The road to hell

It seems a long time since I stood, leaning on my bike at 3,400m, looking up the scree slope to the top of the Kegety Pass. The sky was clouding over and the temperature was hovering around zero degrees.

Kegety crests at 3,690m in the Tengri Tag (Tien Shen) mountains of Kyrgyzstan; Tangri Taga translates to English as ‘Lord of Heaven Mountains’: it might have only been 300 metres to the top but it felt like a thousand. I can still feel it now. Having covered 1,700 of the 1,850 kilometres of the 2023 Silk Road Mountain Race, the chest infection I’d picked up earlier on the dry dust hills of Kazarman had really found me.

The loose gravel road had long finished. Now I was on the final slippery and steep shepherd track. I struggled to breathe and my throat wheezed as I tried to take in air. I couldn’t panic, I had to stay calm. I was stuck, going nowhere.

Slowly, I got control of my breathing and started to move upwards, step by step, the short distance to the top. Once I crested, I wasted no time and started the descent. I knew from here I would quickly get down to lower altitudes and be able to breathe well again.

That thought was bittersweet, for while I would soon breathe easier, to finish the race I would have to cross the highest pass of the race at 4,000m. I realised I shouldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. ‘Scratching’ from any race is a miserable thing. I was scared. I was sad.

“These races can turn into sleep-deprivation challenges”

Be prepared

In the months before, my preparation had been close to perfect. I’d spent most of July living at altitude near our home in Spain, parking my van at the top of a mountain pass at 2,100m and sleeping there, alone, for three weeks. Often, I’d go to sleep in the clouds.

I left for Kyrgyzstan in good spirits – healthy, fit and hungry. My expectations were tempered by knowing what was to come. This would be my fourth run at the race. My first attempt in 2019 I’d come fourth, while in 2021, I got into great shape and went all the way to Kyrgyzstan to sit in a hotel room, potentially having caught Covid. In 2022, after a tough year with our son being born in January, I had a great race and got on the podium for second place. How would I fare in 2023?

I flew to Kyrgyzstan 10 days before the race started and then travelled with a huge rucksack up to 4,000 metres. Our destination was the Arabel plateau, a beautiful high mountain tundra strewn with lakes. This was a point on the race course but also served as easy access from the start in Karakol to a high altitude.

My plan was to rest, sleep and acclimatise at altitude. A few days later, we got underway. As often happens the nerves and excitement got the better of some. I saw previous winner Sofiane Sehili going down in a crash, quite hard.

The race unfolded normally for me, which is to say, not that well. I simply lacked ‘legs’, it was weird. I was fit, fed and watered, like a good rider should be, but my ‘engine’ didn’t respond. The balance between doing too much and too little in the days before the race can be a fine one. I can only assume I did too little and my body had turned off.

My body needed some time to settle into the familiar race cycle of effort and recovery so I stopped early that first night. I found a little dilapidated building previously used for a road checkpoint where I rolled out my sleeping stuff. Warm and dry, I slept for three hours. I knew that these races can turn into sleep deprivation challenges rather than sporting feats.

It had been smart to sleep because I just wouldn’t have made it over the pass. In the morning I caught up with riders who’d bivied out in the snow storm that I’d seen pass over. Thankfully, by the early afternoon of day two, my ‘legs’ were back.

I rode from Issyk-Kul Lake up to Juku Pass, cresting the summit at 4,000m around 2am, having spent the past few hours hiking over the landslide section. It was a clear night and I lay in my sleeping bag on the Arabel plateau where I’d ridden during my training. I had made good time on that climb, my body was back, and with the power that let me know my training had been just right. I was already closing in with the many riders in front.

“These races can turn into sleep-deprivation challenges”

The next day I made my way down against a strong headwind. I arrived in the town of Naryn – famed as ‘Scratch City’ as many riders give up there – around dinner time and was now feeling deflated. I knew I had a lot of distance to make up. Naryn nearly ended my race too, the voices in my head were trying to stop me. I went to a restaurant and bought a pizza, then cycled over to a guest house and got a bed and a shower.

The pizza and three hours in a bed worked as the next few days drifted by, blurring together as I found my real rhythm, heading towards Lake Kel-Su and the second checkpoint. I’d been here before in 2019 and remember the slog. This time, the road disappeared under me and even pushing along the famed Old Soviet Road – once-navigable, now reclaimed by nature – after the checkpoint seemed nothing either.

I rode towards the third checkpoint, across the arid section featuring the gold mining town of Kazarman. In winter, Kazarman is largely cut off as the mountain passes around it are covered with snow. I was riding well but the dust was getting to me. My face buff couldn’t stop it getting into my lungs and I began coughing heavily.

Eventually, after spending time sitting at the side of the road knackered, I arrived at the Son-Kul checkpoint via the seemingly endless switchbacks which make the Stelvio pass look easy. I knew I needed to rest. I also took the opportunity to eat a good meal – bread and jam plus warm potatoes in a warm yurt – my first since the pizza in Naryn a blur of days ago.

Pushing myself to the limit

Apart from that one meal I’d been subsisting on junk food, Snickers, sandwich in a packet (though I’d throw out the processed contents and just eat the bread), crisps, Jaffa cakes. From here, sitting again at the side of the washboard road trying to breathe and eat something, there were just two ‘hurdles’ still to go.

The first was the Kegety Pass, a long, hard climb from the north side. I remembered it being an absolute beast but actually the ride up the valley disappeared quickly and even the lower slopes were somewhat rideable.

As I got higher, over 3,000m, things started to go wrong. I found myself going slower and slower, and I was struggling to breathe. It felt as if mucus had filled a large portion of my lungs and the remaining bit was not enough for breathing at altitude. Then, around 3,400m, I started wheezing and felt panicky. I was worried I’d have a full asthma attack.

While creeping up the rough trail, I thought about turning round, descending the north side that I’d just climbed.

I decided I should try to get over as I could descend to lower altitudes much faster on the south side. I moved slowly and tried to keep my breathing rhythmic and calm.

My breathing returned as I descended. I was glad to get off the mountain. At the top I’d known that I had to ‘scratch’ – give up – as soon as I got low enough. My life is worth more than any bike race and I knew that the final pass was not only higher by 300 metres, it was also even more remote – the cost didn’t bear thinking about. Cruelly though, here I was, at 1,000m, breathing just fine and enjoying the warm sun. I nearly talked myself out of it but it would be stupid to continue.

I knew how good I was, I had done my best and beyond. I was fulfilled, sitting there, 150 kilometres from the finish of a 1,850 kilometre event. That distance meant nothing and everything. My fourth and final attempt at the Silk Road Mountain Race had come to an end. It wasn’t the end I had dreamt of, but it was the end that perhaps fitted.

The 2023 Silk Road Mountain Race was won by Sofiane Sehili.