In January, I wrote about Taurus Mountain Race when it was still mostly an idea.
A new race in southern Türkiye. The Taurus Mountains rising almost straight out of the Mediterranean. Nelson Trees promising something long, remote, and incredibly difficult.
There was not much else to go on. Nine months later, we know a little more.
Taurus will be 1,460 km long, with 36,346 metres of climbing. It will go above 3,000 metres. Temperatures during scouting ranged from +30°C to -5°C. The longest listed gap between resupply points is 184 km.
We also know that many of the biggest names in off-road ultra racing are heading to Antalya.
And somehow, Taurus still feels almost as unknown as it did in January.
Nobody has raced it before. Nobody knows what a fast time looks like. There is no established bike setup, no previous winner to follow, and no rider who can tell everyone which village shop is unexpectedly useful at midnight.
Almost nobody has seen the route.
Everyone gets the GPX late
The secrecy is deliberate.
The full route is being kept private until shortly before the race so riders cannot pre-ride it or spend months checking every corner online. The organisers want everyone arriving with roughly the same information and having the same first-edition experience.
That actually removes one of the biggest advantages in ultra. This year will be less about who prepares the most, and more about who can function cognitively while on the move through what will be one of the most remote landscapes in the world of ultra cycling.
GPX files will still get pulled apart. Key rest and resupply points will be put into spreadsheets. Satellite images will be zoomed to their limit. The key difference is that most of the work will have to be compressed into the final 48 hours before the start.
No racer has spent the summer scouting the route, trying to gain an advantage, and there are no previous editions to copy from.
Everyone is in the same boat, which, for Nelson, is the whole point:
“I want everyone to discover it together.”
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The numbers aren’t pretty
We do know what Nelson has managed to fit between Antalya and Erdemli, in broad terms at least.
For perspective, this year’s Silk Road Mountain Race covered 2,052 km with 35,362 metres of climbing.
Taurus has more climbing in almost 600 fewer kilometres. According to Nelson:
“Taurus won’t be quite as much of an adventure as Silk Road but will be harder on the legs.”
The opening 252 km to Köprülü contains 5,675 metres of climbing. Then comes 404 km and 9,950 metres to Taşkale. The third leg, between Taşkale and Demirkazık, is 457 km with 11,881 metres of climbing. The final 348 km to Erdemli contains another 8,903 metres
The elevation figures suggest there isn’t much of a recovery section in the race, but there may not be much recovery once riders stop moving either.
Köprülü should have limited accommodation at a guesthouse, while Demirkazık is expected to have beds available throughout the checkpoint opening. But those are small islands of comfort across a route where the organisers warn of long stretches with “no shelter, no habitation, and no services of any kind.”
An individual shelter is mandatory, and the organisers go further than usual by actively recommending a tent over a bivvy. Riders also need an extensive sleeping system capable of keeping them comfortable at -5°C.
This won’t be the sort of race where you can neatly stitch together guesthouses and hotels, banking a few hours of proper sleep whenever you need it. Often the place you recover will simply be wherever you decide you’ve had enough for the night.
Then the shops disappear
The resupply table gives us perhaps the best clue as to how this race might actually feel.
Early on, the gaps look fairly normal. Then the resupply gaps start looking increasingly difficult in a race that’s likely to see very slow average speeds.
155 km, 113 km, 184 km, 133 km, 116 km, 109 km.
Realistically, with opening times, racers will be lucky to resupply once per day. If they don’t want to get caught out, they’ll need to have capacity for up to two days at points.
My mind goes to last year’s Hellenic Mountain Race, where even many of the top riders struggled with an extremely remote final section, leading to many scratching. This, more than many races, will be a real war of attrition.
Most of the race follows gravel roads and 4x4 tracks. Some of it is described in the manual as extremely rough. There will be high passes, loose rock, very little habitation in places, and sections where help could take hours to arrive.
With ~85% set to be off-road, the terrain doesn’t appear to give riders much room for recovery either.
This isn’t necessarily a race full of highly technical riding. The description sounds more relentlessly chunky – loose, rocky, uneven terrain that might not stop you very often, but probably won’t let you switch off either.
The race manual is fairly blunt:
“There are only a few paved sections, with most of the route following gravel roads of varying smoothness and quality (a lot of it is extremely rough).”
A 184 km food carry on quick gravel is one thing, but 184 km when a considerable amount of that distance involves carrying your bike through the mountains is something brutally different.
Nobody quite knows what bike to bring either
The manual recommends something fast and light with at least 2.0-inch tyres, very low gearing, and potentially front suspension. Nelson says he would personally take a hardtail 29er.
But that’s Nelson.
That won’t be the setup I opt for. I still need to iron out some final details, but my setup for Hellenic earlier this year was a full-suspension bike with 2.4-inch tyres. For me, it’s less a question of how wide the tyres are than how comfortable your overall setup is.
For a race of this length and terrain, a full-suspension bike will give me the most comfort, and comfort is speed. As Justinas Leveika – this year’s Silk Road Mountain Race winner – put it:
“The longer the race, the more you want from the bike, and the faster you become if you’re comfortable and you don’t waste energy.”
Maybe I’ll be proved wrong once the GPX lands and once we’ve had our first edition of this race, but knowing so little about the route pushes me towards over-biking rather than risking under-biking.
Even so, I wonder how many gravel bikes we’ll see on the startline. Perhaps this year’s Tour Divide winner – who is expected to be on the startlist – will prove us all wrong again and show us what a rigid drop-bar bike is really capable of under the right legs. I doubt it’ll be his bike of choice, but we’ll see.
Why this one feels different
Taurus is not the longest race of the season. It is not the highest. And as a first edition, it obviously does not have the reputation of Silk Road, Atlas, Tour Divide, or Badlands. Yet.
But it could be the defining race of the season.
It comes right at the end of the ultra season, when riders have already shown what they can do elsewhere.
Racers are now being dropped onto the same course, with the same very limited information.
There’s even been some slightly tongue-in-cheek talk among riders about Taurus becoming an unofficial world championships of off-road ultra. I wouldn’t go that far (despite its many flaws, Traka 560 probably had the deepest field).
But the comparison has appeared for a reason.
Little research. No scouting ahead. Less room for money-no-object hotel stays. Get enough of the strongest riders together, give them 1,460 km of unknown mountain terrain, remove almost all previous race knowledge, and see who works it out first.
It will show who adapts best when some of the usual advantages are stripped out.
It’s a pretty exciting way to end the season.
We still don’t know the best bit
Back in January, Taurus was interesting because we knew almost nothing about it.
Now we have the numbers.
We know there is almost as much climbing as Silk Road packed into a much shorter race. We know the route goes above 3,000 metres. We know some food carries could approach 200 km. We know riders may see temperatures on either side of freezing. And we know the field could be one of the strongest assembled at a Mountain Race.
What we still do not know is how any of that joins together. The GPX will answer some questions, but only shortly before the start.
Then, on Wednesday 14 October, the riders get to answer the rest.
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Not freaking out at all. Nope. Everything is fine. 🫣
Great piece! It was like reading my own thought process for this race. I chose to follow the advice of Nelson, apart from the bike: That will be a full suspension. Now I just need to shave off the grams I realistically can, but it's difficult. Need to bring more nutrition onboard as well, given the resupply situation, especially late in the race.