to change the situation other than work with it. The journey could have ended there, halfway through this incredible route as I cursed the cards I’d been dealt, but instead I got to experience the full adventure. It wasn’t how I would have chosen to ride AMR, but that’s life, it was beautiful and fulfilling in its own way. Different, not worse.
8) How you pack is as important as what you pack – ultras are already hard, don’t make it any harder by packing poorly. When you’re in an event where the clock never stops, and mental fatigue makes mountains out of molehills, taking the path of least resistance is the key to success. Put things that you know you’ll use a lot at the top of bags, in pockets that are easily accessible, segregate your kit in a way that makes sense for how you’ll actually use the gear.
Similarly, don’t pack too well. If the kit only just fits when you put everything in your bags from the comfort of your own home, take a bigger bag. You will never pack as neatly out on the trail, and you won’t enjoy the time you spend trying to.
9) Hope for the best, prepare for the worst – I had planned a lot of things around the schedule I made for myself ahead of the race. In a perfect world I would have finished in around 4 days and change, but we don’t live in a perfect world and ultras rarely go to plan. I started running out of cash in a completely cash-based society, where a bank or ATM is a rare sight, and some of my supplies started dwindling as my original target came and went. I made things work, just, but I could have made life a lot less stressful for myself.
10) Think small – when I was considering scratching at Checkpoint 2 this year it was partly because racing for another 750 kilometres through the mountains seemed impossible given the state of my health at the time.
I couldn’t imagine myself doing it, the obstacles were just too great, but I knew I was physically capable of getting back on my bike. I broke the challenge down into chunks that seemed achievable; I would get to the next town, then the next climb, the next 100 kilometres, the next checkpoint, and just like that progress was being made. Forward motion, little victories, one pedal stroke at a time.
As an aside, the well known phrase ‘never scratch at night’ also came into play for me here. Things always seem worse in the darkness, when you’re at your most tired, so sleep on it. Solutions can often be found in the warmth of a brand new day.
