Badlands is not a race that forgives improvisation. 800 kilometres across the south of Spain. 16,000 metres of climbing. A crossing of the Tabernas Desert — Europe's only true desert — and a Sierra Nevada pass at 2,400m where the night temperature can drop below freezing. Self-supported. No marked route beyond a GPS track. No mandatory shop hours. The riders who finish are the ones with a plan that survives contact with 60-plus hours of heat, dust, sleep debt, and decisions made by a brain that has stopped working properly.
Here is the thing nobody tells you about Badlands. The fitness ceiling is not the limiting factor for most amateurs. The limiting factor is sleep, kit choice, gut training, resupply planning, and the discipline to pace at sustainable wattage when the leaderboard is in front of you. Watts are a small part of the picture; the rest of the picture is logistics.
Here is how to train for it across 16 weeks, with the right physical demand, the back-to-back-to-back capacity, and the bikepacking logistics that decide most of the day-to-day.
Key Takeaways
- 16-week build for ultra-experienced riders; 24+ weeks for first-time ultras
- Peak volume 18-22 hours/week with three back-to-back-to-back long-day weekends
- 2.5 W/kg minimum, 3.0-3.2 W/kg contests the front group, 3.5+ W/kg races
- One 400-500km ultra completed in training before race week is non-negotiable
- Sleep plan written and rehearsed: where, how long, triggered by what
- Tabernas Desert crossed at night or before 09:00, never midday
- Bike fit, saddle, sleep system, gut all tested at full distance pre-race
What Badlands Actually Demands
800 kilometres of mixed road, gravel, and rough farm-track across Andalusia. 16,000 metres of climbing — that's an average of 20m per kilometre, relentless rather than spectacular. Self-supported: resupply at open shops, fuel at petrol stations, sleep where you can. 5-7 days of riding for most finishers, 3-4 days for the front group.
The route shape is the part you cannot get from headline numbers. There are signature climbs — the Sierra de los Filabres at 22km long, the Sierra Nevada crossing at 28km, the Cabo de Gata coastal climbs late in the route — but the day-to-day reality is that nothing is flat for long. The shape is climbing-descending-climbing, day and night, for a week.
The Tabernas Desert is the section that defines the race. 35 kilometres of rocky farm tracks across Europe's only true desert. 40-42°C in the day, dropping to 5-10°C at night. No shade. No resupply within the crossing itself. Riders DNF at Badlands more in the desert than anywhere else, almost always for the same reason: midday crossing.
Sleep is the other defining feature. Spanish villages close 14:00-17:00, which is exactly when you want to resupply between morning ride and afternoon push. The riders who finish know which villages are open, when, and have a fall-back if the planned shop is closed. The riders who DNF discovered the closure at 14:30 with an empty bottle.
The defining demand is durability — physical, mental, and logistical. Train all three.
The Physical Bar: W/kg and Endurance Capacity
Three numbers tell you whether Badlands is a realistic target this year.
FTP in W/kg. Less important than at any other event in this cluster. 2.5 W/kg with smart pacing and a polished setup finishes in 5-7 days. 3.0-3.2 W/kg with disciplined sleep contests the front group. Above 3.5 W/kg you're racing for the podium — but you're still racing within a sleep-strategy framework, not on watts. Use the W/kg calculator for the number, but don't overweight it.
Long-ride durability. You should have ridden one 400-500km ultra in training before Badlands. Not a 200km event, not a 24-hour ride, an actual multi-day self-supported ride with sleep, resupply, and weather-handling rehearsed. If your longest ride has been a 12-hour gran fondo, you are guessing about hour 30, hour 50, hour 70 — and the desert does not negotiate with guesses.
Multi-day recovery capacity. By peak block, you've done at least three back-to-back-to-back weekends: 8 hours Saturday, 6 hours Sunday, 4 hours Monday. The training stress this builds — flush, refuel, sleep on tired legs, ride hard again — is the metabolic skill the back end of Badlands demands. Single long rides do not transfer.
If those three boxes are ticked by week 13, Badlands becomes a hard but controllable race. If they aren't, the 50% DNF rate that is normal for this event is the realistic expectation.
The 16-Week Framework
Four blocks of four weeks each, with the back-to-back-to-back work and the over-distance ride in the final 8 weeks. Volumes assume an experienced ultra rider with a 12-hour weekly base. First-timers, extend the base block by 8 weeks.
Weeks 1-4: Base
Volume: 12-15 hours/week.
Five to six rides, 80% in Zone 2. The aerobic engine is non-negotiable for ultra distance. Stephen Seiler's research on training intensity distribution applies hardest at this distance — the easy stuff has to be genuinely easy, because you're going to spend 90% of Badlands well below threshold and the body needs to be efficient at that pace.
At least 60% of weekend rides on gravel or mixed terrain to build durability and bike-handling. Long Z2 ride builds from 4 hours to 6 hours over the block.
Weeks 5-8: Build
Volume: 14-17 hours/week.
Two quality sessions per week. One threshold (4x10 minutes at 95-100% FTP, building to 3x15 minutes by week 8). One sustained tempo (2x30 minutes at 80-87% FTP).
Long ride climbs to 7-8 hours on gravel, with disciplined fuelling rehearsal at full intake. By week 7, do one 12-hour ride on similar surface to Badlands — gravel, fire road, rough farm-track. Not road, not bike paths.
Weeks 9-12: Peak
Volume: 18-22 hours/week. The back-to-back-to-back work starts.
Saturday 8 hours of gravel with one threshold block; Sunday 6 hours at sustainable pace; Monday 4 hours of recovery-pace gravel on tired legs. Repeat the structure with a rest week between, three times across the block.
By week 11, do the over-distance ride: 400-500km of self-supported ultra, ideally with one short sleep block in the middle. Test the sleep system — bivvy bag, hostel, hotel — in actual conditions. Test the saddle at hour 25, hour 40, hour 50. Test the gut at full intake for full duration. Test the lighting system at night. This is the rehearsal that prevents race-day surprises.
Dan Lorang's athletes ride this kind of stacked training before three-week stage races, and the principle scales further at ultra distance: protect easy days, drop volume on intensity days, use the long stacked weekend as the specific stimulus.
Weeks 13-16: Specific + Taper
Weeks 13-14: One final stacked weekend with full kit and full ultra simulation. Volume holds at 17-18 hours but quality work tightens to short, sharp efforts.
Weeks 15-16: Taper. Volume drops 30% in week 15, another 50% in week 16. Keep short intensity (3x5 minutes at threshold, 4x90 seconds at VO2). The fitness is in.
Travel to Spain 3-4 days early to acclimatise. Pre-ride 30-50km of the opening section. Sleep in the local time zone. Eat in the local rhythm. The body adjusts faster than the mind on the front end of a long event, and a settled body is a body that sleeps when it gets the chance.
If you build your plan in TrainingPeaks, the structured workouts and the ATL/CTL tracking make the back-to-back-to-back blocks legible — and the data clarity matters when you're trying to land peak fitness with no over-fatigue six days before the start.
Ultra-Distance Nutrition Strategy
Badlands is a calorie-deficit problem disguised as a race. You'll burn 8,000-12,000 kcal/day and you cannot eat that on the bike. The goal is to minimise the gap and refuel aggressively at every shop, café, and petrol station. The Roadman Cycling Podcast episode on the Badlands 800km strategy walks through the exact numbers a finisher used — worth reading alongside this guide.
On the bike. 70-90g carbs/hour from gels, bars, and bottled mix. Asker Jeukendrup's research on multiple transportable carbohydrates underpins the standard 2:1 glucose-fructose mix used by most riders. After hour 10, real food beats gels — sandwiches, tortilla, tuna, pastries, anything calorie-dense and palatable. Flavour fatigue is real and debilitating; don't rely on sweet gels alone.
Off the bike at every resupply. Eat real food at every shop, café, and petrol station. Hot food at café stops late at night isn't a luxury, it's a sleep enabler — you cannot lie down on cold gels alone. Coffee, tortilla, sandwiches, fruit. Spend 20-30 minutes if you need to.
Sodium. Non-negotiable in the desert sections. 1,000-2,000mg/hour is normal in 38°C heat. Salt tabs every hour, electrolyte mix in every bottle, salted real food at resupply.
Hydration. 750ml-1L/hour in heat, 500ml/hour at night. Map the shops on your GPX before the start; running out of water in the Tabernas is a 90-minute problem, not a 10-minute one. Carry 1.5-2L of reserve for desert sections.
Sleep as nutrition. Riders who get 4-6 hours/day of sleep recover; riders who try to push through on 90-minute naps without prior ultra experience crack on day 3. Sleep plan = nutrition plan. Write it down before the start.
For ultra-fuelling principles in detail, the carbs-per-hour guide covers gut training and absorption rates.
Common Mistakes
Underestimating the night cold in the desert. Spain in September feels like a warm-weather event until you discover 4°C at 03:00. Long-sleeve baselayer, gilet, full-finger gloves, leg warmers, and a thermal layer for sleep stops are all required. Riders who pack for 30°C and discover 4°C at 03:00 get hypothermic on the descents. The desert is hot in the day and cold at night, full stop.
Treating it like a long sportive. Badlands punishes riders without ultra experience. Complete a 300-500km ultra in training, ride back-to-back-to-back long days, test your saddle, your sleep system, and your gut at full distance before race day. A road sportive background without ultra pacing is a 50% DNF probability.
Riding the first 24 hours as if it were a 24-hour race. Pace at 60% of your 8-hour FTP from minute one. The leaderboard is meaningless until day 4. Riders who push above sustainable pace in the first 200km are the ones bonking in the desert two days later — and the desert does not negotiate.
No sleep plan. Sleep is a strategy, not an emergency response. Write down where, how long, and what triggers a sleep block before the start. The riders who finish well are the ones executing a written plan; the riders who DNF are the ones falling asleep on the side of the road at 04:00 with no idea where the next hostel is.
Skipping resupply mapping. Spanish villages close 14:00-17:00 and on Sundays. Map the open shops on your GPX before the start. Have a fall-back for every planned stop in case it's closed. Running out of water in the Tabernas at 14:30 because the planned shop closed is a survivable error if you have a fall-back, and a DNF if you don't.
Skipping the kit rehearsal. The bike fit, the saddle, the sleep system, the lights, the gut — all need testing at full distance before race day. Race day is not the time to discover that your saddle gives you a hot spot at hour 25, or that your sleep system doesn't work in 4°C, or that your light battery dies at hour 40.
Kit, Gearing, and Logistics
Bike. A gravel bike with frame clearance for 45-50mm tyres and mounts for the bikepacking setup you've tested. Tubeless mandatory. Disc brakes required. Bottle cages and frame pack tested for the bike under load.
Tyres. 42-50mm reinforced tubeless. Run pressure at the higher end of your normal gravel range — the rocky farm tracks slice low-pressure setups. Two plug kits, CO2, spare tube, chain quick link, multi-tool, spare derailleur hanger.
Bikepacking setup. Frame pack, top-tube bag, saddle pack, handlebar roll. Pack list refined across the build — by race day, you should be able to pack the bike in 20 minutes from a stable kit list. Trial it at full distance once.
Sleep system. A bivvy bag, an emergency blanket, and a small inflatable pillow are the minimum if you're sleeping outdoors. Most amateur finishers stay in hostels or pre-booked hotels — the time cost of a 30-minute sleep stop is real, but the recovery quality of a real bed is also real. Plan it pre-race.
Lights. A front light good for 8+ hours of night riding plus a backup. A rear light plus a backup. A head torch for camp setup, mechanical fixes, and reading signs in the dark.
Clothing. Long-sleeve baselayer, jersey, bib shorts (one pair, ridden 8+ hours pre-race), gilet, light insulated jacket, full-finger gloves, fingerless gloves, arm warmers, leg warmers, sun sleeves, cycling cap, thermal layer for sleep stops. Two-bottle minimum on the bike plus 1.5L hydration reserve for desert sections.
Bike fit. A 60+ hour ride exposes every fit issue. Saddle pressure, hand numbness, neck strain, knee tracking — anything you noticed on a 5-hour ride compounds across days. Get the fit checked 6-8 weeks pre-race, then test the changes at full distance.
Electronics. GPS head unit with the route loaded. Spare battery pack for charging the head unit and lights. Spare phone battery. Inreach or similar satellite communicator for the remote sections is sensible.
Free Plan Templates (Inside the Community)
Inside the Roadman Cycling community on Skool we host a free library of plan templates — sportive, road racing, gravel, base, build, VO2 max and FTP builder blocks. For Badlands, stack a long base block into a build block and overlay this article's back-to-back-to-back stacked-day work plus the over-distance ride in the peak block. Same structural templates we use as the starting point for paid coaching. Free to join.
How Roadman Coaches This
At Roadman Cycling we periodise the 16-week Badlands build around your starting fitness, your ultra experience, your local terrain access, and your sleep tolerance. Generic plans break on this event — the sleep strategy depends on your real-world racing history, the over-distance ride needs to land at the right point in the build, and the saddle and bike fit need rehearsal at full distance.
Most of our coached athletes work through TrainingPeaks — structured workouts, daily metrics, and a coach who actually reads your data instead of pasting templates. Coaching tiers run from $175/month for structured plan oversight to $1,250/month for full one-to-one coaching. Learn more about our coaching or how we work with riders across the UK, Ireland, and the US.
If you want to see your projected finish times before you commit, the Badlands event guide has the route breakdown, finish-time bands by W/kg, and the resupply and sleep strategy laid out by section. The companion piece on the Badlands 800km fuelling strategy walks through the calorie maths in detail.
Badlands rewards riders who treat it like what it is: an 800km self-supported ultra where sleep, kit, gut, and logistics decide more time than peak FTP does. Train ultra hours. Pack thoughtfully. Pace at sustainable wattage from minute one. Cross the desert at night. The medal is yours, and the race is one of the great rides on the planet.