There is no easy way to get through The Traka 360, which is set to unfold on Friday in Spain, but there is a hard way to tackle the Spanish gravel race and that is the potentially race-winning approach, which Lachlan Morton (EF Education-EasyPost) likens to holding your hand to a flame.
“For anyone who's just trying to get around the 360 course, maybe at a pace that is faster than last time or at a pace that's sustainable, you have to be pretty conservative in the beginning,” said Morton in an EF Education-EasyPost release. “But if you're trying to race to win, the pace is dictated by everyone who's racing.
"So, you have to buy into it and just keep the hand in the fire for as long as you can. That's the way these races generally go. Whoever can hold the hand in for the longest wins. That is the plan for the Traka."
Morton will be setting off from Girona on Friday at 5:50am local time to take on the 358.5km event with 3,700m of climbing. The pace dictated by the leading bunch as they set off into the opening road climb and then into the largely unpaved and extremely varied course is bound to be fierce given the packed field which includes defending champion Peter Stetina, three-time winner Mattia de Marchi (Enough Cycling) and Chad Haga, who finished second to Morton at Unbound 200 in 2024.
The Australian rider last lined up the Traka 360 in 2022, where he came second to De Marchi in what was the second year the distance, which sees even the fastest spending around 12 hours on the bike, had been included at the event. He has now returned to what had once been his European home base in a year that has seen him soaking up a packed schedule of diverse events.
“It feels a bit like going to a national championship as an under-19,” said Morton. “Everyone is a bit on edge, but I'm having fun the way I'm going about doing it.
Morton started the season at RADL GRVL in Australia, where he enjoyed a beer in the sun with his fellow competitors after tackling the race, and then criss crossed the globe as he took in an array of events from the Transcordilleras in Colombia, The Hills in Italy – where the post race indulgence was instead a glass of prosecco – and Sea Otter Gravel in the United States. Then, as the team pointed out in the release, it wasn't a matter of fine-tuning his form before The Traka 360, but he was instead racing the 4Islands MTB Epic in Croatia, helping Tsgabu Grmay tune up his skills in preparation for the mountain bike events at the Life Time Grand Prix.
"For me, this year is equally as much about the experience around the race and the times we've been able to spend here, getting out on the bike and just enjoying what it means to ride bikes here. That is really important. I feel like I've been finding a nice balance for myself.”
The training may not have been finely tailored ahead of the Traka 360, which is part of the Gravel Earth Series, but with Morton in familiar terrain and fuelled by the fun of the bike, there is no telling what could unfold.
"It's a big day out, and so many things are going to happen in the course of the race that it is sure to be fun and interesting, and we’ll have good stories to tell by the end,” he concluded.
