Traka Week in Girona

An air raid siren went off in my bedroom at 5 a.m. on Saturday. I had no idea what it was or why it was happening. It was so loud, and it was right next to my head. It was my phone. What the hell? Why is my alarm that loud and why have I set it for 5 a.m. on Saturday morning?

This was bouncing around my weary head as I flailed in the dark trying to find and shut it down. Silence again, relief, then abject panic as I remembered, “VICTOR!”

A lot had gone on up to that point in the week. Traka had turned Girona into the gravel cycling capital of the world. It was buzzing, and Factor had gone big. But first, a brief history of Traka: the first edition was held in 2019, created by friends of mine, Gerard and Cristina. They had been organising trail running events for years and had noticed more and more gravel riders around Girona. So why not try creating a gravel event? It’s basically trail running on bikes, after all. A few dozen riders turned up to that first event in 2019; fast forward to 2026 and it’s over three days, four events, 4500 participants and thousands on the waiting list. It is the perfect exemplar of how the gravel scene has exploded. The four events cater to everyone: 560 for the ultra mad people, 360 for the mad people, 200 for the slightly crazy people, and 100 for all the people.

Girona’s gravel vibe

Yet it’s not just the events that are the main draw, it’s the vibe in town and surrounding area, and this year, for the first time, it felt like a full-takeover. Factor was not the only one, although we may have gone biggest. There were shops, brands, teams, all hosting get-togethers, events, creating pop-ups. On top of all this it was a tech bonanza. In the past, Unbound was the big gravel event where brands reveal their latest tech. Nobody waited this year, it was all on show at Traka. So yeah, a lot had gone on during the week. Not only did Factor have multiple takeovers, we also had twelve racers in town ready to compete: four in the 560, three in 360, four in 200, and one in 100. We got all our them together for a shake-out ride on Wednesday to the FACTOR HOUSE at Aquarium Café in Banyoles. After a coffee pause we headed back to Girona to finish at the FACTOR HOUSE at Domestique Cafe. An incident-free, calm-before-the-storm gravel spin and a reminder of just how lovely our entire crew is.

Friday morning at 5:50 a.m., Traka officially started, with the pro men in the 360 rolling out, followed by the pro women. Then everyone else in the open, including my wife, Nicole. An hour later the 560 took the start line. The riders competing in the 560 are unsupported, from the moment they cross the start line, they are on their own until the finish. This was the event that most excited me out of the four. Having done it last year, I knew what they were tackling, and although it’s at times breathtakingly beautiful, it’s definitely not pretty what you do to yourself.

SARANA in action

Not only that, it was the first time the SARANA would be raced, in its natural habitat, by the world’s best ultra riders. We were launching the bike once the race started and I was gibbering with excitement because Victor Bosoni was there to defend, and I had a feeling he was going to do something very special. Most importantly, he was going to push the SARANA to its very limit and fulfill over three years of development by the engineering team.

I had been witness to Victor’s performance in the 560 last year. Well, not really, I finished six hours behind him. Yet I experienced it and could fully appreciate it more than had I just been a bystander. I’ve had the privilege to be up close to many exceptional human performances, but what Victor did at the 560 in 2025 simply melted my mind. When Rob Gitelis and the engineers committed to the SARANA for 2026, I knew it was Victor who was born to race it. I called him up in August and signed him shortly afterwards. I was so incredibly proud to bring him to Factor, I had hoped beyond hope we’d find a reason to, and the SARANA gave me that reason. So now, here we were, the day of the 560, and the launch of the SARANA.

Pit service and dot watching

The day began for me at 4:30 a.m., our Factor crew had Romain Bardet and Haley Smith to support in the 360. I also had my wife to look after, the one athlete I was most concerned about missing at a feed zone. We did the crazy pit stops for Romain and Haley at feed zone 1 and then divided to conquer, I stayed for Nicole, sat in the grass and scoured multiple sources for info on Victor. As ever, following ultra racing is mildly traumatising. There’s the dot on a map, then there are the WhatsApp messages from people out on the course, social media content, and rumours. The rumours are the worst, because basically the dot you watch is a tantalisingly minuscule piece of the big picture that you end up trying to paint yourself, and rumours and bad intel form a dark storm of concern.

This is what happened to my Victor tracking experience. A puncture early on saw him dropping back, he made it back to the front, then he lost a bottle, then we heard on the grapevine that the lid on his only other bottle wouldn’t unscrew, so he couldn’t refill it, meaning the only water he had was in his hydration pack and he would be dependent on finding water sources in the wilderness to refill it. Yet all the same, he was motoring, at the 300km mark he was over twenty minutes ahead of second place. In the videos I saw of him, he looked sublime, the SARANA was in full-flight mode, it gives me goosebumps now as I write this. Meanwhile I was making sure Nicole was supported and although she had a momentary life crisis at Zone 2, she showed up much better at Zone 3 at 7 p.m., then it was the final push for her into the night over the final 75 km.

It was around this point things started to go wrong again for Victor. His lead disappeared, and we were hearing rumours that he looked drained and tired. Second place had caught back up to him; I could only imagine that dehydration was hitting him, and that maybe he’d been going too fast early on. All of a sudden, the situation turned upside down, his dominant repeat of 2025 was not happening, there were now two dots yo-yoing for the lead.

I was immersed in the dot watching while waiting at the finish line for Nicole to finish the 360. She came in at midnight, offering a respite from my compulsive tracking app refreshing, and a moment of genuine joy as Nicole’s was as mind-bending a performance as any of the pro wins - and a reminder of why the vast majority of the riders at Traka do it. By the time we got home, it was 1 a.m., and the situation hadn’t improved with Victor. The dots were still lead swapping and peripheral info had disappeared into the darkness of night. This was when I set my alarm, so I could wake up and check the dot and see when I needed to be at the finish to meet Victor, no matter the result.

Dawn patrol

My reason I wanted to be there was that I read an interview he did about his win last year in the 560. He completed the course so fast that nobody was prepared for his arrival. He rolled in and nobody knew who he was or what he was doing there, even the organisation, no family, no friends, nobody. So whatever happened, I was going to be there.

Back to 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, “VICTOR!” I sat bolt upright and grabbed my phone again and opened the dot watcher. He was in the lead, and he had 5km to go. What? How was that even possible?

I exploded out the room, grabbing my clothes from the night before, grappled my shoes on, and sprinted out the house. It was a stressful drive, like I was late to pick the kids up from school. I flew into the finish area, dumping the car as near to the finish as possible, and ran with my shoelaces still undone to the finish line.

He had only arrived minutes before and was still in a daze. He couldn’t believe it himself. He’d suffered badly with lack of water, and the stress and time loss in finding places to refill his hydration pack. He’d also had to stop to rest as he had found himself too tired at one point, yet he somehow managed the situation well enough to recover the resources needed to rediscover flight mode in the final hours. He averaged 25.7km/h for the 560km over 10,000m of climbing, in 22hrs 11mins. He was 1hr 47min faster than 2025. The SARANA did what it was designed to do, and Victor did what only he can do. The two of them together proved unstoppable.

Where results are only part of the story

Across the 360 we had Haley Smith, Romain Bardet and Petr Vakoč at the sharp end throughout the day, finishing 5th, 5th, and 8th respectively. In the 200, we had Magnus Bak, Jonas Lindberg, and Wendy Oosterwoud doing the same. Magnus and Jonas dominated the first half of the race, but Magnus was caught out by a move and Jonas punctured. Magnus and Wendy finished 6th and 7th, respectively. Rob Gitelis completed the 200 in 10hrs 10mins, on track for his Tour de France mission this year. In the 100, Zack Morris was off the front solo with over a minute lead, the win a done deal, until it wasn’t. He crashed and broke his collarbone.

It was an eventful week in Girona, to say the least.

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