BADLANDS: THE RACE I CAN'T STAY AWAY FROM

There are races you finish and move on from. Badlands isn’t one of them.

I first raced it solo in 2024. Around 800 kilometres through southern Spain, close to 15,000 metres of climbing, crossing some of the most exposed and beautiful landscapes I’ve ever ridden through.

I finished knowing two things. I was completely empty, and I wanted to come back.

Words — @stvvvnwlllls
Photography — @aks

Steve wears: Range Light Jersey, Passage Cargo Vest, Geode Mesh Base Layer, Realm Cargo Short 2.0, Pattern Active Socks, Sphere GORE-TEX Jacket, Drift Merino LS T, and MET x Portal Trenta MIPS Helmet.

Two years later I was there again.

Badlands has a strange hold over me. Before the race, you spend months thinking about it. During it, there are moments when you question every decision that brought you there. Then you finish, some time passes, and somehow the difficult parts start making you want it even more.

Maybe that’s part of what keeps pulling me back.

The landscape defines the race. The Tabernas Desert. The Mediterranean coast. Long, empty tracks through Andalucía. Mountains that continue to appear when you’re already convinced the climbing should be over.

There are sections where the landscape feels endless and completely exposed, and others where your entire world becomes the few metres illuminated in front of your wheel.

The conditions dictate almost everything.

Temperatures reached around 46 degrees during the day. At night, the same landscape could become surprisingly cold. There’s dust, wind, long periods without shade and stretches where water becomes the only thing you really think about.

Eventually the race starts controlling you more than you control the race.

You stop thinking in kilometres.

You think about where the next water is. How much food you have. Whether you can keep moving through the heat. Whether stopping is better for you or worse. Whether the body is asking for sleep or whether you can convince it to keep going.

Your world gets smaller while the landscape around you gets bigger.

That physical reality was something I wanted to think about differently for 2026.

Ahead of the race I sat down with Portal to work through what I needed from the kit to take on Badlands — something that could work through the heat of the day, the cold of the night and everything that happens over 800 kilometres of moving through this landscape.

Those conversations shaped the prototype Range Light Jersey and the wider selection of kit I would take into the race.

That is something I love about these races.

Eventually preparation ends and everything has to exist in the real world.

Badlands gives you plenty of time to find out what works. This year gave me around 70 hours of it.

There is a physical reality to Badlands that you can prepare for but never completely control. Sometimes you feel strong and hours later you’re struggling. You wait. You push. You make decisions when you’re exhausted. You convince yourself to keep moving when stopping would be much easier.

The race constantly changes around you, and your body changes with it.

And despite everything Badlands asks from you, I still find it difficult to describe it simply as suffering. There is too much beauty in it.

Watching the light change across the desert. Riding into another sunrise after being awake all night. Finding a small shop open when you desperately need food. A cold Coke. A coffee. Sitting on the ground outside a petrol station feeling like it is the best place in the world.

The insignificant things become significant. Maybe that is why I keep coming back.

For a few days, life becomes incredibly simple. Move forward. Eat. Drink. Look after yourself. Deal with whatever the landscape gives you.

Nothing else really matters.

Then suddenly you cross the finish line and it all stops.

Badlands is hard. Sometimes brutally so. But I have an emotional connection to this race and this part of the world that is difficult to explain without being there.

I love the landscape. I love what the race asks of you. I even love the parts that, while they are happening, I’m convinced I hate.

Two starts. Two finishes.

And many more to come.