I went to Girona expecting to ride the 360. I ended up riding the 560.
Jacob will tell you he talked me out of the longer distance before the race. He wasn’t wrong to try — five weeks before Unbound Gravel, adding 200 kilometres probably isn’t in the plan. But standing at the start line in Girona at 06:41 on Friday morning, the 560 was right there. I signed up.
The Numbers
Before anything else — here’s what the COROS recorded:
| Distance | 550.58 km |
| Moving time | 28h 50m 41s |
| Elapsed time | 30h 10m 16s |
| Elevation | 9,426 m |
| Avg speed | 19.1 km/h |
| Calories | 15,778 |
Over thirty hours door-to-door. Nearly twenty-nine of those actually pedalling. That’s what a 560 costs.
The First Half
The first twelve hours went well. Genuinely. Moving well, eating well, feeling strong across some proper terrain — the kind of climbing that makes you glad you came. Coll de Jou (7.5km, 470m), Collada Meianell (13.5km, 911m of ascent in just over an hour twelve), gradients on the Joncars section that hit 19.3% and don’t apologise for it. Everything you want from a first ultra.
I even picked up a QOM on Pla d’Erola Road — 19:19. Segment bests on two more. At that point, I thought I had a handle on it.
Then the stomach issues arrived.
Hour Twelve
Hour twelve of a very long day is not a good time for your nutrition strategy to stop working. It went from manageable to not manageable quickly, and from that point the race became a different kind of problem. I kept moving forward. Ultra racing is mostly problem-solving, and at that distance the problems don’t stop coming.
The one thing I’ll say: even with the stomach off, something was still working. I put 2nds on Baixada Rahola’s house and Ribes de Freser–Rocabruna (4 hours 6 minutes for that one), and a 3rd on Collada Meianell long. When you’re 400km deep and running on empty, those kinds of splits don’t come from the legs alone.
5am, No Food
At 5am I ran out of food completely.
My plan had been to use 24-hour vending machines along the route. None were where I expected. The petrol stations were either closed or pay-at-pump only. I knocked on the door of a Spar trying to get them to open early.
They didn’t open.
I wasted a lot of time looking — time I didn’t have. I rode the last five hours on nothing but a can of Coke. Fifteen thousand, seven hundred and seventy-eight calories burned across the whole race. Roughly one can’s worth going in at the end.
Staying In It
I came up with every reason to stop. The dark does that to you. Everything feels harder at that hour when your legs are heavy and your stomach has checked out and you’ve been awake since before dawn the previous day. But I stayed in it, and I crossed the line in fifth.
It wasn’t the race I’d hoped for. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The women in this sport are something else — the standard is extraordinary — and I wanted to do better. But I finished a 550km ultra on my first attempt, averaged 19.1km/h across nearly nine and a half thousand metres of climbing, rode through the night for the first time, and came home in the top five. That’s something to work with.
The learning is real. Note to self: a 42t chainring is not the one for this race. The terrain punishes it in ways you don’t feel until you’re deep into hour fifteen and the gradient is showing you something like 15–19% and you have nowhere to go.
Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe I won’t. Right now I’m not sure.
What’s Next
The Gralloch in Scotland is up next, then Unbound Gravel in Kansas two weeks after that — 322 kilometres of flat, hot, relentless prairie. Everything from Girona goes straight into how I approach both.
Big thanks to the whole OGT crew for the incredible support throughout. It makes a difference, every time.
Supported by Merlin Cycles, Ventum Racing, OGT, Spatz, Coros, and Kenetik. Coached by Jacob Tipper at JT Performance Coaching.