Cycling has always had a masochistic relationship with distance.
For as long as there have been bikes, people have looked to push themselves and the human-powered mode of transport to its limits – from the non-stop, six-day penny farthing races that drew crowds to velodromes on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1870s to the first recorded ultra-distance event, Paris-Brest-Paris, in 1891.
The latter still pits participants against 1,200km of northern France more than 130 years later, while there are a whole host of modern, road-based ultra sportives – Mallorca 312, Chase the Sun, the Dragon Ride’s Devil distance – that go way beyond the Imperial century.
But this love for long-range rides certainly isn’t limited to the asphalt.
Over the last decade, alongside the growth in popularity of gravel riding and bikepacking, a new category of self-supported cycling events has emerged.
In 2024, not a weekend goes by during the northern hemisphere’s summer months where there isn’t a mixed-terrain bikepacking race or rally for a hardy breed of cyclists to sink their teeth into.
But what is behind this rise? And what is the appeal of pushing yourself outside your comfort zone – physically and mentally – for days rather than hours?
New horizons
“There’s an opportunity in gravel cycling and bikepacking because they’re newer disciplines – they’re slightly less constrained by the culture that exists already in road cycling or mountain biking, which can be a bit off-putting to newer riders,” says Louis van Kleeff, Rapha’s UK activation manager and organiser of its annual Pennine Rally – a 500km mixed-terrain ride from Edinburgh to Manchester.
“Road cycling is always performance-orientated; mountain biking is slightly less, so but the pinnacle of the sport is racing.
"Touring and audaxing have existed for decades but they are tied in – audaxing especially is an offshoot of cycling clubs, which, again, has a culture in and of itself.”
Van Kleeff believes the self-supported scene is a chance to build a new narrative that is more community-minded, while the off-road nature of events adds a spirit of adventure and escape in a way that’s less combative because you’ve got less traffic.
“You’re in beautiful places in the middle of nowhere – it’s a great way to discover bits of the country that you wouldn’t otherwise touch. It’s slightly more appealing than the idea of turning yourself inside out on a road somewhere,” he adds.
The Pennine Rally isn’t a race, and van Kleeff believes the name pitches it at the more accessible end of the adventure spectrum, setting it apart from challenges such as the 800km Badlands in Almeria, Spain, or the 850km Seven Serpents.
“I wanted to make something that filled the interim step – you’re interested in long-distance bikepacking and wild camping, but you probably don’t feel like racing it yet,” he explains.
“Pennine Rally is hard, but you feel more able to do it because you know there’s other people – not the organisation, but riders – who will be there to pick you up.”
In ultra-distance racing, the rules around self-sufficiency can make or break a ride.
In the 2022 Transcontinental Race, a primarily road event across Europe, winner Christoph Strasser and second-place finisher Ulrich Bartholmoes were given an hour’s time penalty when Strasser bought Bartholmoes a can of coke at a mid-ride stop after his credit card was declined; last year, third-place finisher Anatole Naimi was removed from the GC after riding with another competitor for a section in the Alps, six days before he reached the finish.
“I respect the choice, but the self-reliant aspect stifles the support that riders can offer one another,” adds van Kleeff. “Knowing that you could make friends, ride with new people, and someone will help you get out of a jam lowers the bar.”
The Pennine Rally also has gender parity. Rather than selling tickets, entry is run via an application process. “If you allow anyone to buy [tickets], 85 to 88 per cent of the audience is men, so those tickets go very quickly and there’s not even the opportunity,” he says.
“Having more women in the event changes the vibe unbelievably. It’s more friendly, people are more willing to talk to one another and it’s pretty devoid of the machismo that comes in when something is around speed or winning. That’s not to say that there aren’t incredibly fast women who take part and put down ridiculous times, but the vibe is much more influenced by that [feeling] of ‘we’re all going to get there together’.”
Self-sustainable survival
One rider who experienced this first-hand is Jade Lau. Prior to 2021, the 35-year-old PhD student had only ever ridden a maximum of 100km in one go but decided to try ultra-distance cycling after being inspired by the work of the Ultra Distance Scholarship (UDS) – a charity that aims to increase diversity in the discipline by supporting riders with kit, mentoring, coaching and race entries.
“I love the idea of trying to be self-sustainable,” she says. “It’s a little bit weird but the ultimate vehicle in an apocalypse would be a bike and even though ultra-distance cycling isn’t really like that, I like the idea of surviving on your own.”
A successful applicant for the UDS’ 2022/23 intake, she took on the 2023 edition of the Pennine Rally.
“The way that it’s planned [meant that] at the end of the day you’re bound to see someone so you’re not just on your own – most [riders] stop at a campsite that’s kind of pre-planned. I felt very included and I think [the gender equality] gives a different dimension.
“I also prefer gravel to the road because you feel like you’re in the middle of nature, and there’s nothing around. Even though it was tough, you could look up and be like ‘wow, I’m suffering, but this is okay’.”
This sense of adventure is common among mixed-terrain events, where routes designed with gravel and mountain bikes in mind enable riders to venture deep into the heart of national parks and areas of natural beauty.
But with most courses using public roads and free-to-access bridleways and trails, do you need to spend hundreds of pounds to take part?
“It makes it easier,” laughs Pete McNeil, whose ultra-distance palmarès include top 10 finishes in the Highland Trail 550 (HT550), GBDURO [an off-road British end-to-end] and Silk Road Mountain Race [through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan].
“You can sign up for a race and know it’s going to be an adventure – there will be some stories that come out of it and some hardship – but it’s handed to you on a plate.
“Given my lifestyle, I can turn up to something, give it two weeks and have this challenge, which if I was to try and do it myself would take up much more time.”
The 38-year-old mountain bike guide was inspired to take on his first ultra – the 2017 HT550 – after spending two-and-a-half years riding from the UK to New Zealand with his wife as their honeymoon.
“Everyone was very impressed that we cycled 20,000km, but I think our average was about 50km [per day]. I had these nagging questions in the back of my head: ‘How far could I actually go? How far could I push myself? What am I capable of?’. The ultra-distance scene answered that.”
On entering the race, McNeil thought if he finished he’d be “very pleased and probably not need to do anything like that again”.
But on the last of his five-and-a-half days, all he could think about was how he could have saved time.
“I guess that was it – the bug bit,” he says.
He returned the following year, shaving almost 24 hours off his previous year’s effort to finish fifth, before embarking on the Silk Road Mountain Race – a brutal 1,700km event, where only one third of the 100 participants finished; McNeil placed eighth.
Family life and Covid lockdowns saw him take a back seat from ultras for a few years, but he got back in the saddle in 2023.
Long-distance relationship
While most self-supported races don’t have prize money for the winner, McNeil believes there always has to be a competitive element, even if it’s with yourself.
“The context of a race pushes you a little bit outside of your comfort zone and you do a little bit longer than you would normally do.”
For the fastest riders, the competition can be fierce. Unlike a normal race, where finishing first is often down to raw physical ability, an ultra-distance event can be won or lost by time off the bike.
“It’s endurance and it’s efficiency – it’s spending as little time stopped as possible,” explains Cara Dixon, who was the fastest woman at the 2023 Trans Atlantic Way (TAW) – a 2,400km race that hugs west Ireland’s undulating Wild Atlantic Way coastal road.
“If you’re cycling a kilometre an hour slower than somebody else, but you stop for an hour less a day, it’s going to make up that difference,” she says.
“It’s so easy to add stop time with faffing on your bike or in shops, and you can save so much time just by becoming more efficient at that.”
During her tilt at the TAW, Dixon averaged three-and-a-half hours of sleep per night, but in shorter events such as the Badlands, her rest was confined to “two short naps”.
“I had one before a long road descent. It was 3am and I was starting to feel a bit dangerous on the bike – I knew I needed a bit of sleep just to reset my brain.”
In total, she slept for about 40 minutes, finishing the race in 46 hours 19 minutes – 45 minutes behind fastest woman Cynthia Frazier. She went on to finish as fastest woman in the 2024 event.
To complete, let alone win, these events requires considerable physical strength. But McNeil and Dixon say that it’s the mind that can be the difference between making it to the end and a DNF – especially when you’re sleep-deprived, low on motivation and dealing with a mechanical on the side of the road.
“It’s so hard to go from having the best time of your life cycling around gorgeous scenery in the sunshine in Ireland to just completely mentally crashing because your chain comes off,” says Dixon. “That’s enough to tip you over.”
In these situations, she’s learned to calmly think through her options, rather than get stressed and overwhelmed by routine mechanical fixes.
McNeil believes there are two types of riders: “You either like doing battle with the route or you surrender to it,” he says.
“You see some people absolutely bury themselves and then others moving just as efficiently and quickly who have accepted what’s happening. My aim is to get to the point where I surrender to it; let go. I feel when I do that, I start moving well.”
It’s clear that ultra-distance cycling events such as the Pennine Rally aren’t for everyone, but with their focus on adventure and escape amongst a like-minded community full of camaraderie, it’s easy to see the rise in their appeal.
“You bump into other people out on the trail who are all there for similar reasons and you end up forming this kinship with them,” says McNeil.
“It’s a weird little subculture and these people are perfectly happy sleeping in a ditch and riding their bike for 18 hours a day. I like those people – they’re quite similar to me.”
