Racing and riding season is in full swing! This week we hear from some of the women racing Tour Divide 2026, along with Hannah Glatter who is currently riding 5,600KM along the Great Plains Gravel Route.

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For the first time ever, the Highland Trail 550 has a 50-50 gender split on the startline. For the 14th edition in 2026, 32 women will be racing. Since 2022, Alan has worked hard to build a 50-50 start list, encouraging women that they belong on the startline.

This year’s event is longer than previous editions, with 913km around the Scottish highlands. Created by Alan Goldsmith, it was inspired by events in the US like the Tour Divide and the Colorado Trail Race. As Alan describes it on the HT550 website: initially put together as a training ride, it became apparent that the great trails, beautiful scenery, remote wilderness, and fickle Scottish weather offered a world-class route for a self-supported challenge right here in the UK. The route follows stunning trails, includes some boggy and technical sections, and hike-a-bike to boot.

Watch our dots HERE as we make our way around the highlands.

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Nutrition is one of the most underestimated parts of bikepacking and ultra-distance racing. We can dial our kit, obsess over our gear, train for months — but if we're not fuelling well, none of it matters. This week, Dietician Uri Carlson is back on Detours, and this time we had a very specific agenda: Highland Trail 550 is on the horizon, and this year I'll be lining up for my first time, and I wanted to make sure I left no stone unturned.

We get into carb loading — when to start and how to think about it for a multi-day race that lasts a week — resupply strategy, hydration ranges, gut health and the microbiome, what to do when you're too nauseous to eat but still have a long way to go, and why under-fuelling is a bigger threat to your gut than any high-carb gel. A lot of the specifics are Highland Trail flavoured, but the fuelling principles apply to any ultra-endurance adventure you've got on the horizon.

You can also find the blog post version of this episode on Substack

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What do you do when things don't go your way? When you're caught in the eye of a storm and unsure whether to continue. When the race you trained all winter for falls apart on day one.

Justyna Jarczok has been cycling for only two years, and in that short time she's found some answers. She's resilient, positive, and ambitious – and she just won the women's race at Dale's Divide.

We talk about decision making in extreme weather, reframing races that don't go to plan, the community that rallied when her bike was stolen, and why ultra feels like the place she belongs.

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A lil life update on our recent trip to Spain, bikepacking around Girona, one month living overseas and the final few weeks of prep before Highland Trail 550.

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Gala Giannini is an ER doctor, ultra racer, and now event organizer based in northern Italy. She's raced Italy Divide, Gran Guanche, Silk Road, Atlas, and Badlands.

At her first ultra, there were maybe four women on the start line. At Atlas this year, the change was undeniable.

In this episode of Detours, we talk about the growing movement of more women on start lines, how winning a gravel bike by drawing a 180-kilometer reindeer on Strava led to her first ultra two months later, the parallels between night shifts in the ER and racing through the night, and the event she's building in the Italian Alps – named after a mythological goat with uneven legs.

Learn more about the Dahu Trail

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What if the thing waiting on the other side of "failure" is more valuable than the goal itself?

Vedangi Kulkarni is an ultra-endurance cyclist, adventurer, and two-time round-the-world rider. She first circumnavigated the globe at 19 – starting in Australia in 2018 and finishing on Christmas Eve, turning 20 somewhere along the way. Then in 2024, she set out again, starting and finishing in India, chasing the record for the fastest woman to cycle around the world. She didn't get the record. But what she found along the way might have been more valuable.

Now based in Inverness, Scotland, Vedangi runs The Adventure Shed, helping others plan solo expeditions, and is launching the Looking Beyond Barriers Adventure Fund to support the next generation of women adventurers.

In this episode of Detours we talk about the privilege of a single yes, what it took to keep going when her goal slipped out of reach, redefining success around impact over performance, and so much more.

Follow Vedangi's adventures: @thisisvedangi

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Millie Gibbons loves riding her bike. And when I say loves, I mean she's Everested four times and her idea of a really good time is gathering eight women and riding 200K to France for a croissant.

Based in Girona and always surrounded by a girl gang, Millie has built community simply by showing up and doing what she loves. She's also a seriously quick racer, winning the women's race at Kromvojoj in 2025 and and Trans Pyrenees 2023.

In this episode, we talk about her proudest finish at Alps Divide on an underbiked gravel setup through every weather condition imaginable, the meditative simplicity of racing for a busy brain, and her philosophy: find your thing, have fun doing it.

Follow Millie's adventures: @milliegibbons

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