Mallorca 312 race report
It didn’t go as planned…
Back in May 2022, I and a few others from my local Triathlon club “TriTanium” (Richie, Steve, Ross, and Neil) did a 300km ride around the border of County Meath in Ireland.
At the end of that ride, most of us swore we would never do that again, A few days later however I learned about the existence of this event called “The Mallorca 312”, a seed was planted…
As soon as the ticket sales opened up, I signed up, literally THAT day.
The race fell on April 29th, quite early in the season especially if you live in Ireland and have to train through rain and wind most of the time in the months leading up to it. My preparation wasn’t ideal, I came out of January and February fairly fit, but as the weather became abysmal even by Irish standards my motivation to train dropped. In April when the weather finally got better the flu kept me from training for a week, so I arrived in Mallorca less than sure of my ability to bring this thing to a positive conclusion. My goal was to finish in a 12-hour riding time, which should see me comfortably arriving within the time limit of 14 hours.
Luckily, I had signed up for a cycling camp with one of my favorite Youtubers: Jasper Verkuijl, a week prior to the event.
My intention was to get to know the climbs on the rides that were part of the itinerary of the camp, learn from an experienced cyclist like Jasper, who had undertaken these types of challenges on more than one occasion, and boost my fitness hopefully just that little bit.
It could be argued that a big training week, almost double my usual weekly training volume, right before my “A” race was less than ideal. But my whole preparation had been less than ideal so whatever. In actual fact, Jasper drilled into my head that, that thing I kind of already knew but never applied properly was going to be the key to my success: 100 grams of Carbohydrate PER HOUR of riding on top of a carb load day the day prior where he instructed me to consume around 800 grams of carbs to fill up my glycogen stores.
I will make a separate post just talking about this, but the importance of in-ride nutrition has never been more obvious to me than during this week, on the hardest ride of the training week, a 120km ride with 3000 meters of climbing crammed into it, I as the anti-climber, was cruising on all the climbs as long as I was sticking to the 100 grams of carbs per hour rule. The one hour I fell out of that rhythm: the hour where I was wrestling myself up Sa Calobra where the steep gradients meant I had to push well into my red zone to keep moving at my body weight, after already 4 hours or so of riding meant I no longer had the mental capacity to stay on top of my nutrition. Breaking that rule meant the rest of the way home became a suffer-fest, despite the fact I had refound my fueling “rhythm”.
Lesson learned so, I stocked up on Maurten 320 drink mix and Maurten energy gels. The objective was simple: Consume one drink mix every hour (80 grams of carbs) + 1 energy gel at the foot of every climb, topped up with some bananas and colas at every feed station.
Saturday, April 29th, 5 am: Pre-312 breakfast: 6 slices of white bread with strawberry jam, approximately 150 grams of carbohydrates. Right before the start at 6.30 am, I drank a few sips of the drink mix and an energy gel. Let’s start carbed the F* up I thought to myself! Unlike my typical morning routine, I skipped the coffee because I wanted to keep the caffeine boost for when I really needed it: When it started to hurt!
Around 6.40 my wave was allowed to start and off we went. I found myself in a group that rode to the first mountain at a nice pace of around 35kp average. Which is pretty fast, but in a group not too difficult to keep up. Despite that being a pretty nice cruising speed, there were groups whizzing past us. I remember thinking “Jesus lads, you still have AT LEAST 9 hours to go, and that’s only if you’re pro-level cyclist.” We’ll come back to this thought…
I had calculated in my head that if I could come out of the first 150km with an average speed of 22kph (22kph is the theoretical average speed you need to finish the event within the time limit) I could then start to make up time in the flatter second 150km which suited my body type much more.
22kph doesn’t sound like all that much, but when have to cover about 3500m of vertical gain in that 150 km, it actually not such a foregone conclusion, especially not for someone like myself who has to push close to 90kg over those mountains. Sure after an uphill comes a downhill, but it doesn’t quite help as much for boosting that average speed as you might expect.
I arrived at the foot of the first big climb: The “Coll de Femenia” with an average speed of 32kph.
I thought: Brilliant! That’s a little buffer, I can ride well within my comfort zone on the climbs”.
During the training camp, I had ridden up the climbs at a power output of around 250 – 270 watts which for me is high zone 3 (Moderate to “pretty” hard effort) to low zone 4 (hard effort). Knowing I was going to be on the bike for 12 hours I had set my power targets for the climbs to 220 watts which is low zone 3 (moderate effort) and I should be able to keep repeating those efforts throughout the day as long as I kept myself fuelled and hydrated.
At km 50 there was the first liquid feeding stop, In theory, I had enough liquids and carbohydrates on me to go straight to the next stop at km 98 but to err on the safe side as temperatures were already rising well above 20 degrees Celsius, I decided to stop to fill up my empty bottle, add another bag of Maurten 320 drink mix and continue on. Time lost: 10 minutes. An expected time-loss for a feed stop.
I got back on my way, over the top of Mallorca’s highest point (to my knowledge) accessible by road bike the “Puig Major” followed by a long 15km descent. The descent was long and flowy and a real joy to ride down. It also allowed me an intermittent moment to lift my average speed which had dropped from 32kph to 22kph back to a little over 23kph. Still well on track in my mind to hit my speed and time goals!
Despite all the climbing, I still felt super fresh. I had stuck to my 100 grams of carbs per hour rule and had been disciplined on the climbs not to go into zone 4 (where your body relies almost exclusively on Glucose for energy). I was confident, I GOT THIS! I thought.
I reached km 97, which you had to reach before 11.10 am to be allowed onto the 225 or 312 route at 11 sharp. Tight, but not a problem. It’s the flat section after all where I will start to push and raise my average speed. Onto the long route, we went. At km 98 was the first “solid feed zone”.
ABSOLUTE CHAOS, the drinking water truck had a mechanical defect and so instead of the 15 or so taps that were supposed to be on hand to serve the cyclists’ need to fill their bottles, there were only 2 taps. Try to imagine 2 to 3 thousand cyclists desperate to fill up their bottles with only 2 taps available to them… It was bad. I considered cycling on without filling up but I didn’t know whether or not we’d pass a supermarket in the next 20 minutes or so. I was pretty much out of liquids and with the heat it was a risk I didn’t want to take. So I got the elbows out, managed to get my bottles filled up after some pushing and throwing, get some extra energy gels and bars in me, and got back out. Time lost however in this ordeal: 40 minutes. That put a bit more pressure on me to get in before the time limit. But I was not too concerned.
At km 150 I knew I had most climbing behind me, started to consume caffeine here and dear god, you don’t know how powerful this drug really is until you deprive yourself of it for a while before giving yourself a good dose! I downed 200mg of Caffeine, the equivalent of 2 strong cups of coffee and I felt euphoric and like Superman! Let’s hammer these pedals! I bridged across a few groups ahead of me on the flats pushing well over 40kph. I reigned myself in a little bit after 20 minutes or so of mashing the pedals as I reminded myself we were only about halfway into the race. I found myself a nice peloton riding a good piece and I kept myself shielded from the wind. The pace was strong and by km 194, another feeding zone; My average speed was up to 24.5kph. Closing in on that 25kph average speed goal I had set myself, and fast enough to get myself to the finish line before the time limit.
I stopped for 10 minutes, got myself a Coca-Cola, a banana, and downed 2 energy gels to stick to my carb rule as I had run out of my Maurten drink mix’ and gels. 2/3rds of the way done I thought to myself. “Almost there”.
Again I found myself a peloton moving at a 35kph pace. I calculated that I should make it to the finish line around 8 – 8.15 pm, and even texted my wife Dalal to be at the start line around that time.
At km 225, the surroundings start looking a bit familiar, so I ask the cyclist beside me if we are certainly still on the 312 route. He believed so... We turned the corner and there is the finish line! What?!
In my fixation on the 8.40 pm time limit to finish the 312 distance, I had overlooked the 220km time cut-off point I should have passed before 4.20 pm, I believe I passed it at about 4.55 pm, and so they had diverted us onto the 225 distance. Disappointed yet relieved in a sense I made my way back to the hotel to lie on the couch for a while to process what had happened.
In the end, I was pleased with my performance, I had remained disciplined with my power targets and nutrition. I managed to ride the pace I had set out to ride and unfortunately, due to some unforeseen time losses I had to make peace with only finishing the “short one” of 225km. In all honesty, I was quite happy to be home at a reasonable time to have a last proper meal with my wife and with a bit of time to pack my bike back up on our last night in Mallorca. Which all would have been a lot less enjoyable had I had another 3 hours on the bike.
In the end: 227km distance, 3900m of altitude gain, 9 hours of riding time, and an average speed of 24.9kph is still a good day out on the bike but I will be back next year however to get that 312 distance on my cycling CV, and we’ll aim to for a higher speed than 25kph
I think differently now about the guys steaming past me at 40+kph in the first few kilometers. Next year I will try to join them in an attempt to get to the front of the peloton before the climbs start to avoid the chaos at the feed stops.
The Chaos at the 98km feed stop aside, the event was excellently organized and I would highly recommend anyone of able fitness to give it a go. The time limits are very tight though so plan well and plan for some delays in your pacing strategy as you should always count on something not going your way: a Puncture that needs fixing, Feed zone chaos, …
Will I see you there next year?
