Gravel Birds | 750km Bikepacking race with my bestie 🙌

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Though we live in separate countries, Juliana is one of my absolute best friends. The chance to pair up for another ultracycling race, this time in Portugal, was an opportunity not to be missed.

Gravel Birds follows a wonderful route through the Alentejo region of Portugal (near the Algarve and Faro), making use of some fast-flowing, challenging and beautiful gravel roads. Then there was the hike-a-bike, ‘sand pit’ and multiple water crossings to keep us on our toes!

Check out the first day of this, one of the best short off-road bikepacking in Europe.

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good morning it is day one of Gravelbird 750 in Portugal in the Alenteo and in classic style juliana and I turned up when the race had already started people were already leaving and we’re like “What the hell it’s not 6:30 yet.” Well it is 6:33 so we quickly jumped in and we’re heading off um the route has not loaded my tracker isn’t working it’s the usual the usual chaos but off we go guess what happened realized I’d left my phone at the accommodation miguel is at the front and had a key in his pocket i time traveled all the way to the front to try and catch him i couldn’t catch him i’ve just done the hardest 8 km of my life and the group is going to go back and get my phone and ride all this again oh my god bye everyone why why why poor Juliana she can just carry on and I’ll catch her up i think that’s probably for the best oh no I can’t take that oh why is my life like this no one from the campsite’s going to be around at 7:00 [Music] a.m bloody race started at half six right the first of potentially many problems solved let’s find Juliana oh I’m cold now we’ve also done an extra 17 pointless kilometers i’m so lucky that Juliana is so nice and so chilled she’s just like “Yeah I’ll wait for you up here don’t worry it’s lovely you are the best friend [Music] gravel roads are really lovely and of course Juliana and I are like “Oh if it’s all like this it’s going to be fine.” Of course it never is all like this so we’ll see what the organizers have got in store for us i think tomorrow is going to be a really hard day so we’re trying to just keep it easy today and get up the hills without burning too many matches do think it’s ridable i’m going to be a right princess and take my shoes and socks off don’t want wet shoes and socks very refreshing now some hiker bike [Music] hi oh no one wants a stroke wow time for the luxurious car park picnic what have we got today we’ve got pasta salad tuna and egg sandwich chips yeah coffee water and some nuts obviously I’m not going to eat everything right now how’s it going Timmy too early in the game to feel like this oh no that’s not what we want to hear i’m okay the legs are okay i don’t know why I feel like did you take your antihistamines all the drugs oh all the drugs i bought way too much food if I eat all this I won’t be able to move we’re aiming for about 180k obviously I’ve already done well an extra 20k so I’ll be doing 200k there’s no way that sandwich is staying in that pocket no I’m going to eat it right now thanks to Hule for sponsoring this video i’ve recently started using their hot and savory meal pouches when bike packing and it’s been a revelation it was actually Laura who switched me on to this she has the big bags of Hu hot and savory and she would just take a serving with her but now they do these small pouches and you can have a little pot that goes with it i’ll show you and you’ll see why I like them so in here I’ve got all my cooking stuff you know I like going minimal uh these are the meal pouches there’s seven different varieties then I’ve got my little stove cooking pot and gas the only thing I’m not sure about is where my spork is cuz uh the kids had all my sporks out last weekend and I’ve not seen them since a lot of the reason why I like this stuff is because of cost you know those camping freeze-dried like expedition meals that you get they’re about 7 quid it is so expensive whereas you can get these single serving meals for um upwards of about £2.75 another reason I like it is because you don’t have to use a lot of fuel you not cooking stuff for a long time you just boil the water and then pour it on top of your meal leave it for 5 minutes and it’s cooked it also means you’re not like boiling pasta then throwing water away i’m having one of these for lunch so let’s prepare it so sunny unbelievable so you need roughly 200 mil woohoo we’re good you only have to wait 5 minutes and I find even 5 minutes hard to deal with not cooked yet all right we are done not going to win any prizes for how it looks but it’s a nutritionally complete food they have about 25 grams of protein depending on which flavor you go for mainly based around grains rice pasta and plant protein and they’ve got 26 vitamins and minerals in them so it’s a really good option if you’re busy or trying to keep things lightweight or easy use the link below to check out Hule hot and savory meal packs and use my code Juliet for £10 off your order in the UK [Music] more water last stop 40k to goish and no more resupply so well we’re good i mean I still fall from little at lunchtime genuinely eight hours 150k and a hill great didn’t really want wet shoes but also didn’t really want to step on all those rocks with bare feet so oh there’s a lot of really punchy little climbs in this section it’s so so pretty all the flowers are blooming it’s been a really wet spring and with all the sun now on it it’s gorgeous rather nice way to spend your evening 27% [Music] grade nearly there we’ve called ahead and reserved a guest house and we’ve also asked them if they might be able to give us any food or tell us where to get some so fingers crossed oh it’ll be so nice to have a shower i am so sweaty and disgusting god how embarrassing oh my god i still have this in a five-star hotel so the only hotel we could find to stay in is really nice and everyone’s here having a really nice dinner and well but we’re so happy to be here more food thanks