Even when your Dad is a former Tour de France stage winner and yellow jersey wearer, trying to get across exactly what it’s like to take part in an ultra-distance gravel event is not easy. But if your Dad is actually right there beside you, experiencing it all first-hand, then he will definitely get some good insight into what it’s really like. We headed to the Traka at the start of May and spent some time with the Yates family during an extended impromptu father-son gravel session.
Image courtesy of Emmie Collinge
Let’s face it, telling another one of those “oh, you should have been there,” stories can be hard work. So, isn’t it better to just bring the listener along for the experience right from the start? For Liam Yates, this was the obvious and most straightforward modus operandi for his recent decision to ride The Traka 360 with his dad. This British gravel rider has spent the past few years travelling with his bike to take on big challenges and each time, his family, which includes his father, Sean Yates, a former Tour de France stage winner, have become keener and keener dot-watchers, waiting to hear stories on his return.
Image courtesy of Emmie Collinge
But those stories never really tell the full story, explains Liam. “My family are all cyclists, but there are moments when they look at my dot, for example, in a race like the Silk Road Mountain Race when it’s moving at 2 km/h on a climb and they don’t really understand why. Even Sean doesn’t, so when I tell them about an 8-hour hike-a-bike, they look at me as if they missed the point of the story.”
In early May, Liam, who rides for the Shimano Gravel Alliance, was entered for the 560 km Adventure at The Traka, which ended up getting cancelled at short notice due to adverse weather conditions. Faced with a choice of doing the revised 540 km route (subsequently cancelled again) or the 360 km, he reached out to his dad who was already entered for the shorter distance. “Maybe I’ll see you out there,” Liam said, knowing that a number of his overseas pals were also going to be lining up and this would also be a good chance to catch up with them.
Liam, who is inspiringly unburdened by cycling’s competitive side, is one of those riders who is driven to ride by curiosity. It’s a bit of a different approach to his younger brother who was also lining up for the 360 km event, with his eyes on the podium. So, on the start line of the Traka 360, Liam’s own ambition was to get something different out of this revered event while hopefully helping his dad.
“I started out riding with different friends for the first 100 km. We chatted, surfed groups and embraced being mid-pack heroes. I spent some time with Lael Wilcox, which was really cool and I got some great tips for the upcoming Tour Divide. It’s weird, given the delay and then cancellation of the 560 km event, I hadn’t really focused on my own race prep, to the point where even having breakfast before the 360 wasn’t on my mind. I actually wasn't feeling great when I got to the first checkpoint. But after some pasta, I cruised up the first main climb thinking that it would be a wasted opportunity not to wait for Sean - we don’t see each other that much and with 100 km of flat after the climb, I figured it would be nice for him to have a wheel to sit on.”
Having ridden twelve times in the Tour de France, held the yellow jersey and garnered a reputation as not only a strong time triallist, but a rider with a huge engine, capable of ‘sitting on’ the bunch for hours on end, you’d think flat terrain would be Sean Yates’ prime territory. But an irregular heart function and 100% reliance on a pacemaker now meant that his son’s wheel would be a welcome aid to help him through this tough event.
As Sean arrived at Liam’s scenic waiting point, his matter-of-fact “What the f***? You’ve been waiting 3 hours?” echoed around the Catalan hills.
The pair rode (and hiked) together long into the evening. “The hike-a-bike section, although short, was interesting. And in a fatigued state, it gave Sean a perspective on the stories I’ve been telling him. The experience hits different when you do something with someone,” adds Liam.
With night falling, fatigue kicked in. "We were still working through the 100 km of flat and now had done close to 10 hours of riding time. I could see Sean was suffering. I’ve supported him at a lot of 12-hour time trials so have seen him really fatigued on previous occasions, but it was a little different out here. We only had one light between us – I was saving my battery for later on – and we were missing some layers, so we were both looking forward to the second feed station where Glen, a mate who was supporting us, was waiting with another light, clothing layers and extra tools. This was welcome. But not long after we’d rolled out, Sean started to be sick on the bike, struggling to hold any food down as his body started to rebel from the efforts. I knew that everyone suffers at this point of the race, even if they are at the front, but we were moving slowly. I’ve seen Sean messed up before and it’s not pleasant.”
“You try to make small talk,” Liam continues, “but no one is interested at this point. Sean was in zombie mode.”
Reaching the final climbs on the course with around 70 km to go, it was clear that it was going to be impossible to continue. “At this point it was around 01:30 and Sean was done. I didn’t want to leave him because his phone had broken and I know that the trackers are not that accurate, so anything could happen. I arranged with Glen for a pickup, but there were no roads for the next 30 km so we had to double back to the last town. As soon as Sean was in the van with the heating on, he fell asleep straight away,” Liam explains.
How was it to see his dad ‘scratch’ from the event? “I know exactly how it feels when you are in that state. I didn’t want to influence his decision, no matter how well-intentioned you might be trying to be. So, I was happy to ride with him until either he was done, or he didn’t want to continue. In some ways, the decision was outside of his control—mentally he could finish, but physically because of his heart he couldn’t.” Liam explains.
The quote from Sean’s subsequent social media post probably sums it up the best:
“Set myself the goal of trying to finish the Traka 360 last year after having been here a couple of times with my sons, Liam and Jessey. I did everything right, but I have found out that doing such an event when being 100% pacemaker dependent and in permanent atrial fibrillation is too much. After 15.5hrs and 260kms my body just shut down pretty much. There won’t be a next time the lesson has been learnt. Thanks to Liam for riding with me and organising evacuation courtesy of @aeightbikeco. Was fun while it lasted. Ciao.”
An experience like this makes you think. How much does your perspective of things change once you’ve “been there, done that” and, in the case of the Traka, even got the t-shirt? “Even without the 560 km race, I got so much out of the Traka this year.” Liam said “It’s a unique event, where people are there to ride or race for very different reasons. Riding with Sean and all the other riders out there put a lot into perspective. You’re used to see people achieving everything online and making it look easy, but it’s not until you do it yourself that you realise how hard it is.”
“Our perspective of achievement is all relative to the type of riding that we do. So here’s me thinking that 360 km doesn’t need breakfast, but seeing how tough it was for Sean took me out of my bubble. I recently scratched from the Stagecoach 400 and felt like I’d achieved nothing, so much so that I didn’t even want to post about it, but seeing everyone deal with 360K in their own way made me feel differently.”
According to Liam, the gaining of perspective was part of what Sean took away from it too: “Around 250 km into the event, as we were struggling through the mud, he turned to me and said ‘You rode 600 km of the Dales Divide in the mud like this, f*** that.’”
Image courtesy of Emmie Collinge
But, and now Liam laughs, “At least I was able to loan him some grippy tyres for the mud here in Girona.”
Images courtesy of @Liam Yates except where credited.