Exploration
How to survive one of the most brutal bike races on earth
Back-to-back Transcontinental Race winner James Hayden reveals what it takes to finish first in one of the world’s toughest races.
Each year, around 260 men and women set off from the Flemish city of Geraardsbergen with their final destination roughly 4,000km away on the other side of Europe. How they get between the two is up to them, with the only rules that they pass through four pre-arranged checkpoints and complete the full distance only on two wheels. Most start the Transcontinental Race (TCR) with the goal of just getting to the finish – in 2018 only 61% managed it. But at the sharp end of proceedings, the TCR is the ultimate endurance race. One man who knows this best is James Hayden.
The 28-year-old was initially drawn to the TCR after falling out of love with competing on the national road racing circuit. “I thought, ‘I have this competitive side, love racing and I’m pretty fast, and I love touring and seeing things, so why not combine both?’,” he explains. What’s followed since is four consecutive summers of grit, gears and determination that include comebacks from a rare debilitating injury, three finishes and two wins – the last in just under nine days, with the gap between him and his nearest rival spanning the length of Albania.
From the brutal effects on the body to cunning race-craft and mindset, here are some of James' learnings from his time on the road...
1. Expect training to become a full-time job
James juggles 40 hours of training with a university course
© Andreas Yiasoumi / Fairlight
Having competed in the race four times, James has got his training down to a tee. “If it’s before and building up to the race, it could be 30 hours a week just on the bike and there would be another 10 off the bike in the gym. [When on my bike] I tend to have water and a frame bag, and I’ll go out for six hours with some food and clothes with me. But I haven’t needed to ride around with a full bike. I do gym work to strengthen things so it’s not really necessary.”
2. Planning is everything
It’s all very well having the strength and endurance to cover a course from one side of Europe to the other, but that ability is pointless without a clear plan. “Mike Hall [the original organiser of the Transcontinental Race who was killed racing in Australia in 2017] said that the race was for the masters of self-reliance, which is true,” says James. “It’s also for multi-skilled athletes. If you’re the fastest person in the world but you don’t have any of the other skills you need, you’re never going to win. You could be one of the slower people, but have all of the other skills at a very high level and do very well.”
He therefore devotes around 100 hours to planning his route. “It’s not just planning one route. I’ll have three-or-four routes, looking at different options and then determine what the optimum solution is for each stretch, considering elevation, terrain, weather, food availability, and then pick the optimum.”
I ended up pulling over to the side of the road and breaking down in tears because it was so painful
3. It will take its toll on your body
With permanent nerve damage down his left hand, and back and neck issues that need regular looking after by a physiotherapist, James has suffered some big injuries over the years, including a torn hamstring 400-500km from the finish of TCR 2015: “I ended up pulling over to the side of the road and breaking down in tears because it was so painful. Eventually I more or less had to ride the last 50-60km with my left leg and my right leg unclipped." But it was the condition that he developed on his first attempt in 2014 that saw him fail to complete a TCR for the only time.
“I had to retire from that first edition due to Sherman’s neck. It’s just like when you wake up in the night and you’ve slept on your arm and it’s just dead. My head would just flop back down. It was a bit weird and I couldn’t really get it to hold up. I tried my best and I rode for 6-700km with this issue and supporting it, but once I started to experience pain that was it for me.”
4. Don’t under-estimate the power of finishing
“One of the most important lessons I learned was the power of finishing,” explains James. “I went into [my first TCR] thinking ‘I’m going to do really well, I’m going to get a result’, which was the wrong attitude. [Having to retire] was humbling and taught me the right attitude, which is to go into any race with the aim of finishing. Anything beyond that is an incredible success. Going in with that attitude allows you to have a positive mindframe, however you’re doing.”
5. Concentrate on your own race
“For the first five or six days I don’t look at the tracker because it doesn’t matter,” says James. “I’m concentrating on my race, going as fast as I can, but I’m still only doing 90%. I’ll go through the checkpoints and I’ll know what position I am, and that’s enough. The last few days, if I need to, I’ll turn it up to 100%. You look at the past couple of years, and I’ve been fifth at the first checkpoint. But it’s not really a worry because I know other people will have gone out way to hard and will blow up. If you start racing other people’s race, you’re going to be playing to their skills and assets, whereas you need to play to your skills and assets. That’s really important – mentally as well."
6. Swap the roadside bivouac for a proper bed
As the race is completely self-reliant, a lot of riders opt for a bivouac to rest and recuperate in, with it possible to park up anywhere. But not James. “A lot of people call me soft because I like to sleep in hotels, but the reality is it’s not about that – it’s just about performance. I found that an hour in a hotel is worth three hours sleeping in a bivouac for the same rest and recuperation. I’m not going to say that I recover, but I degrade a lot less fast. No one recovers in these sort of races. I go touring and camping a lot and I use bivvys then because it’s nice to sleep outside. But when I’m in a race, I’m there to do a job and deliver the best performance I can for myself. If you book a hotel in the afternoon on the phone, you know where it is and you can just arrive and check in, shower and be in bed – I’ve done it within five minutes before.”
7. Take a tortoise approach and listen to your body
After a long, gruelling climb, it might seem like the obvious thing to whizz down the other side as fast as you can to make up some time. But James prefers a steadier approach. “You’ve got to be sensible. I forgot that rule when I was in Scotland [racing the Highland 550] the other week – I was on a descent on a mountain bike and I got a puncture. Then you lose 10-15 minutes, maybe even longer if it’s a bigger issue. By descending a bit slower, you’re only going to lose 2-3 minutes at most. You’ve really got to think about where to save time and where to spend it.”
This is the case too when he’s not feeling 100% mid-ride. “When I’m not feeling good, I take it easy – you can stop a little bit more or just not push so hard on the pedals. I think that has helped with injury preventing during races. When you’re feeling like crap just take a rest.”
8. Stop for food before you’re hungry and always have an emergency supply
“I used to say ‘Oh, I wont stop there because there will be something better’,” explains James. “But now I pull in to the first thing I see. Even if it’s a really bad selection, I at least buy something, and then I’ve got something to get me to the next place because you’re never quite sure where that’ll be. In Europe it’s fairly regular, but as soon as you get into Eastern Europe it becomes less so. If you think you’re getting hungry, just stop and get something.”
But what if there isn’t anything? “I always carry 1,000-1,500 calories in my bag as an emergency. I often start races and finish races with the same items of food because they’re there for when shit hits the fan, which has happened to me. I ended up in Montenegro having to ride up this 1,500m mountain – Durmitor – at 4 in the morning and I had no food left. I’d gone through my reserve energy food and broke into my emergency gel. I hit the wall and had gone far beyond it. I was completely hyperglycemic. But I got it done.
“You should finish a race with a bit of food you’ve carried all the way. Okay, it’s a few hundred grams, but it’s emergency – it’s a safety net. If you run out of food, you run out of energy, your legs come to a stop, your wheels come to a stop and you’re going nowhere.”
9. Don't stop at the finish line
With two Transcontinental wins to his name, James is living proof of that there should be no letting up once you've reached the end of this race. You've put in the hard yards and built up a real threshold for pain in the saddle, so why not maximise this and take on another challenge?
James currently has his sights on another incredibly tough cycling challenge – the Silk Road Mountain Race. “I want to race the toughest races with the toughest people, so it was time for me to take it to a new arena and a new level and race some of the hardest people out there. The first time out is a learning opportunity. Anything beyond finishing is an incredible result that I’ll be over the moon with and I will likely be back again to improve as I have with TCR. Once you’ve learned how to do something, you’ll want to come back and put that into practice.”
Read all about the Silk Road Mountain Race by hitting the link below
