Guillaume Chaumont, 31, an engineering company manager from Brussels, stepped up from recreational to long-distance cycling only in 2019. He entered three BikingMan events in that year, the IncaDivide in August, Portugal in September and Taiwan in November, placing second in the BikingMan series for the year. Here he describes his race in Portugal.
BikingMan is a series of six bike-packing events of between 850km and 1600km held in countries around the world. Riders are unsupported: they may buy food, mechanical repair and even beds for the night, but only if these are publicly available. See more about the Bikingman series.
Guillaume Chaumont has partnerships with Canyon Bikes, Restrap, for bike-packing gear and Peloton de Paris, a cycle community cafe and clothing brand. You can follow Guillaume at Instagram and his website, guillaumeultracycling.blogspot.com
First a bit of Form
I’ve been involved with competitive sport all my life. I have played football since I was a kid and still play futsal (a hard-court version of five-a-side) with friends. As a child I was a fan of motorsports and my main sport became karting: I drove competitively from the age of 12 till I was 20 and twice I was the Belgian karting champion. I competed in the European Championship many times and twice in the World Championships.
After my karting career I wanted to remain in shape, so I started running, but unfortunately knee issues meant I had to stop. Cycling was a logical step and in 2016 I started mountain-biking, though it wasn’t long before I discovered road cycling. I was a recreational cyclist until 2018, riding out with friends on Sundays on the road- or mountain-bike. We made trips to the French mountains including the Vosges and Jura, but I never took it further than this and that seemed fine.
But then, at the end of 2018, I don’t really know why, I decided I wanted to achieve something on a bike, perhaps a race of some sort, and a friend, Xavier Massart, mentioned the BikingMan series. He had competed in two races and told me it would be a perfect way to get into ultra-cycling. For work reasons, the first race I could enter was the IncaDivide in August… It was quite a call: the IncaDivide is the most difficult race in the series by a long stretch and, given I had no experience of the discipline, I didn’t even known if I would like long-distance racing. Eventually I decided to go for it. I registered on 30th or 31st December and started training pretty hard from 2nd January. There was no time to lose.
My first solo bikepacking trip was in 2019 as well. I rode from Brussels to Lisbon in Portugal and back (5500 km in 26 days in total and 2100 km in the 7 days of the return ride). It was a hell of an experience to cover such a long distance in a very short time in constantly changing countryside. Also, on a personal level it was a great experience: I met a lot of nice people along my way.
Why BikingMan Portugal 2019?
I was looking for a race… I considered entering the TCR (TransContinental Race), but the registration process was quite onerous and then Xavier suggested BikingMan. I decided to go for the IncaDivide, but saw that I could register for 3 races for a reduced price, so I entered Bikingman Portugal and Taiwan aswell.
What was BikingMan Portugal like?
First of all, it was great to be back with the Bikingman team as they are really nice people. I arrived a week before the start to rest and enjoy the city of Faro. There were five other athletes there who had raced the IncaDivide and it was great to see them again too. Finally, I had a different bike from the one I rode in Peru and I wanted to set it up correctly.
The race looked much easier on paper than it turned out. I knew there would be some very good riders and with just 950 km to cover with 11,000m of elevation gain, it was expected to be very fast. Navigation was not an issue as the course was mandatory and we just had to follow it on our GPS. My plan was not to sleep too much and cover the distance in less than 48 hours.
This distance was new for me, but not because it was too long, rather because it was a sprint distance (Peru was 1600 km and it took me just over seven days to cover). I knew that if I wanted to do well, I would need to cover the distance in one stint, or sleep in very quick naps. Any race like this is about finding the right speed. Too slow and you lose a lot of time; go too quickly and you’ll burn yourself in the first hours.
What sort of training and preparation did you do?
I didn’t really have a structured plan to get fit for Portugal, but with the IncaDivide to aim for, I knew I had seven months to be as ready as possible. So, from early January I trained hard, almost every day, at the gym or outside in the snow, mixing short intense sessions indoors with long rides outside. And in April I left Belgium for my five-week solo bike-packing trip to Lisbon in order to work on my endurance and test my gear for the races. When I returned from that trip, I carried on training hard until July when I headed to France for a month to train in the mountains (MTB and road bike). I don’t run any more because of the knee issue, so riding my bike was my main training.
After the IncaDivide, there wasn’t really time to train specifically for Portugal. I was also exhausted after Peru so I decided it was better to take a break for 2 weeks and I went travelling with my girlfriend. In fact, I still hadn’t quite recovered by the time the race started.
What strategies did you have during the event?
My strategy was to stop as little as possible. As we were in Europe, I knew food and water would be pretty easy to find (at least during the day) and that’s how it turned out. When riding, I mainly ate power bars and sandwiches. I tried to stop twice a day to eat something warm or more substantial and to refill my stock of sandwiches. Other stops were only to refill my water bottles. During the night (from 10pm to 6am) it was pretty easy: there was no chance to buy water or food, so there were no decisions to make. The only stops I made were for power naps or just to rest for a few minutes.
As I planned not to sleep too much, I took nothing to sleep in and I didn’t book any hotels. I knew the only place I would sleep would be on the side of the road for a quick nap.
What was new for me though, was riding the whole night and coping with sleep deprivation. During the first night all went well and I slept for one hour, but the second night was epic – I took just 30 min in the grass on the roadside. I hallucinated - I saw a dinosaur lurking between the trees. I fell asleep twice in the saddle, so I took the decision to stop for five minutes, eat and drink something before going on.
What was most challenging moment?
I mentioned that the course looked relatively flat on paper. What I did not expect were the very steep climbs in the first few hours. This totally burnt me, and so after just 100km and all the climbing, I was totally exhausted and I found it impossible to develop a good rhythm. A lot of riders began passing me, which was mentally very hard. I arrived at CP1 in 18th position and yet I had been aiming for a top 5. Fortunately, as I decided not to sleep, I quickly climbed back into the top 10.
Physically, the toughest moment was probably the first night. It was much colder than I was expecting. I was carrying only a light jacket and some arm warmers, which was clearly not enough. It felt like the night would never end. I didn’t know I could long so much for the sunrise! At one point, I considered taking a hotel for the second night as I did not want to go through the same experience for another night! But riding with Leo (see below) helped me through this and motivated me to keep riding through the second night in order to get the best time possible.
What was the best moment?
I would say it’s the fun we had riding along during the first night when I was with Leo and Rodney Soncco. It was a laugh sleeping on a bench alongside the road for an hour. More generally, it was the time I spent with Leo. At CP1 he asked me if we could ride together as he had no GPS and didn’t want to ride in the dark without a navigation device. I agreed, and had no idea that from that moment we would stick together. We cycle at a similar pace and so we just decided to continue to the end of the race. He also had some issues with his lights so it was probably a good idea he had someone with him. And he is such fun to ride with; he is always smiling! You should know that the guy comes from Brazil and has very little money and takes nothing for granted. He crowdfunded his plane ticket to Portugal. It is a life lesson I will never forget.
What did you learn?
When I left CP1 with Leo, we quickly fell in with Rodney Soncco (the series winner in 2018 and 2019) and rode along together with him for a few hours. At one point the three of us decided to stop. I learned a lot about sleeping during races like this - how to find the right spot, how to set up your “camp” quickly and then get back on your bike as quickly as possible.
I also learned not to underestimate a race because of what it looks like on paper, especially when it’s a BikingMan race!
