Starting a race at 6pm is a new one for me, and most riders agreed that it wasn’t our favoured time to kick off a 1300 km ultra through the Atlas Mountains. We would be riding through some of the most incredible landscapes, up to the highest point of the race, in total darkness, and we wouldn’t have slept for an entire day before riding even began. Still, it’s all about the adventure and this certainly wasn’t an experience we would have in a world outside of this event.
My day was spent checking the bags and bike a couple of hundred times, attempting to nap (or at least rest as much as I could given the ever increasing nerves), and eating anything and everything I could get my hands on.
Lining up with 200 other riders, I was struck by how strange this was for me. The last time I’d ridden in a bunch of this scale, surrounded by the all too familiar heartbeat of the peloton, was in my road racing days. For the first time I felt that deep nervousness in the pit of my stomach, heart pounding, my mind working through all the possibilities of what was to come.
In reality, of course, it was nothing like anything I could ever have anticipated. It was better.
We began with a 25km of neutralised roll out, spinning through the outskirts of Marrakech surrounded by the sirens of police cars, the buzz of excitement rippling through the bunch. I chatted to some familiar faces, friends new and old, and was struck once more by the richness other riders bring to a ride like this. The vast majority of time during an ultra is spent in complete solitude, and that’s an incredibly important and transformative part of the experience, but the moments when the silence is punctured by the presence of others are always some of the most memorable.
Neutral over, a further few kilometres where drafting is inevitable and accepted, and the turn onto the tougher terrain was upon us. As the road began climbing upwards, and the surface transitioned into gravel, the splits formed naturally. Settling into my own rhythm, for the first time I felt as though I could breathe. The stress of the previous hours, days, and weeks, began to fall away as the real journey began.
By this time the lights were on and the sun had set behind us. Greeted with quite the opposite from the total darkness I had expected to be plunged into, the horizon loomed beneath the full moon and clear sky. Glancing ahead and behind, the sporadic flashing of red and glinting of bright white lights extended into the distance both ways. Throughout each long climb they marked the trail already covered by others, snaking through the hairpins above they illuminated the elevation gain I was yet to encounter. Sometimes so far out of reach that it felt almost impossible that I myself would soon be riding that high.
Although many hours of pedalling came before it, and a lot of tough ground had already been covered, the presence of the towering Telouet Pass in the 125km stretch before CP1 made the rest of it feel like an extended prologue. An appetiser before the main course really began. If this initial taster was anything to go by then I knew we were in for something really special. The temperatures were already dropping, the air feeling thinner, the snow building as the light began to reflect back ever brighter.
Onto the lower slopes, the sheer vastness of the landscape was immediately apparent. I felt both invincible and insignificant, dwarfed by the mountains that surrounded the rough trail over which I pedalled. The darkness of the sky blended perfectly into the limits of my vision, giving the illusion of a never-ending horizon.
Although I’m sure this view would have been stunning in the daytime, and my mind wandered to thoughts of returning someday under sunny skies, there was something special about climbing a mountain in the middle of the night in these conditions. The full moon bouncing off the crisp, white powder that coated the slopes on either side of me, an experience I never could have imagined.
Hairpin, a rideable straight, hairpin, an un-rideable straight, hairpin, a rideable straight, and repeat. On the bike, off the bike, pedalling over a rubbly surface until the wheels no longer turned with any great conviction, hiking through the inches of snow I had been warned about and yet was unable to truly anticipate. Relentless, ridiculous, remarkable.
As fatigue began to really set in over the closing kilometres, I would look back and marvel at the dozens of other riders I could see on their own version of this same adventure. Lights flickering in the distance, each one denoting another human being sharing in this incomparable experience. Alone, yet so beautifully shared.
Just keep moving forward, that’s all there is to it. Slow progress is better than no progress.
One foot in front of the other, the temperature dropped into the negative degrees, one pedal stroke at a time, it’s minus nine.
Just as it started to feel like the climb would never end, it was over. No fanfare, no time to celebrate, really the test was only half done. Clambering through the boulders, carrying my heavy bike for the first time, I took the sharp turn onto rougher ground. Don’t be deceived, the path will reveal itself. At least that’s what we were told, perhaps that’s more true when it’s not 3:30am, and you’re not lugging your bike in snow filled shoes over a narrow, un-rideable mule track.
I lucked in at this point, and as a rider passed me he revealed that he had ridden this stretch just the week prior. His flashing rear light became my map, glancing at my Garmin only occasionally to check he did in fact know where he was going. He did.
Towards the bottom the surface became rideable; a welcome relief. I remounted and enjoyed the ease of pedalling rather than scrambling downhill, the bike being a much simpler thing to ride than to drag alongside you over boulders and at this point foot deep snow.
Emerging back onto the road, finally some fast flowing tarmac lay ahead, and before I knew it CP1 appeared before me. It felt like almost no time had passed since we had set off the previous evening, yet it was 5:30am, I had covered the 125kms, and the highest point of the race was now behind me.
Laying the bike down, walking into a warm building, brevet card stamped, someone told me I was the first woman (something I was unaware and unaffected by in this moment), into a room filled with other riders sat around large tables being served big plates of very welcome food, a luxurious pause in an epic challenge that was turning into everything I had hoped it would be and nothing I had expected it to be all at once.
Eat, drink, layers off, layers on, phone checked, supplies acquired, and it was time to continue on into the night. 12 hours in and it’s just the beginning.
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Molly Weaver.