…nothing went wrong but everything happened. April was meant to be my final training crescendo, but Mother Nature had other plans, hurling snow blizzards at me in Helsinki while my work travel schedule played calendar Tetris with my riding days. My training suffered more than my quads on a 20% gradient, and those crucial long rides kept playing hard to get.
I just wasn’t feeling it. Perhaps I was overtrained, or maybe just overwhelmed by the looming specter of my first ever race, one that Red Bull casually lists among “world’s toughest,” which is like finding your neighborhood stroll on a list of “activities that might kill you.” When Red Bull puts something on such lists, it’s usually because normal humans shouldn’t attempt it.
What I packed vs. What I should have packed
What I packed: Base layers designed for mild Danish breezes
What I should have packed: Oxygen tanks and mountaineering equipment
What I packed: A soft bike bag to protect my components
What I should have packed: A military-grade tank with component-specific foam padding
What I packed: Normal cycling nutrition
What I should have packed: IV drips and portable defibrillator
After trying to tackle similar climbs in Girona and analyzing the race’s GPX file with mounting horror, I realized this challenge would be to my expectations what mountains are to Denmark, dramatically more elevated than anticipated. Meanwhile, the last minute scramble to pack my bicycle felt like a chaotic game show where the prize is avoiding public humiliation. The internet algorithms, those all knowing digital stalkers, sensed my desperation and benevolently offered a discounted bicycle bag. My only concern: would it arrive before my sanity departed? (It did, barely.)
My final training rides were too late and too little, like bringing a water pistol to extinguish a forest fire. In retrospect, those missed sessions wouldn’t have changed anything, but they provided excellent fuel for my pre-race anxiety.
As previously confessed, my enthusiasm had gone AWOL weeks before. One reason I’ve avoided races (besides a few running events) is my aversion to training when motivation has left the building. Races stubbornly insist on happening at specific times on specific days, regardless of whether you’re feeling like a Tour de France contender or a sloth on sedatives. Especially when said race begins at 6:30 AM, requiring a 5:00 AM arrival, a time when my body is constitutionally convinced it should be comatose.
A Danish cyclist’s dictionary
Hill (n.): What I previously called a “speed bump” before Mallorca recalibrated my understanding of vertical distance
Training plan (n.): A fantasy document bearing no relation to what will actually prepare you for Mallorca’s race
Morning (n.): An ungodly time of day when races inexplicably begin, despite scientific evidence suggesting humans function best after 10 in the morning (citation needed)
Derailleur adjustment (n.): Dark magic requiring specialized shamans with multi-tools
Ready (adj.): A mythological state never actually achieved before any race
Arrival day unfolded with all the smoothness of a cobblestone descent. The bus driver, upon seeing our bicycle bags, rejected us with the enthusiasm of a bouncer at an exclusive club. Finding alternatives at the airport promised to be as affordable as gold plated water bottles. Thanks to technology and desperation, we secured a ridiculously cheap car share with two random Germans in the same predicament. Several hours and creative expletives later, instead of arriving early for a relaxing ride, I stumbled in late afternoon, frantically assembling my bicycle like a sleep deprived IKEA furniture builder. My shift lever had contorted during transit. Apparently, “soft bag” translates to “your components will arrive slightly rearranged.”
Day two featured more travel misadventures. Returning the car to its original location (free drop-off apparently being a mythical concept) and bus surfing back. Finally time to ride! With my bent shift lever and derailleur making sounds no bicycle should produce, I desperately solicited help from anyone wielding tools. The Sports Tours International mechanic, bless his greasy hands, promptly fixed everything. My short coastal ride with gentle inclines brutally confirmed my worst fears. My legs and motivation remained perfect strangers. I wasn’t ready, and no amount of Mediterranean scenery could convince me otherwise.
The pre-race day’s planned warm-up ended faster than a chocolate bar in direct sunlight. One minor climb, and I retreated like a turtle into its shell. The rest of the day involved visiting the race fair, panic buying forgotten lights, checking tire pressure seventeen times, and attempting early bedtime while my anxiety practiced parkour.
Race day arrived with the subtlety of a jackhammer at dawn. Rushing to be first in the last starting box among 8000 participants, I arrived an hour early, joining a shivering mass of lycra-clad optimists. To improve matters, the heavens opened with timing that would impress a Broadway director, drenching us in a pre-race baptism. Everyone vibrated. Partly from cold, partly from fear (maybe just me), as we waited for the blessed release of starting.
Stages of race grief
Stage 1: Denial – “These hills can’t possibly continue for 312km”
Stage 2: Anger – “WHO DESIGNED THIS COURSE? SATAN?”
Stage 3: Bargaining – “If I make it to the next aid station, I promise to train properly next time”
Stage 4: Depression – “I’ll never finish this. My legs have abandoned me. My lungs are on strike.”
Stage 5: Acceptance – “This is my life now. I live on this bicycle. I will die on this bicycle.”
Stage 6: Transcendence – “Pain is just weakness leaving the body and immediately being replaced by more pain”
The beginning was less of a race and more of a glacial herd migration. My only coherent thought was when can I actually pedal enough to generate warmth? After several kilometers, alongside a beach sunrise beautiful enough to momentarily distract from impending doom, I finally defrosted and unleashed what my delusional brain considered “speed”. Avoiding the forming groups like they carried plague, I still likely pushed too hard, a rookie mistake as timeless as the sport itself.
Local wildlife encounters
Even the local birds seemed to mock my suffering, flying effortlessly up inclines that had me questioning my life choices. Look at the human, they chirped, struggling with gravity like it’s a new concept.
The goats on the hillsides watched with expressions of pure judgment, clearly thinking, “And they call US the dumb animals”.
At one point, I swear a lizard paced me for several meters, nodding sympathetically before darting away, presumably to tell its lizard friends about the strange, sweaty creature making dying noises up the mountain.
That first climb revealed my future with crystal clarity. This would hurt more than anticipated, and apparently everyone else had trained on actual mountains while I’d been practicing on Danish speed bumps. With 150km of ups and downs ahead, my new goal materialized, simply beat the cut-off times and remain upright.
Approaching the first downhill, officials halted the race due to an unfortunate incident with a British cyclist (information unknown at the time). Restarting the descent with thousands of amateur daredevils was like participating in a controlled avalanche. My downhill experience roughly matched my climbing prowess, theoretical at best. It became alarmingly apparent others shared this deficiency when the rider ahead panic braked, sending me skidding sideways, my balance hanging by a thread thinner than my remaining confidence. Knowing countless riders followed behind, I silently composed my epitaph while somehow staying vertical.
The final 100 km unfolded as an exercise in shallow breathing and existential negotiation. At the 285 km mark, I sat contemplating retirement from both the race and possibly cycling altogether for a solid 10 minutes. Through some neurochemical miracle or temporary insanity, I remounted, now indifferent to finishing, a state that paradoxically helped me continue. Every minor incline loomed like Everest’s angry cousin, not too steep to climb but mentally exhausting.
A guardian angel cyclist materialized beside me, and I croaked the universal question of the suffering. How much more? Whatever conversation followed remains lost to oxygen-deprived delirium, but it carried me forward until a speedier group swooped past like caffeinated falcons. Suddenly rejuvenated by their slipstream, I found myself cruising at 30+ km/h toward the finish, unsure if my mental savior joined us or vanished like a mirage.
Stats That Don’t Matter
Total tears shed: 3.7 liters
Number of times I questioned my sanity: 416
Promises made to never do this again: 79 (all broken within 48 hours)
Mental calculations of how much money I could get selling my bike: 24
Hallucinations per kilometer in the final stretch: 0.73
Percentage of time spent wondering why I paid money for this experience: 87%
Number of imaginary arguments won against the race organizers: 13
Times I envisioned a teleportation device: Every 4.2 minutes
Crossing the finish line ended the day but not the struggle. Finally acknowledging my breathing difficulties to the medical tent, I received aerosol medication and a complimentary ambulance ride to the hospital, where doctors essentially concluded if I was going to die, I would have already. Comforting.
As I summarized two days post-race:
“The most brutal pedal party ever. I’ve never felt more hollow than I do right now. This emptiness after the race feels like a strange grief, as if I’ve lost something I never knew I had. The rush of pushing past my limits has left me with this odd emotional vacuum. I don’t know if it’s the crash after all that adrenaline or if my body is simply trying to process what I put it through. Maybe this is just what addiction to cycling feels like, always chasing that next high, that next finish line. Despite it all, I know I’ll be back in the saddle soon, searching for whatever it is I keep finding out there on those endless roads.
I have barely survived what can only be described as voluntary torture on wheels. Mallorca’s 312 race didn’t just demolish my soul, it redesigned it, reupholstered it, and sent it back with a note saying “try again, fool.”
Turns out training in Denmark (aka Flatland Kingdom) was like preparing for Everest by climbing stairs. WHO KNEW? Not me, apparently! My quads filed for divorce halfway through and my lungs staged such a dramatic rebellion they needed to be negotiated with via aerosol medication after the race. Nothing says “victory” like bronchodilator selfies!
Mallorca itself? Absolutely gorgeous! Would I have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t hallucinating from exhaustion? Possibly! Will I be back? Absolutely! For the 312 race? Let me consult with my therapist first.
I keep labeling this “Type 3 fun” (translation: only fun MUCH later in stories when the trauma fades), yet somehow Istria300 (another 300 km race) is already marked on my September calendar. This is clearly a psychological condition science hasn’t named yet.
Lessons learned? None whatsoever. But my new training plan involves finding the highest parking garage in Denmark and riding up and down until security calls the authorities.”
What’s next? A brief May respite (doctor’s orders, which I’ll interpret as loosely as possible), followed by tour preparations for June. Some people learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them, but either I’m a slow learner or cycling across countries isn’t actually a mistake, just a gloriously terrible idea I’m compelled to repeat. This year’s agenda is Denmark to Croatia again, but taking the eastern route to avoid those pesky Alps with changing weather, traversing eight countries before reaching Cavtat in the far south. Because apparently, one transcontinental journey of suffering wasn’t enough to satisfy whatever psychological disorder drives cyclists to keep punishing themselves for fun. Or is it just me?
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