Utrecht Ultra 2024: from scratching to a top 10 finish in just one year

Here's how I transformed my performance and experienced Utrecht Ultra 2024.

August 2023 proved to be a real low for me. Having scratched from Utrecht Ultra - a 1000km ultra cycling race - due to poor preparation and subsequent hypothermia, questions over my long-distance cycling capabilities were raised.

After giving up criterium racing and fully transferring to ultra cycling, this was supposed to be my strong point.

However, despite my first race being a scarring experience, it turned out to be a real springboard for my cycling career.

One year later in August 2024, with already a 2nd place finish at TransAlba and a top 30 at Race around the Netherlands, I found myself again on the start line of Utrecht Ultra.

I was ready to race in a much more competitive field, under some pressure to live up to expectations and put last year’s disastrous race behind me.

Hour 0-12: A physically & mentally gruelling first night

It’s been a long season. So far this year I’ve covered 16.000km on the bike and understandably, fatigue is catching up.

At 18:10 the race started and I knew from the get-go that my legs weren’t 100%. Add some headwind, heavy rain showers and the need to cycle through the first night to compete at the top end, it wasn’t an ideal start.

I pushed on through the Dutch flatlands and crossed the Belgium border after 140 km as the night began to close in. Here I met former team mate Finn Joosten, venturing into his first ultra race.

I pushed deeper into Belgium, encountering heavy rain showers and limited opportunities to refill with water.

Now here’s the difference to last year’s race. While ultra cycling is centred around extreme aerobic fitness, a critical part is conditioning. Your hands, your arse and your mind need the capacity to withstand countless hours on the bike.

And this conditioning kicked in hard as I approached checkpoint 1 (CP1) at 5am. I broke though the tiredness and re-found the strength in my legs. It’s hard to explain that after 9 hours riding I was feeling stronger than the start, but it comes from a deep resilience and the ability to recover from fatigue.

As the sun began to rise, I passed through the first checkpoint (CP1) in 12th place, benefited from a bakery stop and with the weather improving, so too was the race outlook.

Hour 12-30: Belgium roads take their toll on bike & body

As is often the case in ultra races, good moments are short lived. Within a 50km stretch after CP1, I punctured 3 times, losing over an hour in time.

It isn’t so much fixing the punctures themselves that’s challenging, but the mental pressure you place on yourself to make up for lost time. I kept reminiscing over the punctures and battled with bone-shaking road surfaces, but eventually I made it over the rolling hills to checkpoint 2 (CP2) - 450km deep - to start the most gruelling part of the course.

I was greeted with a Coke Cola at CP2 and being in less than an ideal position - 13th - I pushed on to move higher up the rankings.

Steep long climbs awaited me on the CP2 course. Gruelling 5k ascents were mixed with 18% ramps that packed a punch and zapped the legs. After finishing the 50km stretch and bumping into Finn again, exhaustion had really set in and I stopped for a 10 min nap on the roadside.

Once again, the deep resilience and conditioning saved me. Despite the sleep being short, I felt completely rejuvenated and I pushed on through Bastogne and the Belgium countryside.

130km later I found my best legs, cresting the highest point in Belgium - the Signal de Botrange at 700 metres - and flying down the descent at 80kph as darkness began to fall.

With new life in my legs and checkpoint 3 (CP3) quickly approaching after 750km, I was considering pushing through the second night as well. But the next section of racing proved to be the most challenging by far.

Hour 30-46: A strong push for the top 10

Plunged into a 5km climb through a pitch-black forest, a downhill gravel section and an 18% cobbled climb where I started hallucinating, the last part to CP3 left me utterly broken. At 12:40am, I rolled into the checkpoint where a bed and shower were available.

At this point I was sitting just inside the top 10 and decided to keep the stop as short as possible. After a shower and 90 minutes of sleep, I left CP3 at 2:30am in a bid to make ground on the riders still sleeping.

From CP3 to the Dutch border, it was fast, free flowing riding. Despite a short nap at a bus stop and some questions from the local police, I was quickly approaching the last of the hills in Limburg and eager to push the last 250km hard on the flat.

A short 5 minute sleep at 5:00am in Belgium before the police woke me up to check if I was ok

Sitting in the aero bars and taking just one stop for water, I blasted the last kilometres at 30kph, holding off the other riders to finish in 6th place with a time of 46 hours and 52 minutes, comfortably breaking the 48 hour mark.

Conditioning & repetition are the catalyst for my one year transformation

This year’s ultra cycling racing has been marked by one quality - consistency. With each race, I’ve become stronger and stronger, and there’s still one more race to go - the Goats.cc in Portugal in October.

But rather than looking forward to what I can achieve, Utrecht Ultra 2024 embodied everything I’ve gained in just one year. From scratching to beating the winning time of 2023’s edition and finishing in the top 10, it’s a strong reminder of everything I’ve sacrificed to reach this level.

For the full training weekly schedule I followed over the past year, check out this article. You can also find me on Instagram and Strava where I post more ultra cycling content.