2024 Newsletter #2 – Riders Roster & Route Info

For the time being, the 2024 route will be more or less the same as last year’s route, which is the best iteration of the B-HARD route to date, with even more nature, more climbs, more epic views and even less traffic than in the previous years.

Let’s do a quick overview of the route. The roads are a mixture of main, regional and local roads, completely surfaced with asphalt (save for any eventual roadworks on the route). The condition of the surface ranges widely – from brand new asphalt to broken and patched up sections. Comfort is a relative term in the case of ultradistance cycling but 28 mm tyres are perfectly fine for the job. Many riders have completed the route without issues even on 25 mm tyres, while some prefer 32 mm or larger tyres, which can only be more comfortable while not being significantly slower. The roads in Bosnia & Herzegovina are generally not too busy traffic-wise, except around the cities of Mostar and Sarajevo. However some roads are narrow and generally in Bosnia & Herzegovina there is no “hard shoulder” for cyclists to ride on, e.g. you share the main part of the road with other traffic, so you always need to leave some room on your right-hand side.

Also, while there’s normally no shortage of petrol stations and cafes along the main roads, except in the rural mountain areas, there’s a 100 km portion of the route between CP4 and CP5, specifically between Čapljina and Trebinje, that follows the famous Ćiro Bike Trail – an old narrow gauge railway converted to a (bumpy) public road and a marked cycling route. This portion of the route offers virtually no restocking options except a very nice hotel/restaurant in Ravno, as an oasis at about halfway of the aforementioned section. Also, this section might be quite intimidating if riding alone at night while it offers very nice views during daytime.

The B-600 route follows the main route until CP4 and then it shortly heads up North to the town of Jablanica, where it joins the main route again and follows it until the finish.

Although predetermined by locations of select natural beauties and touristic destinations, the 10 obligatory checkpoints are pretty evenly and logically dispersed throughout the route and all of them offer commercial accommodation at the spot or nearby, while some come with restaurants attached to them. For those with a healthy appetite, it’s convenient to make a short stop and have a full course lunch at CP3 during the first day, followed by getting accommodation near CP4 for the first night. This plan should suit all but the most dedicated riders – the ones that are trying to outsmart the stopwatch – that are going to ride throughout the night.

From then on, the tactics will determine the remainder of the individual logistics but CP6 – that marks the halfway point of the route – is another great spot for tasting local cuisine. Riders in the brevet category will find it convenient to plan the second nightly rest at CP7, while the quickest racers will have already passed CP8 by this time.

It might be a good analogy to say that the section from the START to CP7 is the “B” part of B-HARD, because from CP7 until the FINISH it definitely becomes “HARD”. This section is the “all hell breaks loose” part of the route, with mountain pass after mountain pass – containing Cima Coppi, e.g. the highest point of the whole route (at CP8) as well. However, everyone should be able to reach CP9 (or at least the mountain preceding it) by the end of the third day and have a good night’s rest there before starting a relatively short fourth day, with a casual finish in the evening by 11 PM. Slightly quicker riders will complete the course during the fourth morning/day, while the quickest ones will have already finished on the third day or third night.

You can familiarise yourself with the checkpoint host towns and the descriptions of the route in-between them on our website:

Let’s just do some quick math – for those of you who may be tackling this kind of challenge for the first time – if your average riding speed for the route is 20 km/h (which is realistically quite slow), it will take you less than 61 hours of riding to complete the whole loop. Stopping for three nights of 6 hours each (which is quite long really) will add another 18h to your total time. Add 2.5h of total stopped time during each of the 4 days onto that and you end up at 89h in total. So you can see that, if you have good amounts of stamina, some strength, quite a bit of willpower and no major issues – you can “easily” complete the route within the posted time limit.

Those of you going for the best result will ride at between 22 and 26 km/h on average and will be aiming for very little sleep in total, which will get you to the finish line in the 60 to 80 hours range. Riders in the B-RACE category should keep in mind that completing the route under 84h qualifies them for Race Across America, while for B-1200 LRM riders there’s no need to rush it (and they get an additional hour and 20 minutes on top of the 90h time limit). The time limit for B-600 BRM riders is 40h.

You can check the distribution of finishing times on here but bear in mind the weather was appalling last year, hence a large number of DNFs:

We are eager to see you train and inspire others to ride and potentially join the B-HARD family – so please tag us in your posts and stories as @bhardultrarace and we will happily share them.

If you are proud and excited of the fact that you will be riding with us, we have included a few photos you can post/share at your leisure – again tag us as @bhardultrarace and https://www.bhardultrarace.com (where applicable).

Also, let us see your efforts in detail by joining our Strava club: www.strava.com/clubs/563459

In case we’ve forgotten to mention something that you absolutely need to know at this point – do let us know and we will do our best to help out!