Self-confessed ultra-endurance acolyte, Bruce Hughes, ponders the future of unsupported endurance racing in the wake of Mike Hall’s tragic passing at this year’s Indian Pacific Wheel Race in Australia.

At 6:20AM on Friday the 31st of April a cyclist was killed in a collision with a motor vehicle on the Monaro Highway near Canberra, Australia. At the time of writing this piece, the details regarding the cause of the collision were unknown.

What we do know is the name of the cyclist: Mike Hall. This will not mean much to many, and is likely to be just another forgettable name in an all too long list of names of cyclists who have fallen in such collisions.

Hall, was however, not your average cyclist, and the story of his passing will, like a rock cast into a still pond, generate far reaching ripples throughout the cycling community, in which he occupied near demi-god status.

You see, Hall was an ‘ultra-athlete’; a specialist in self-supported ultra-endurance cycling races. He was director of the insane Transcontinental Race across Europe (in which I competed in 2015). He was the winner of the 2012 World race and 2014 Trans-America. He also holds the record for the fastest Tour Divide – 13 days and 11 hours (to put this in perspective: it took me 25 days and 7 hours to finish the same race in 2014). There is perhaps only one person whose Palmarès rivals Hall’s – a Belgian by the name of Kristoff Allegaert.

At the time of Hall’s death he was locked in a titanic battle with Allegaert for the lead of the Indian Pacific Wheel Race across Australia. This was the first time they had gone head-to-head and the ding-dong back-and-forth duel of physical and mental prowess had the bikepacking community drooling over their keyboards as they followed these two Spartan’s spot trackers across the continent.

Coming into the last 500km of the 5500km race Hall had closed Allegaert’s lead down to a measly couple of hours, but the cost of both hunting and being hunted was being felt. They had both slept in the region of 9 hours over the past 12 days. In a video interview the day before his death Hall was visibly tired. He mentioned that he had been struggling to stay awake on the bike. A couple days previously he had tweeted about 12 near misses he had with speeding cars as he pushed through the night.

It is not appropriate to speculatively point the finger of blame at any one party involved in this tragedy. It may very well have been, as is so often the case, pure driver error. Hall was an experienced cyclist not prone to creating dangerous situations for himself. That being said, the circumstances of Hall’s death will inevitably push certain issues into the limelight for vigorous debate, regardless of whether details of the cause of the incident are ever themselves brought to light. It is important therefore, to place the accident within the context of the race, as its impact will be felt precisely because of the circumstances in which it occurred.

This is not the first motor vehicle related accident in a self-supported race, nor in fact was it the first hospitalisation in the 2017 Indian Pacific. Part of the fabric of ultraendurance bikepacking (one of the reasons this niche type of racing has experienced such growth) will also be the one thing that has the potential to curb its future growth, or possibly even end it all together. Bikepackers crave self-reliance. We want the challenge of solitude without the interference of organisation. We want to face all the elements as they naturally occur, not to compete in a manufactured environment tainted by handmade singletrack, frequent refreshment tables, rest stops, massages, bike service packages, and 3 square meals a day. We want to reduce cycling to its most basic elements; to remove the crutches that at the same time help and hinder us.

But this is dangerous. Things get broken when the protective wrapping is removed.

Having competed in the 2015 Transcontinental Bikepacking Race organised by Hall I can testify to the near insanity of competing in such races with the idea of finishing within the cut-off time. The race allowed competitors to choose any ‘cycling legal’ route to the finish so long as it passed through the four checkpoints and they reached the finish in fewer than 16 days – this required a monumental 330km daily mileage.

Bringing the daily distance down to that number meant taking the straightest and fastest route. Inevitably this meant traversing some dangerous roads not ordinarily recommended to cyclists. In this regard the endlessly straight and shoulderless roads of northern Italy immediately come to mind as having been particularly terrifying.

Yet, stories of navigating the so called ‘sleep monsters’ occasioned by extreme fatigue, in the midst of humming traffic are fondly regaled by participants at the finish of such races. You see, stories carry weight, more weight than medals. Those with the most stories, those that flirted most ardently with the risk/reward boundary line are not chastised but revered.

I can say it no better than Hall did himself after winning the World Cycle Race, “The winner will be the guy who lives fast, not necessarily the one who rides fast”.

Over the 29000km race Hall decided that time could be made up simply by not hanging around – by drinking his coffee faster, by only stopping to sleep when he was actually in danger of falling off the bike and by making sure that all his daydreaming, highs, lows, panics and crises happened on the bike, rather than by the side of the road. In so doing he carved out a path for other would-be ultra-athletes to try and follow. He was a man of many and fantastic stories.

The problem is, until now the genuine potential fatality of pushing oneself so incredibly hard in dangerous environs has not come home to roost. Fiction has not become fact. There is a dividing line between the impact of near misses, and fatalities. Perhaps it is the difference between courage and foolhardiness. Near misses add weight to stories; they give credence to all participants’ courage.

Perhaps, however, it is time to reconsider our stories. Were we brave or just lucky? In our desire to escape the Labrynth of traditional racing, to cast aside the shackles binding our potential and reach for the freedom of the skies, was Hall, like fabled Icarus, the victim of our collective hubris? Did Mike Hall, soaring leagues above our head, fly too close to the sun?

These are questions that may never be answered but will undoubtedly be debated with increasing veracity in the months to come. At the heart of this debate lies the future of organised bikepacking.