What has motivated you to shift your focus this year from longer ultra races to gravel adventure races?
I’ve won the long, very important ultras that I always wanted to win. In that world, there’s these three really big races: the Tour Divide, the Silk Road, and the Transcontinental. I always planned to win those first. After that, it was always clear that I wanted to add some short, fast ultra-races to my palmares. And there, I see three other big events: the Traka, Unbound, and Badlands.
It’s definitely more difficult to plan to win these three, but that is my plan—to win one or, optimally, all three of them. So yeah, it’s kind of a strategy to show a complete, diverse skillset in ultra-cycling. That’s what motivated me.
How have you adjusted your training to this different style of racing? Mentally, how has your approach changed?
My training has not shifted all that much, but my mental focus has shifted a lot. There’s a bit less volume to the training, a higher frequency of high-intensity training compared to longer, sub-threshhold efforts. In general, it’s still very similar, though. What’s changed is my mental focus. Before, these long rides—six-hours-plus—were my central focus.
Now, the central aspects of my training are these key workouts, intense aerobic stuff where we do really high-intensity efforts. I try to recover well, to be properly fueled. I pay a lot of attention to the numbers I’m putting out. This is something new. I’ve also added a few shorter “preparation” races to my training, which I would not have done if my focus was only on super-long ultra-races.
