Riders Ready, Watch the Gate, Beep Beep Beep

Badlands 2020

At 9am local time, 81 solo riders and 20 pairs rolled out of Granada for the Inaugural Badlands 2020. The field is about as star studded as gravel ultra endurance racing can be, ranging from a World Tour rider to previous TCR winners.

The route they’re facing is 700km with 15000 meters of climbing, 85% off road and taking in some stunning parts of this area of Spain with a 5 check points. The ride to the first checkpoint at Hoya de Guadix is shown below. It’s pretty apparent the amount of climbing there is in this race; within the first 45km they will have to ride over 1000 meters of vertical. To add to this, despite the weather looking good by all accounts, the roadbook of the race does point out that “you’ll ride through deserts at temperatures close to 40º but also you’ll probably ride through snowfields and overnight close to 0º”.

Bike wise, it seems that most are riding gravel bikes, which is in keeping with the organisers recommendation of 40mm tyres. However, James Hayden wrote in his race preview that having tried a gravel bike he is going to be sticking to his hardtail. You can read more here:

https://www.jamesmarkhayden.uk/stories/badlands

Here are a few bike set ups:

Liam Yates https://www.instagram.com/p/CExB17NFcLh Sonia Colomo https://www.instagram.com/p/CEwTEiQAa_7/ Pep Sanchez https://www.instagram.com/p/CEt-762qdE6/ Lissa Breugelmans https://www.instagram.com/p/CExPOcKFslX/

A quick scroll through the socials shows that some riders have been out testing equipment and giving their bikes a final check over. Hippy has been having some tubeless issues and socially distancing at the riders briefing, Liam Yates has been out camping and Hayden McCormick and Lachlan Morton have been out for a short ride.

https://twitter.com/firsthippy/status/1302280169680441346

With a ton of unknowns, a beautiful route and a loaded field, this race is set to be a corker.