A desert sprint – Robin’s Badlands 2023 recap

Another incredible performance from Robin Gemperle on what ended up being the fastest edition of Badlands. This year the desert pulled up all the punches for an incredible adventure and a fierce race.

Don’t take our words for it, read Robin’s own recap below. 

“For once I arrived in Granada without a clear goal in mind. Badlands seemed to be a new challenge, shorter than what I think is my premier distance and therefore packed with professionals from more traditional cycling disciplines. Of course I was going to try and race for the win but I wasn‘t sure whether I should say that out loud. 

With the race starting on Sunday morning 8am I expected to be capable of covering the 750kms and 15500m of climbing on Spanish deserted gravel within around 40hours. Others obviously planned to be quicker as the first hours - reminded me of my XCO background. It needed all the self-confidence I had gained throughout the year to eventually stop, start going at my slower planned pace and wait for the over-motivated to blow up. 

Due to my no-sleep strategy I was able to pack the bare minimum. Some food – mainly gels, some tools and a tiny wind jacket as even the massive rainfall would by default come with a big drop in temperature. And as little baggage means high efficiency, I found myself back in fourth position already in the middle of the first night. 

Racing for around 40hours really is a completely different story to racing for several days. Over the past years this has by far been my fastest effort and I had completely forgotten how much riding hard hurts. The fact that my whole training is focused on longer low intensity stuff and with only having had a few weeks of specific preparation made sure the suffering wasn‘t fun either. This meant that also the mental challenge of the race became another one: Instead of dealing with the unknown in the days ahead of longer events, the race became a 2-day battle with myself to keep going. 

With around 200kms to go I was sitting in 2nd, still suffering but sure I would be capable of catching the leader. He was starting to get slightly slower but also for me some pressure started to form from behind as others had paced themselves just as well. Well, it then just became a long sprint to the line with everything coming close together again, but no more major changes. I finished with a smile as the only ultra-rider among shorter-distance gravel racers and noticed how well laid out Badlands is: make the race 100kms longer and things would have been clear for me, make it 100kms shorter and I would not have stood a chance.”

Robin finished second behind Rob Britton with a time of 39h 27min, closing out a stellar season.

Now time for some well deserved rest.

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