Giant ambassador William Loyd and his wife Ayesha, a Liv ambassador and former pro racer, tackled the Girona 700, an unsupported ultra event over mountains and through the countryside of their home in the Catalonia region of Spain. This is Will’s account of the three-day adventure on his trusty Giant Defy Advanced SL.
It’s been almost four years now since I moved to Spain. Living here, I’ve become enthralled with long rides to places less travelled. A mountain ride here, an overnight stay at a quaint small town there. For me, the bike is such a great way to see more of the country I now call home.
Ultra-distance cycling is defined as any bike race, event or route longer than a century—100 miles or 160.9km. While I often ride three- to four-hour loops, these longer rides have become my jam. There’s just something about a multi-day event that I really enjoy—the planning, the random moments experienced on the saddle, the new roads and views. All these sensations work in unison to fulfill that dopamine hit one gets from an adventure.
Recently I participated in Ride Across Girona 700, an unsupported, timed event through the Catalonia region of Spain. This was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done to date—I don’t usually ride 700km with close to 38,000 feet of climbing just because!
My wife Ayesha and I did this ride last year, when the route was 400km, and we really enjoyed it. We saw parts of the region we had never been to, and backroads around places we had already frequented.
For the 2025 event, organizers turned up the climbing to the maximum. We were locked in and ready, with our main goal being to finish the route in three rides—and this year we’d be riding at night. Last year’s 400km route we split into two days of riding, so this would be progress!
With that goal in mind, we set the agenda around our planned stops. With five mandatory checkpoints we had a good idea where we’d want to sleep and resupply for nutrition. To be fair, my experience the previous year was that I preferred to not stop much, but Ayesha made sure to veto that for this longer attempt. I guess climbing Coll d’Ares first thing in the morning with only some bread and juice for breakfast and no food stops until midday makes my preferences ill-advised. So this year we planned to have supply stops every 50km or so. Running out of fuel would not be an issue.
While the extra climbing would be challenging, I felt confident in my trusted bike setup with my Defy Advanced SL. I had used it to ride from Bilbao to Barcelona a few months prior and felt good going in.
Unfortunately, that confidence left the chat about 10 minutes before our 6 am start. My bike was leaning against the car, and when Ayesha slammed the door shut, the Defy fell to the ground, resulting in a bent derailleur hanger. With just minutes to get to the start line, I had no choice but to press on without being able to use any gears higher than the sixth cog on my 10-36 cassette.
Such is how long-distance events go—anything can and usually will happen. Fortunately, the Defy comes equipped with a 46/33T crank, so it wasn’t completely unbearable. By the time we had carefully bent the hanger back into shape, we were well into seven hours of saddle time.
Challenges like this can make for a bad time, but we’re both headstrong and we knew that if we kept cool, we could work it out. A large part of any long-distance ride is controlling how you deal with arising issues, especially when riding with others. Despite tiring out my legs on the climbs more than I’d anticipated, we finished our first day in the dark but with full use of my cassette. Day one would be our longest at 294km and the most climbing at 16,781 feet (5,115m), so everything moving forward should be smooth sailing. Right?
Day two started out slowly. We begrudgingly went downstairs to the hotel breakfast. Knowing you need to do something and actually doing it are much harder after riding almost 14 hours. Stomachs full, we set out to tackle the first two of the three major climbs along the route, nestled in the Pyrenees with not much flat ground in between
Somewhere along the route Ayesha decided to sit down for a rest in front of an ajuntament, the Catalan word for town hall. The benches were perhaps a little too inviting as a fellow Ride Across Girona participant had also stopped here a few feet up the road. It was during this break that Ayesha determined that due to the long first day and our sluggish start, it didn’t make sense to try and push through to the top of the second climb.
We were fully cognizant that stopping for the day would mean delaying the combined 40km of climbing until day three—which already had its fair share of elevation gain. It was a gamble, but we were banking on feeling better after getting some much-needed rest. A couple of rollers and a 12km climb later we reached our hotel in the town of La Pobla de Lillet.
We were nestled at the foot of the daunting Coll de La Creueta, but that would be tomorrow’s problem. For the moment, we rested. It’s important to be able to pivot when the situation calls for it. All the planning in the world doesn’t amount to much if we ignore what our bodies dictate. This wasn’t a race, we had four days to finish, and as the saying goes: “Man plans and God laughs.”
The following morning, we woke up rejuvenated and steeled for what was to come—281km and 13,606 feet of climbing, followed by about 60km of descending to the finish line.
We got through the first two climbs with relative ease, but the true test would be the first major descent of the day. At the top of Col du Calvaire, we saw inclement weather ahead. We would end up narrowly avoiding precipitation, but the temperature was plummeting, highlighting one of the only packing mistakes I’d made—a lack of warm gloves.
Every single time I’ve taken my bike to France it’s been cold, no matter what time of year. Granted, Mount Ventoux stands alone in the wind and the Alps are just on a different level, but still, at the end of August I did not expect to need winter gloves.
Nothing like thinking on your feet, a necessity for any successful adventure. We stopped at an Intermarché and Ayesha bought two pairs of heavy-duty cleaning gloves. All the wind-blocking protection with none of the pretentious cycling kit markup, just in case you ever get caught without. You might be frowned upon for your aesthetics, but let’s focus on what’s important here—warmth!
We crested Collada de Tosses with sunset fast approaching, meaning the next 30km of descent would be into the night. At this point we were certifiable night riding professionals, and the road became our own personal dragstrip.
The beauty of riding at night in the Pyrenees is that the roads are not heavily trafficked. It wasn’t until we were about 50km from the finish that things started to fall apart. Neither fatigue nor hunger was the culprit—our lights ran out of power.
Forced to stop on a well-lit path in an industrial complex, we waited for my light to charge enough to stay on. From there I charged it in my frame bag while we rode. It lasted just long enough to get us to the finish. I never used the brightest setting, and Ayesha rode slightly off to my side to see what was up ahead. Being delayed so close to the finish was probably the biggest mental hurdle for the entire trip. Anyone who is married knows well the gravity held by the eyes of an angry wife.
Nonetheless we reset, collected ourselves and got it done. Yes, we reached the finish at 2:35 a.m., but we achieved our goal and managed with only one major bike issue. We also didn’t finish last as we thought we would have. This year’s event was much harder in terms of elevation gain, with only 13 of 28 riders finishing.
Also notable was that Ayesha was the only woman to complete the full 700km route. I enjoyed this ride so much for its incredible route, but also for the time spent on the bike with my wife. That’s something I cherish so much—we all should have a favorite person to share our adventures with.
Having an adventure on a bike is one of the most thrilling and enriching ways to spend our time. We can truly get a sense of ourselves and our processes in myriad situations while simultaneously sharing experiences on the way to some new destination. As instinctual as wandering is to mankind, exploration by bike is damn near second nature.