The TRAKA 2024

It was going great, until it wasn’t…

The Traka was my first major first target race for this year, and leading into the event I had high hopes and expectations. The event has almost become the “Unbound” of Europe, attracting professionals (be they from gravel or MTB, as well as current and former World Tour roadies) and some of the most renowned brands in the gravel racing scene to Girona. A good result here means a lot, and has the potential to make sponsorship conversations for 2025 that much easier. 

Roughly a month before the event, I picked up a mystery respiratory virus (which seems to be doing the rounds in Girona) and I just wasn’t able to shake it. The next four weeks would see me take a total of 14 days off the bike, and more red and yellow workouts logged on TrainingPeaks than green ones, making my build up anything but ideal. Ten days before race day, a doctor put me on a three-day course of antibiotics in a last-ditch attempt to clear the infection once and for all, and it seemed to have done its job. 

With my health finally on the up, the weather was anything but leading in to race week. Those of you who live in or around Girona will know that Catalunya declared its first ever drought emergency in February earlier this year, resulting in various water restrictions and limitations, but that would quickly come to an end in Traka week - Murphy’s Law. 

Rain started falling six days before the 560km Traka adventure (which would go on to be cancelled due to the weather), and didn’t stop until the early hours of Friday morning (the day of the 360km event), which would make each of the remaining events an absolute mud-fest (R.I.P bearings and drivetrains).

Friday afternoon was standard when it comes to the day before race day, with race registration and number collection. I timed my pick-up to coincide with the finish of the 360km race, which meant I was able to watch the winners come in, and also to see a fellow South African (and Ciovita ambassador) Kevin Benkenstein cross the line after quite a respectable ride. The rest of the evening was business as usual with final bike preparations, copious amounts of rice, and an early bedtime.

The 4am wake-ups on race day still haven’t gotten any easier (especially when my usual wake-up time is around four hours later) nor is trying to shovel a big breakfast down the hatch. It’s times like these when I am eternally grateful for my Aeropress. 

Another thing I was grateful for was how close the start was - I left home at 6:26am and arrived at the start at 06:30, undoubtedly the biggest up-side of riding a home race!

I lined up second row on the start, and at precisely 7am, we were off. The first 4km were “neutral,” but anyone who has lined up for a gravel race in the last year knows all too well that it is anything but. The race kicked off with two climbs, around 15 and 19 minutes long respectively, and everything played out pretty much exactly as I had expected it to, with the race splitting up immediately on the first climb and a front group of around 15 riders establishing themselves. I sat comfortably in the second group, and while the idea of bridging across to the leaders did cross my mind, I was in good company with riders like Greg van Avermaet, Carlos Verona (Lidl-Trek), Nicholas Roche and Ivar Slick in my group, and I decided that holding back and gambling on the groups merging later in the race would be the smarter decision, especially considering my lack of training volume and intensity in the previous weeks. 

By the time we crested the second climb of the day, the gap between the first two groups sat at around two minutes, and I was pretty confident that we would catch some, if not most, of the riders up the road at some point. After a long descent, the group settled in on the flatter section on the course and spent the next 80km working relatively well together. It was during this time that I tried to make sure that I was fuelling well, and I was reminded once again why positioning in bike races is so important. Near the front of the group, I would hardly slow down when cornering or avoiding large puddles or mud that had accumulated from the last week of rainfall, but as soon as I drifted back, even the slightest obstacle resulted in what felt like a 40:20 interval session (which can be horrid on a good day). 

At around the 90km mark we caught a few riders who had fallen back from the first group, but other than that, the racing was pretty uneventful up until then, which was as I had expected it to be.

Feed zones often create a chaotic dynamic in gravel races, some riders and teams will have support staff handing out bidons as they pass, some will have to stop and help themselves, and some will choose that moment to attack, which was precisely what happened. The second feed zone was at 105km, and that’s where our group started to splinter for the first time. Some riders had perfect feeds, some dropped bidons, and some saw it as an opportunity to attack. 

We went (what felt like) full gas in the 5km between the feed zone and the start of the next decisive climb, and it was here where I started to feel slightly under pressure for the first time. I had taken a caffeine gel not long before then, so I was pretty confident that would kick in soon, and given how I was feeling up until then, I wasn’t too concerned about the next 8km of climbing. Perhaps I should have been slightly more concerned. 

Not long after we started climbing, I had what felt like a complete system malfunction. In a space of less than a minute, I went from riding at 350w, to less than 150w (and that 150w felt more like 450w). Anybody who has raced a bike before is familiar with “bonking” or “blowing-up,” and that is probably what happened to me, but this time was unlike any I had ever experienced before. My body was completely empty.

I knew there was another group a few minutes behind me with some good riders, so I thought if I could just get myself to the top of the climb at my own pace, I would recover by the time they’d catch me. I took another gel, and started riding at my own pace (which at that time was an embarrassingly low number of watts). 

The gel didn’t do anything, if anything, I felt worse. I was caught and passed long before the top of the climb, and any hope of getting some sort of result was out of the question. 

Truth be told, I was probably over-optimistic coming into the race. Expecting to be at the sharp end of a race for six hours when my longest training ride in the weeks prior was just shy of four hours was always going to be a shot in the dark. No amount of fuelling was ever going to substitute for my illness and lack of training. But hey, sometimes you have to back yourself, be a little too optimistic, and hope for a miracle, right?

I dragged myself to the third feed zone, which was at the 138km mark, and it was there where I decided to call it quits. I can’t remember when last (if ever) I DNF’d a race by choice, and those who know me, know this is not true to my character, but my body was just empty and I felt like I had nothing left to give. 

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed at how the weekend turned out. It was a race that I had looked forward to all year, it was a race that suited me, and one that I knew I could do very well at. 

At the end of the day, you have to play with the cards you’re dealt, and looking back at the weekend, I think I did the best I could have, considering my particular hand of cards. 

It was just a bike race, and there plenty more of those to look forward to in the coming months!