Editors note ,I have loaded Tims photos in no particular order sorry …my bad. COC
I completed the 2026 Atlas Mountain Race just over three weeks ago and I’m now trying to write down what I remember about it. This race has become one of the big events in the ultra-cycling calendar – about 1400km, more than 50% off road in very remote areas and 25000m elevation. Like all ultras it’s self-supported so you’re on your own for accommodation, food and mechanical support. You carry a tracker and the clock never stops. This event is generally over-subscribed and I applied in 2025 without much expectation of getting a place – the reality of what I’d let myself in for only started to dawn on me a couple of months before the start.
I went against all the advice and used a gravel bike instead of an MTB. There were a number of reasons for this, which I won’t bore you with but it was just the most suitable bike that I had without buying (another) new one. I decided to put my gravel bike on steroids, with Maxxis MTB tyres (27.5×2.0”), a 32 tooth chainring and a Redshift suspension stem. In the end, I don’t think I was at a huge disadvantage over a hardtail MTB – I’ve some thoughts on what would have been the perfect bike at the end.
I’m not going to be able to give a very detailed account of my race, this is just a little bit of insight into my thoughts and emotions as the ride progressed. I’m genuinely thrilled that I was able to finish, when nearly 60% of participants had to scratch. That said, it was a brutally tough race that took a fair bit out of me both physically and mentally and I’m still recovering.
Some logistics…..
Previous editions of the AMR have started in Marrakech. For 2026, the start moved to a city called Beni Mellal. Accommodation was limited – I had booked a hotel room a couple of months before but they cancelled my reservation the day before I flew from Ireland. This seems to have happened to quite a number of riders, although generally when they arrived. I was able to find an alternative hotel a little further out of town. A bus transfer had been organised from Marrakech airport and we got in about midnight to a car park in Beni Mellal. I had an interesting walk across town to the hotel with an American chap called Mike as we manhandled our heavy and clumsy bike boxes through dusty streets. A local chap very kindly took pity on us and gave us a lift in his car, bike bags and all.
The start (day / night 1) 122km, 3331m
The 5pm start on Friday gave plenty of time for a bit of a lie-in after the late arrival, then the usual faff of reassembling the bike and getting bike, luggage and bike bag to the start point. I shared a taxi with a French lad called Stefan to do this in 2 runs, most other riders however seem to have opted for a single trip, wobbling uphill with bike bags and boxes precariously balanced on handlebars. Once I’d registered and left off my bike bag for transport to the finish line in Essaouria there wasn’t much to do other than eat tagine in the small café, which was rapidly overwhelmed by riders. The sky turned more grey and heavy rain started to fall, this wasn’t looking good. I met some of the other Irish riders, Dave Tilly was good company on and off for the first 24 hours and his daughter Hannah was a checkpoint volunteer. Because of the dreadful weather conditions (heavy rain / high passes blocked by snowdrifts) there was a longer diversion up to checkpoint 1 – this was all on Tarmac but it added an extra 100km to the planned route. The route organiser Nelson airily assured us that we would all arrive at CP1 at the same time as for the original route because it was all paved roads. I was not convinced.
I was struck by how fit and professional my fellow riders looked – I’d expected that there’d be a collection of riders on “clown bikes” – fat bikes, singlespeeds, fixies and folders, I couldn’t see any of these, just fast looking MTBs. The few of us who had turned up on gravel bikes tried not to look too worried.
There isn’t really too much to say about that first night. We all got very wet and cold, and the rain / hail continued long after dark fell at 8pm.All you could see was a patch of road in your headlight and torrents of water in the culverts at each side of the road. A couple of flooded sections from overflowing streams. I was lucky to find an open hotel at about 0200h and I got a bed in a large room with 3 other lads – there was even a warm(ish) shower and a towel and breakfast after a 4 hour rest. Most other riders had stopped in this town or before, although I heard some horror stories of bivvying under olive trees in the rain. The eventual winners had of course pressed on over a fearsome mountain pass through snow and ice.
Day 2, to CP1 249km, 3704m
Not too early a start after the previous night’s exertions, Strava says 0754h. Daylight, at any rate. If you’re thinking of doing the AMR, you’d better be prepared for a lot of night riding – it was pitch dark from 2000h until 0800h every day. I’d set myself a target of finishing by Friday evening – from my experience with the Transatlantic Way Race, 7 days is about as long as I can cope with before things fall apart and I wanted to rest in Essaouria before my return flight from Marrakech on Sunday. This meant nearly 200km every day; what I hadn’t properly factored in was how slow it would be – 13/14kph average speed means a lot of riding every day. This is part of the reason why I don’t have much memory of a lot of the ride as I was in complete darkness for a great deal of it.
Anyway, day 2 was a long, mostly road ride – the first climb took us over icy roads with abandoned cars and trucks. Several kms pushing. An omelette for a second breakfast / lunch with Dave set me up for next climb. I lost my sunglasses somewhere at the side of a climb when I stopped to eat some biscuits. I as still in leg warmers and overshoes for the whole of day 2 but no more ice after the first pass. It was windy and a bit like being in a more arid version of the Pyrenees. The day went on – another omelette in a guesthouse just after dark with other friendly riders, some opted to stay but I decided to press on to checkpoint 1. All went OK until I got lost, my Garmin didn’t seem to like the GPX file and only decided to work on day 3 so I was just following other riders, which wasn’t too bad on Tarmac. Anyway, the last 20km or so to CP1 was on the first bit of unpaved road and I managed to miss a turn, I lost a frustrating couple of hours trying to find my way out of a valley before I eventually retraced my steps and found another kind soul to follow. CP1 arrival at about 0230h but I got very lucky and I was able to get a room that another faster rider had just vacated – what luxury, a steaming hot shower, absolute bliss.
Day 3 141km, 2301m
Well down on distance target today. I reluctantly left my nice room and hot shower and got started, again just after daybreak at 0800h. CP1 was in a place called Boutharar, deep in a spectacular gorge – there was a steep zig-zagging track cut into a cliff to get out of it and then about 30km of open sandy trails. I passed a family of camels but saw no-one else on a bike for quite a while. There was a decent sized town, and this was the last chance to stock up with food and water for the next 100km of wilderness. I didn’t buy enough – it took me a few days to learn to carry extra food in a light backpack that I’d packed. I had a slight detour but then I was back on course with the Garmin finally showing the route. A bit of straight Tarmac and then a very long track through incredible mountains. This went on forever and to my dismay involved a fair bit of hike-a- bike. I stopped for a lunch of Tuc biscuits and tinned mackerel under the only tree I saw for the whole section. Tinned fish became a bit of a staple food, it was very hard to find proper food for the whole event. I also feasted on omelettes, bread, processed cheese and yoghurts, as well as biscuits, crisps and Coke. Sardine oil made excellent chain lube– the wax stuff I had brought along soon ran out and it wasn’t really up to the dust.
When the descent finally came it was getting dark and cold again; the trail eventually spat me out to a small town called Afra. I joined several French and German riders at a small café and I again managed to get a room for the night – just a mattress on a carpet floor but I slept well and treated myself to a cold shower.
Day 4 – to CP2, 215km, 3150m
This turned out to be the lowest point in the race; there’s always going to be a bad day at some stage in these long events. I got up in the dark, well done me; some hairy off road navigation but without any major incident. The morning’s highlight was a long road climb called the Ait Saoun pass. I’ve very little memory of the afternoon; I remember going through a large town called Taznakht and catching up with some friends at a café (not an omelette) then a long straight section on Tarmac before going off road on the final section to CP2.
The last section of Tarmac went through a grim little town uphill where I was harassed by crowds of cheeky children, who weren’t at all friendly. I lost a bottle of Coke – this is hardly surprising, when wealthy foreign cyclists arrive at a small village shop and buy up practically everything; they all know that we are loaded up like Santa Claus. The next long section could have been spectacular but I couldn’t see a thing with no moon and the road was too rough to spend any time admiring the stars. It went on for several hours and I was really looking forward to getting some rest at CP2.
Checkpoint 2 turned out to be a real disappointment; it was a noisy, dirty hostel packed with dozens of bodies sleeping on every available surface. Extortionate price for some horrible couscous and the toilets / washing facilities were repulsive. The enterprising staff were charging £4 for a jug of hot water. I really should just have pressed on and bivvied outdoors but I was cold and feeling miserable so I found a space on the corridor for sleeping bag and slept badly. This turned out to be my near-quitting moment, I was fed up with this race and Morocco in general – just a combination of little annoyances and being very tired.
Day 5 187km, 2271m
My mood lifted in the morning with some beautiful scenery and a chat with a cheerful Italian rider. We passed a vast herd of camels on a main road, holding up all the traffic, easily 200 and many were pure white. A long straight section of deserted highway; this turned left up to a small café for a good breakfast (you guessed it, omelette), several other riders and a decent toilet. The hills towered over us as we rode through the small town and up, up, up to a lunar landscape – not a blade of grass for ages. Down again to a tremendous valley that looked like a dried-up lake, what an extraordinary place. This lasted a long time, some very rough riding. Mile after mile of jagged hills all around.
The dirt road finally gave way to paved for a bit and another small town for resupply. We were then on the infamous Old Colonial Road. After an initial flat desert section the climb started; several hours of winching myself up along this old track that seemed never to end. I think it’s about 70km. The road had completely collapsed at 2 points which meant some challenging detours through the dried up river below. Darkness fell when I finally reached the summit and I was definitely under-biked for the very rough descent. Anyway, I made it down in one piece. Food at a late-night café in Issafen with several other riders and a space on the carpeted floor upstairs – an indoor bivvy. I slept like a log.
Old Colonial Road
Day 6 through CP3 189km, 3617m
What an incredible day. I started in the dark again. A winding road uphill through a lovely series of valleys; date palms and flowering trees. I’d got an avocado at the café the night before, this made a good breakfast with the inevitable tinned sardines. Lots more climbing and my only serious dog chase – thankfully downhill and I was able to outpace the brute. Lots of very remote dusty gravel roads and the route was losing altitude steadily, getting into the Sahara. I hadn’t brought enough suncream and I started to fry, I was very glad of my long-sleeved cycle shirt. The route brought me through an oasis – date palms and running water, such a treat after the complete absence of water since the latter part of day 2. The last checkpoint, CP3 was the next stop, a lovely hotel in a town called Tafraoute. There was a lot more normal tourist traffic on the roads – especially motorhomes, mostly German or Spanish.
CP3 was a real haven of rest – friendly and helpful staff in a well-run hotel. I got a shower and a pizza, recharged some electrics and I could have happily stayed a lot longer. It hadn’t got dark yet though so I decided to press on and bivvy out with Guillaum from Lyons. We rode about 60km into the hills and found a concrete slab in an abandoned olive press to set up camp. It was cold, with frost already setting in but I fell asleep as soon as I lay down.
Day 7, to the finish. 379km 6750m
The stats tell their story; there was a lot of climbing and no sleep. The summary is that I rode from early Thursday morning until the finish line in Essaouria on Friday night.
It was a trickly descent from the bivvy site of the night before on a concrete steep road. The valley below had a river that had burst its banks with the enormous amount of rain that had fallen in the previous 4 weeks and there was a diversion with a difficult climb up the other side of the valley. A very slow couple of hours before we got clear – I made new friends with Sune from Denmark and Axel from Germany here and I think I’d probably still be scrabbling around the valley I hadn’t met them. One over-the-bars fall when my front wheel got stuck in a ditch, not too bad. Breakfast / lunch stop in a town at the top of the climb – I was amazed to watch a German rider repair his front brake outside the café, syringe bleeding the lever and stripping down pistons and seals. He flew past me later on a tricky descent so it must have worked.
My second fall of the day happened on a downhill bend at slow speed, the front wheel slid sideways and I did my best Superman impression, landing hard on the dusty road. A few scrapes and bruises but again no serious damage – fatigue was setting in.
We were treated to a 15km sand road through proper desert; it was unrideable for the first couple of km but OK to ride slowly after. I felt incredibly lonely, with only the tyre tracks of previous riders in the sand. 6 hard days riding had taken their toll but I suddenly had the most vivid experience of God’s presence with me in that desolate place. I had an overwhelming sense of peace that He was not only with me in this desert but that He had been with me all my life, in all the good times but also in all my failures, disappointments and mistakes. I found myself weeping as I rode on over the sand. I’m an easy blubber in fairness, but it was a very special experience in that lonely place and I was sure from that point on that I was going to make it to the end of the ride.
The desert road eventually spat me out on a farm track and back to civilisation with a passenger jet coming in to land overhead – the route was just on the outskirts of Agadir.
A final resupply as darkness fell, a lot of riders had gathered in a dingy cafe, gradually moving on for the next big climb. I learned after that this was called Paradise Valley – a steep climb on a forest trail in the dark. Fantastic descents – I love going downhill fast on a gravel bike off road and it’s even better in the dark. An MTB might have been safer but I think I had more fun. The descent continued to a valley, after midnight it felt humid and warm. I stopped for coffee but passed on the chance to bivvy outside the small café with Guillaum and several others; a short sleep mightn’t have been the worst idea but the place seemed buggy and noisy with frogs croaking loudly. I didn’t like it and I was desperate to end the race by then.
Something very odd happened for a short while– the bike wouldn’t move properly and I had to pedal downhill in low gear. There’s a number of things that can cause drag on a bike, but the cranks and wheels seemed to be spinning freely with no rub. At one stage I stopped to take out the back wheel – my brake pads were nearly worn out but they’d get me to the end and everything else seemed fine. Maybe it was just sheer fatigue that made me imagine all this, or maybe there was some malevolent froggy-demon of the valley that just didn’t want me to be there. I sort of forgot about it and so I didn’t get to ask anyone else if this happened to them. Anyway, it seemed to sort itself out as I headed up the next 1000m road climb, which was nick-named the Moroccan Stelvio. I’ve climbed the real Stelvio Pass with my two good friends Brian G and Brian S but I can’t tell you how they compare – it was pitch dark and there was a thick mist all the way to the top. I was getting very tired at the top and I think I dozed off for a few minutes at the side of the road; I also must have missed a turn and found myself going backwards for a bit until I met the next rider behind me – Ali, a Moroccan rider living in France. He must have worked out that I wasn’t in great shape because he very kindly rode the descent with me and stayed with me until daylight; I didn’t get to see him at the end to thank him.
The final 12 hours or so is a bit of a blur – it was pretty isolated and there wasn’t a chance to get food and water until Imsouane – we were now on the Atlantic coast. I was delighted to meet Sune in a nice café and we shared a table at lunch.
My memory bank has pretty much shut down for the final stretch, which must have been about 100km. Here’s another weird thing though, I had one of the most vivid deja-vu experiences of my entire life. There was a climb up a steep gravel road after a quarry / stone crusher – it seemed to stretch out for ages with an almost convex slope, not concave. I was absolutely certain that I had been there before in a dream, I’ve never been to Morocco before – the only rational explanation I can come up with is that I might have seen it in someone’s YouTube post from a previous race but I still don’t think that was the case. Sleep deprivation was clearly having an effect. Anyway, it got dark soon after and I can remember almost nothing about the rest of the ride, possibly a short dog chase but can’t be sure. Essaouria was a shock to the system with wide roads and busy traffic but there was a fantastic welcome at the café for the finish line; final brevet stamp, hugs and handshakes. I handed over my tracker and I’d even arrived just in time for a dinner order of fish tagine that tasted simply incredible after days of tinned fish
Race over, I’d pre-booked an apartment close to the finish and this worked out very well. I slept until 10am and spent most of Saturday eating and sleeping. I fired the bike and all the associated bits into the bike bag, not hugely caring if it all arrived home in one piece (all good, thanks Ryanair). My left ankle had swollen up like a balloon (Achille’s tendon) and I was already peeling from sunburn but overall I wasn’t too bad, not even any saddle sores of note. There was a Finishers’ party on Saturday night that I just about managed to stay awake for and the bus back to Marrakeck airport was on Sunday morning. I got home at 0130h and I was in work on Monday morning.
If you’re still reading this deranged stream of consciousness then thank you and well done. Thank you to everyone who supported me throughout this adventure and for all your encouragement and help; your kindness really means a lot to me.
Would I do this again? I think I can safely say no; there’s more ultras that I want to do but I this mountain race pushed me to my limit of endurance in all sorts of ways.
Quitting – some thoughts
I’m still a bit puzzled at how an event like this can have such a high scratch rate. Is it just too difficult, too remote, too much climbing? This was a strong field of entrants at the start who had all trained hard and invested considerable time, energy and money into taking part. Obvious reasons are injuries and mechanicals – big Dave Tilly crashed in 2024 and broke his collar-bone. He clearly came back with a sense of unfinished business. My friend Steve wrote off his rear mech in the same race, leaving him with an unrideable bike and a long trek to the finish line. But I don’t believe that most people quit due to very serious injury or mechanicals. Maybe just fatigue / fed up, running out of time with flights home booked? I heard of and saw some riders coping with mechanical issues that would have probably put me out of the race – one German rider finished well ahead of me with half a handlebar and a single brake after a crash.
So, why keep going when it all gets miserable and you’re fed up, sore (but not injured) and tired? Especially when you’re not competing for a podium finish or top 10 or whatever. Well, part of my motivation was that a lot of people were cheering me on and I didn’t want to let them down. I knew that if I quit I would end up being a right pain for my wife and family because I’d be disappointed and moping. I’d probably even end up having to come back and repeat the whole thing. In any case, quitting somewhere in the middle of the Atlas Mountains only creates a whole new set of problems – how do you make your way to the finish line? No race transport, so you’d need to find a bus or a taxi or navigate your own way on some of Morocco’s busy main roads, no thanks. You might as well carry on.
What’s the best bike for AMR?
Probably a full suspension carbon XC bike, as light as possible with electronic gears. It’ll get battered. At the end of my day, my little gravel bike did very well – apart from the temporary drag nothing at all went wrong, not even a puncture. The only change I wished I had made was Di2 (Shimano electronic gear shifting) – my right wrist got very tired from constant gear changes. As the race has gone on year by year there’s been a big decrease in people riding gravel bikes, with most moving initially to hardtail MTBs but now moving again to full-sus.
Santa Cruz Blur…..The perfect bike ?
Tim Lewis
11/03/2026