The Race I Always Wanted to Do

The Race I Always Wanted to Do

Last week´s Kona and as so often: dreams crushed and fulfilled in equal measure on that iconic island. I've never seen so much drama packed into one marathon and I tip my hat to everyone that made it to the finish, as well as those, that likely would not have found the finish, had they kept going. Two athletes pushing themselves to collapse, literally.

This week however, I'm thinking about a different kind of race entirely.

Back in 2019, still grinding through championship seasons, I started dreaming about the one triathlon I'd actually want to do after retiring. Not another perfectly measured course with timing mats every lap and aid stations that could double as pharmacies. Something else. Something that involved nature, real adventure, genuine camaraderie, good food (who's eaten enough overcooked pasta in their life?), and a proper challenge- but one where I couldn't obsessively compare myself to old power files.

That dream became SGRAIL, which I co-created with my best friend. The name comes together like this: Swim, GRavel, trAIL. Point-to-point from Cadaques to Girona through terrain that's so pretty you almost don't notice how hard it is.

Here's what the big players in triathlon do brilliantly: they offer the perfect product. Everything designed to create consistency, predictability, and comparable performances. So we tried to do it differently. Not because there's anything wrong with that model- I built a career on it- but because comparison can be the thief of joy. When you can pull up last year's splits, your competitor's Strava file, and your own declining power-to-weight ratio, the adventure gets suffocated by spreadsheets.

Gravel and trail allow you to forget your FTP. The terrain changes. The conditions vary. You can't optimize what you can't predict. Which means you're forced to actually experience the race instead of just executing it.

The chaos has been glorious. We've had people miss the route entirely and end up in France instead of Girona- eventually catching a train back like they'd just taken an unplanned holiday. Sebi Kienle, former world champion and apparently the most caffeinated triathlete in history, drank ten espressos in transition. Ten. I'm not sure if that's performance enhancement or a certainty for anxiety, but it happened. He certainly set a new PB- of a different kind!

We're tend to optimize everything. Training plans, nutrition protocols, recovery strategies, sleep hygiene. All valuable. All effective. But somewhere in the pursuit of marginal gains, we lose something fundamental: the feeling that made us fall in love with movement in the first place. That childlike sense of "let's see what happens if I go that way instead."

Adventure isn't the opposite of hard work. It's a different fuel source entirely. Performance is powered by discipline, consistency, and measurable progress. Adventure runs on curiosity, uncertainty, and the willingness to not know how things will turn out. Both are legitimate. Both are necessary. But I have at time found myself so addicted to tracking and optimizing that I’d forgotten how to just explore.

Think about your bucket list- those things you say you'll do "someday." Someday may well be a place you never actually arrive at. It's always one more season away, one more goal away, one more perfect window of time away. Meanwhile, the list gets longer and the comfort zone gets smaller.

Adventure doesn't require quitting your job or booking a one-way ticket to Nepal. It just requires doing something where the outcome isn't guaranteed. Where you can't compare it to last time because there wasn't a last time. Where the point isn't to set a personal record but to have an experience you'll actually remember.

Here's how you know if something counts as adventure: if thinking about it makes you slightly nervous but curious, that's probably it. And if you've been thinking about it for more than six months, that's definitely it.

The bucket list shrinks one uncertain yes at a time. What's yours?

Jan