Badlands is an unsupported 800km ultra-distance gravel race in Spain which Chris Hall has done each year since 2021. Read on to hear about the ups and downs of the 2024 edition.

Badlands did not go according to plan. I got heatstroke and had to drop out at about 280km. I’ve done it three times and never even got a puncture, so I guess I was due. In ultras, as they say, if you’re going to have something go wrong it’s either something physical or something mechanical, and for me this time it was physical. I got to the point where I couldn’t eat or drink and when you can’t fuel the fire, the fire goes out.  

There’s a bar in Villanueva de la Torre that I’ve gone to every year – it’s in the desert, an area that is the closest thing Europe has to Death Valley. You get there right after a 4km climb at 15%, which is savage. We’re making a film of the race this year and I had the filmmaker with me, and the owners of the bar knew us both from past years. He went in first and said how much of a mess I was, and then I walked in with salt crystals all over my face and on my clothes. I must have looked awful. One of the owners came over and gave me a massive hug and asked what I needed. I soon had three bottles of Coke and three bottles of Aquarius (an electrolyte drink in Spain), on the house. That gave me enough energy to continue, so I went on for about another 100km… getting progressively worse. 

My coach is one of my best mates, and I called and told him I’d been sick three times, had no energy, and wasn’t feeling great, to put it mildly. He told me I could do it, I could get to the next town and get some food down. That kept me going until I did make it to the next town, and I called him back and said, “I don’t think I should carry on”. He replied, “I was really hoping you would say that.” We both knew I was taking an unnecessary risk. I finally admitted my race was over. Some things aren’t meant to be.

We continued on filming though, so I got to see all the major highlights along the route by car. I’ve done Badlands every year except the first (when the UK was in lockdown and I couldn’t travel), and it’s so interesting to see how the small towns along the route have reacted to it. The first year when I went into that bar I mentioned, it was ‘oh god, why are there loads of people in dirty lycra wandering around?’ By the second year, they had the tracking up on a monitor and had cups of snacks and candies out for the cyclists. Now you see towns that make an event of it, they have cycling decorations up along the route and people come out to cheer you on. 

There is a small team that organises Badlands. David, the main race organiser, works in renewable energies and zero emission building design, so is very conscious of the impact of the race. Many of the small inland towns and villages in Spain are effectively dying as young people move away, move closer to the coast where there are more jobs. Part of the rationale behind the route was to encourage people to visit these small towns to create some new energy. There’s the race, but David also created a touring version of the route that people can just do on their own and that leaves out some of the more technical or, we could say, unpleasant sections. Trying to encourage tourism in these areas is specifically part of the plan. 

Another big motivator that the race organizers had was to highlight the effects of global warming on the natural environment. Being in this region in Spain, you see the effects of climate change first hand. You see the dry river beds – that area of Spain has been in drought conditions for maybe 15 years. We often think that global warming is about heat but it’s more than that, it’s volatile weather conditions. Last year they had flash flooding – it started the week before the race, and they had to remove sections that were too dangerous from the floods. They called it ‘Worselands’ that year. 

At the end of this years’ race we were at the finish and I spoke to the organizers and asked about the number withdrawals this year, which was the second-highest – the amount of people who pulled out was in the double digits, or about a third of the field. They said the humidity was so high this year, which you just don’t get in Spain, also the UV was high – the sun just felt hotter, and with the humidity you can’t cool down. People pulled out from heatstroke, like me, and heat exhaustion. Absolutely there were also some mechanicals and some bad crashes, unfortunately, but the heat really had to do with it. 

Even though things didn’t quite go to plan this year, Badlands is one of the first races on my calendar each year. The organisers have created a fantastic and welcoming community around the race but also have created something incredibly special and unique that’s just bigger than a bike race. It’s a fantastic challenge to target if you are looking to have a crack at some off-road ultras! 

I’ve now ridden Badlands on four bikes – twice on a gravel racer, last year on a mountain bike and this year on the Dark Matter. With the mountain bike I think was ‘overbiked’. I was pleasantly surprised with the Dark Matter, and for this route I feel it was right in the middle of the mountain bike and the gravel racer. It feels a bit like a hardtail – in a good way. Very confidence-inspiring, and it was nice to feel not very shaken up by it. In the UK we don’t have a lot of actual gravel – it’s generally grass or mud, or more technical mountain biking terrain. So the debate in the UK is ‘do you really need a gravel bike’? The Dark Matter blurs the line to mountain bike in some ways, and really takes on all kinds of terrain that falls under the umbrella of ‘gravel’. It was the perfect bike for this route – if only I had finished it!

Right now, I’m taking a bit of a break. I’m still really tired from having heatstroke. I was supposed to do a race in Portugal at the end of the month but my coach decided to veto it since I haven’t recovered yet, so this is probably near the end of my year. Although coming up in the UK we have hill climb season, which is just literally riding up a hill as fast as you can then going home. I’m terrible at hill climbs, but I did Nationals last year and I’ve never experienced anything like it. The crowds are the closest thing I can imagine to riding a Tour stage through the mountains, so I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be doing that on the Sum.