Once in a while we do share some interesting guest blogs. Here comes one from Axel the founder of bikingman about their incadivide race. I already shared last year the story of them braking the world record in crossing South America on a bicycle.

35 crazies took off from Trujillo (Peru) on July 1st while everybody was watching the football games and the Tour...their goal: cycling 1,800km from the coastal desert to the high mountains of the Andes under 12 days. IncaDivide 2018, the crown jewel of the bikingman race series brought athletes from 15 countries on a survival exploration race towards the highest passes of the Peruvian Andes. Two highlights of this craziness were Punta Olimpica climb (4,736m) and Pastoruri loop in the Huascarán National Park (4,876m) which were mandatory checkpoints to ride with ideally a gravel bike...!
Rodney Soncco (2017 winner) won 2018 edition in 127h22min (see leaderboard here). The race is a mix of gravel and paved sections with vertical differences of elevation only available in the Andes mountains. Right after the race, I aimed with Rodney to test the limits of our gravel bikes on one of the toughest and vertical unpaved section of the Peruvian Andes: the Peruvian Great Divide. A 450km segment unpaved with 11 passes above 4000m of altitude and extremely remote villages of the Andes. This high altitude exploration experience brought us up to 4,961m to the Abra Rapaz, a very demanding climb where the limits of our bodies and bikes have been bulletproof tested! Rodney with his 2018 U.P. was faster...but is it really the bike which made the difference... ?!  

And here come a gallery with some impressions of this adventure: