Badlands

I really liked the dot watching, along with the odd Twitter post, following the race.

I hadn't checked it yet today, but really glad to see you finished @hippy and with 7th too. That looked tough in places!

Brilliant effort Hippy

Well done @hippy great ride

Hippy you beast x

Well in Hippy. Cracking ride.

Great work @hippy. Now drink ALL the cerveza

Congrats @hippy, great ride

Hayden McCormick is also a pro, but Conti level. I think there is a real possibility that other pro teams will start entering these events, spurred on by bike manufacturers foray into the gravel/'adventure' market. What is niche now, i suspect will become increasingly common over the next few years.

There is presently a novelty about WT pro obliterating the field, but if a few other WT pros enter the whole scene will change dramatically

I imagine the endurance racing scene will have mixed feelings about this?

Lets be honest, Lachlan will generate 100x more coverage for EF smashing us lot than he will finishing 97th in the Tour of Utah....
And as you say, other teams will see the same thing

And then in 5 years Lachlan will finish 21st in Badlands as Egan Bernal wins it, and Get no exposure and so the process begins again !!!!

To what degree can anyone with great fitness turn up and be competitive an endurance event though?

Not having completed anything epic myself, I always assumed mental strength is as much part of the challenge - could any pro really pick up and do something as relentless and unsupported?

There is a danger that this thread becomes an Anti LM rant, and its anything but. Guy is a stud....and apparently a top bloke who genuinely loves riding his bike
The problem comes when the Rapha media machine needs “content”, and its full race kit and his own personal race photographer (or so it seems)

Whereas the Laurens Ten Dam and Emma Pooley (both of who have much more impressive pro palmares) approach is to ride as privateers in a much lower key way. That sits better with me

I should just add i really like LM! He won a stage at the Tour of Utah last year and has won the whole thing before. As an Aus cycling fan, there was a sense in the early part of his career he could be our next GC hope. He is considerably more talented than a squad domestique. So it is interesting to see his change in career direction.

I think you are right though, in that if he didnt ride for a rapha sponsored team he probably wouldn't be doing these events.

I've never done an endurance event, so have no idea. I suspect being the level of WT pro would be a massive advantage, although Chistian Meier (only 35) didnt make it so clearly not a given!

Well done @hippy!

Figured you were gonna pull the pin though you did seem quite chipper - I guess you knew and had made peace with the tired legs. Just in case, most people quit when I make an appearance, so apols :D

I was actually in a good mood most of the time, just getting on with it instead of having to dig really deep just to turn the pedals. It was hella hard, no doubt but I guess having fewer big races meant I had more in mental tank. Made for a nice change. The only stumbling block was the climb out of Almeria which had me pushing more than riding which I wasn't used to and it fucked with my head with the timing of the next, longer, climb. I was thinking I wouldn't be able to do it with the water/food I could carry. Turns out it was actually rideable - sand rather than rocks, with a more manageable gradient and the day wasn't too hot so I didn't need to worry about water so much. Once that little hurdle was overcome I was back in the game. I reckon I could've pulled out a higher position finish but I wasn't watching the tracker and I slept longer on the last night so as to see Picco Veleta in daylight unlike last year's Transiberica when I summited at 1am or something grim.

Ta. Not a bad result considering I couldn't even keep the tyres inflated the day before we left and I weigh two Lachlans :)

Cheers, yeah, if I did it again I'd definitely not use my skinny road bars and I'd definitely put lower gearing on. 42T might be fine if you weigh 70kg but there was a lot of stuff I just couldn't ride - not through lack of skill (although that happened a lot too) but because I couldn't power over the rocks with the gearing, load and fatigue. Still, that's why you do these things - to discover.

:-*

Ta

Thanks all. Working on it. :D

What bike did you take Hippo?

could any pro really pick up and do something as relentless and unsupported?

Yeah, remember to be and stay pro you need to have the mental strength to suffer just as much as us lot. The difference is, you have a whole team to help you through it, at least until the unsupported event. So, I race but then I've gotta go back to work. He races and he's got someone to rub his legs. I don't mind the odd pro showing up but if it turns into a marketing circus, people will start organising races that exclude pros or remove cameras, etc.

Image was from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ehoi5xyXgAARM72?format=jpg&name=medium but Elongated Muskrat fucked that site up so I've attached it now (20240109)

Kinesis Tripster AT. It's basically the same setup as I used for TABR and TCR in 2018 but with 50mm GravelKings thrown onto my road wheels and flat pedals instead of Speedpray. No Di2 extension shifters since they were smashed off on the rear-ended version of this bike and I never replaced them. I wasn't in the aerobars much though, obviously.

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Would you still choose this over a hardtail with hindsight?

This route was more technical than any XC stuff I'd done in Oz so maybe. But at the same time, I finished on this bike without any mechanicals so it kinda proves that it worked. Maybe my hands would be a little less 'nervy' right now if I'd have used a hardtail but then on this setup I swapped hand positions a lot so that is an advantage over a flat bar. Lower gears for sure would've made some of the more rocky sections faster for me but I don't have enough experience with suspension to know if a suss fork would have helped me. 38cm bars definitely not great - spent a lot of time fighting the front end when it was being kicked around or getting loose on the sandy corners. Wider tyres may have helped but then they'd have possibly been slower on a bunch of sections and not necessary on a lot of the climbs.

Basically I dunno. I just don't have enough experience with MTBs to know what I could do with one. I could get too confident and stack it on the first descent too so maybe having a bike I was worried about (mostly the fucking tubeless tyres) made me ride stuff slower than I would have if I was on some kind of MTB with huge tyres. Nursing the bike a little might've helped my body too.

Someone said my last segment was faster than everyone else. Because on the last climb and the last descent I didn't really give a fuck - I could walk the bike home if it broke - so I just let rip.
So if that's true (I've not looked at any ride data yet) then it shows you what a difference I was making with regards to taking things very gently. Essentially for 95% of the race I was worried I'd cut a tyre and then not be able to seat it and have to run tubes or something.