The wind was howling, and the sun was just peaking over the horizon. Ella Bloor was sitting there with her puffer jacket tucked into her rain pants, hood on under her helmet, watching day break over the Great Australian Bite.
“I was sobbing because it was so beautiful, and I can’t believe I’m here — feeling all of the feelings,” she says.
An older woman approached Bloor to see if she was okay and invited her back to their caravan for a cup of coffee and to warm up.
“I’m sitting in this caravan with this elderly couple, and they’re making me a coffee. And the husband was like, I’ll make your sandwich, we’ve got cheese and Vegemite. She was like, no, no, no. Make her a good one. Make her a ham sandwich. I haven’t eaten meat for over a decade, and I just didn’t have the heart to be like, I’m actually vegetarian.
I just copped it and ate a ham sandwich in a random caravan on the Australian Bite,” she laughs.
This was a week into Bloor’s nearly 4,000km ride from Perth to Sydney and a big training block coming into XCM Worlds and a few other big races in North America.
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The Lifetime Grand Prix Gap Year
Bloor has been a fixture at the pointy end of events like the Cape to Cape and Reef to Reef. She’s regularly a top ten finisher at XC Nationals and even on the road with the Women’s Tour Down Under, Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and a handful of international stage races in the US and Europe under her proverbial belt.
But in 2023, the 29-year-old from the Southern Highlands took a leap and applied for a spot in the Lifetime Grand Prix. Working full-time as a graduate architect in Canberra, at the time Bloor told us she was looking for a change, and boy-howdy did she get one.
“2023 was a huge growth year on and off the bike. I knew the racing was going to be hard, but the Grand Prix was so new. No one really in Australia had done it before — aside from Lachy (Morton). (Brendan) Trekky (Johnston), Tas(man Nankervis) and I were sort of the guinea pigs or the pioneers of what international gravel from Australia would look like over there,” says Bloor.
With the Life Time Grand Prix spanning seven events in just over six months, the field is composed of 60 of the world’s best gravel and XCM riders. By her own account, she didn’t really go in with a plan other than to buy a crappy car and bum it around the series.
Jerry the Jeep, turned out to be quite the nightmare adventure companion, breaking down before she’d even reached the first stop in Monterey, California, for the Sea Otter Classic Fuego XL. He continuing his antics until she sold him at the end of her North American tour. At Sea Otter, she raced well, riding into P9 over the 110km race. But that is sort of where her luck ran out.
Bloor fell victim to the infamous mud pit in the first 11 miles of the 205 mile Unbound Gravel, leaving her without a derailleur. After a puncture-riddled Leadville 100, she was thwacked by COVID, which left her with fatigue and brain fog weeks after the RAT tests came back negative. A silly crash left her with two sprained wrists going into the RAD, and Big Sugar was again a mechanical riddle affair.
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Outside of the Grand Prix, en route to a Gravel World’s qualifier in Toronto, the airline left her bike bag on the tarmac in New York. To say it was a tough year of racing would be an understatement to tough years of racing.
“When you’re moving around, and you’re constantly like, where am I going to stay? I had a couple of weeks each time to try and train for these monstrous events (sometimes) at altitude and then things were constantly going wrong. At the time, it was really hard to be present and make the most of it. I was just like when, and I am going to get some good luck,” she says.
“Even though it felt like I didn’t achieve things on paper. I achieved so much, and it took a long time to take a step back and go, ‘That was epic.’
Even with all the bad that happened, I wouldn’t change a single thing — well, actually, I could have done without COVID,” she laughs.
The jump from off-road racing here in Australia to something like the Life Time Grand Prix is huge — every event is bigger, longer, and faster, and the field is packed full of riders doing that extra one per cent to extract every bit of performance from their bodies and equipment.
“Everyone talks about “The Spirit of Gravel,” but it’s become a professional sport. You can’t just turn up in a flannel shirt and do well anymore, it takes absolute dedication,” says Bloor
“Tas and I were sleeping in car parks, and I think that’s one thing about the Grand Prix you don’t see in the coverage. They really sort of focus on the top five, top ten who are heavily supported. And then, like, when Tas performed super well toward the end, he’s not in the coverage anywhere. In a way, I feel like it’s because the sport isn’t as clean and crisp and professional all the way through the field, and yet some people are absolutely bumming it to get through the season,” she continues.
It wasn’t all struggles, from road tripping up through Montana into Canada and racing the inaugural UCI Gravel Worlds and finishing mid-pack. Although the results may not have been exactly what she was after, Bloor tells us that the experience she gained from racing as a privateer against a field of that pedigree was invaluable — in her own words it was like an apprenticeship.
In June this year, Bloor returned to Emporia, Kansas, for Unbound Gravel to sort out her unfinished business in the Flint Hills, and it’s here that knowledge clicked. She’d go on to finish the Unbound 200 once and for all, riding into 28th place on the day.
“Going back to Unbound this year, you’re like, I know Emporia. Everything is less of a shock and requires less of that mental energy. Just knowing everyone at the start is so valuable in terms of that mental expenditure on race day. Luck is gained through experience, and the more you’ve done these races, the more your luck increases, in my opinion,” Bloor says.
Down the Road | 4,000km from Perth to Sydney
Bloor had a good friend named Maddy, who lost her battle with leukaemia in 2022.
“She knew that she was going to die — it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. To have to face that at such a young age, (changed) her outlook on the world,” she says.
“You’d be talking to her complaining about your job or saying, ‘I’m not happy in this relationship,’ and she’d be like, ‘Well, leave, end it’. Or if you were telling her that you wanted to do something, she’d just say, ‘Well, do it,’” says Bloor.
Bloor tells us it was Maddy — who was a cyclist and represented Australia at the Junior World Road Championships — was the source of the spark that led her to chase a racing season overseas as a privateer. She started building a calendar of events and then shortly after that, was accepted into the Grand Prix.
“I found this sort of power in committing to things that you say you’re going to do. And I was like, ‘I think I’m going to ride across the country. Well fuck it, pick a date and make it happen. Don’t just talk about it, let’s do this,’” she says.
This was Bloor’s internal monologue ticking away on a 350km solo pedal from Canberra to Albury.
So she got to planning.
“How do you even train for something like this? I wanted to do Unbound and sort of had an overseas block planned, and then I had a goal to maybe get back over to do some of the backends of the seasons, which maybe included Worlds (XCM and Gravel) if I get picked,” says Bloor.
Chasing daylight and a mega spreadsheet
With that window from June to September, winter meant short days. Knowing this and wanting to eke out as much daylight as possible, she picked August and committed.
“When I got back from the Unbound block, I had about six weeks, and it was just full-on planning. Knowing every single town that I would pass through, the opening hours of stores and potential accommodation. I did that across 4,000km and then just refined the equipment I was going to take, it was huge,” she says.
This was all completed into a mega spreadsheet and divided up into sections based on what Bloor estimated she could cover in a day.
The goal was simple: ride from Sydney to Perth, in 10-14 days. It wasn’t a race or an FKT attempt, as Bloor put it, she’ll get there when she gets there.
So she took her Specialized Crux, shod with a few bags, over to Perth and started pedalling.
“I was just getting up every morning, riding my bike, eating, sleeping — I never zoomed out to look at how far I’d ridden. It was just like, okay, there is 100km to the next town, or it’s 40km to go. I don’t think in terms of the physicality of it, it has really set in. It’s not like I was doing a triple, quadruple backflip or anything,” she says.
Road trains and the Nullabor
Bloor tells us through the entire journey she didn’t want to make a big deal of crossing borders, reaching certain signs, or geographic points along the way. But on day seven, when she rolled past the end of the Nullarbor Plain, that bigger meaning of what she was doing hit.
Running along the Eyre Highway, this 1,256km stretch is four times the size of Belgium and covers three time zones. Pancake flat, Nullarbor is not an Indigenous name; it’s Latin for no trees. The name coined by the Mirning and Yinyila Traditional Owners is Oondiri, meaning waterless. It’s also home to the longest stretch of straight road in the world — 146km — and is sometimes used as a runway for the Royal Flying Doctors Service.
In other words, it’s long, desolate and brutal.
“There was this moment where I was just like, ‘I just rode across the Nullarbor — by myself.’ When I thought about riding across Australia, the Nullarbor was this huge aspect — I had no idea what it really was, what it meant, what it looked like. I didn’t really know much about it other than it was a big, notorious stretch of road.
I never wanted to make reaching certain points as the thing that would satisfy me, but getting across the Nullarbor and realising that I had actually made it across in one piece was amazing,” she says.
Being out so far, by yourself, on your bike, miles away from the nearest person. A significant distance from any help is something that should make anyone nervous.
The road trains through the outback are notorious. Weighing up to 200 tonnes and extending up to 50m in length, these semis pull three trailers at approaching 100kph. When these trains get going, they are just about impossible to stop or manoeuvre. Quite the travel companion when you’re rolling on 9kg of carbon, rubber and aluminium, with only a bit of foam and expensive stretchy pyjamas for protection.
“As soon as the sun went down, and the trucks began their evening shift, I was like, what am I doing out here? The first night, I was zigzagging off the road when I’d see the lights coming just because they’d give you no room at night,” she recounts. “I had a crash, I washed out on the bank. I was sitting there in the dirt, 16 hours in. In the dark. By myself with road trains passing, thinking, what am I doing?”
Even weeks after finishing, she’s had nightmares since, waking up searching for her headlamp, scared that an approaching road train wouldn’t see her.
Fearing for her life as the light faded each day, Bloor had to manage her expectations of how far she’d make it each day.
“You’re kind of restricted. I had a bivy and camping setup, but for the most part I’d aim to get to road houses. If it was a choice of either stopping at a roadhouse at six or 7pm or probably not getting to the next one until 10pm, that was it.
I’d rather take an extra two or three days than be out there in the dark dealing with the road trains. You can get completely off the road, but it’s like when they’re coming past every few minutes, it was horrific,” she says.
Remember that ham sandwich the grey nomads made for Bloor at the Great Australian Bite? Already experiencing gut distress at this point in the trip, she just ate it and waited to see what would happen. But the worst part, she couldn’t even taste it.
“I had eaten a box of Chicken Crimpy Shapes the day before. I was just riding along, eating them all day, and stripped all the tastebuds off my tongue while eating these salty biscuits. It was like my whole mouth, and I couldn’t even taste it,” she laughs.
That sign says Sydney | Getting closer to home
By day ten, Bloor was starting to reach familiar places. Sydney had been on the road signs for a while. There were more route options now, and in that last 1,000 km, if there was an option for gravel, she took it at every opportunity. Regardless of whether it added distance because she wanted to get away from the main roads.
“Knowing I didn’t have many days left, I had this really powerful sense of gratitude for where I was and what I was doing,” she says.
But there was another emotion that Bloor was dealing with. As she approached her loved ones, there was a growing sense of anxiety. While she was out on this adventure, life went on for everyone else, and they would ask for an ETA on when she may be passing through. She felt the pressure of a deadline.
“I don’t know if I am going to need to lie down in the bushes for two hours. As I was approaching people and feeling all of this pressure to be on other people’s schedules. Part of the joy of doing these things is I will get there when I get there. It was a weird feeling for me,” she says.
That pressure and anxiety would be short-lived when she would reach her friends and family, and after stopping where she grew up in the NSW Southern Highlands, she tells us she asked herself, why am I going to Sydney?
The final stretch
After a night in Gunning NSW, 250km from Sydney she was on the final stretch. And what remained paled in comparison to what she’d ridden already,
“When I left the Highlands, I was like, yes, I’m nearly there — I was super stoked. And then after like an hour I was like 100km is still quite a long way, I’ve still got like four hours and I’m quite tired now.
Arriving in Sydney that evening, it was a Friday night, so Circular Quay was buzzing. There was a storm approaching and Bloor rolled up to the Opera House just as the light was hitting a dreamy golden hue.
“I spotted my dad and sister through the crowd, and oh man. It didn’t hit how far I’d ridden or what I’d just done, but it was really special,” she says.
Ever humble, Bloor tells us the physicality of what she’s achieved still hasn’t really set in because it was just a bunch of 200km or 300km days all stacked up. But what has blown her away is what her feat has meant for other people.
From those who have messaged her saying her ride helped them get back on their bike for the first time in two years after battling depression, or that it inspired them to sign up for an event or big challenge. But she also got a message from Maddy’s father.
“He emailed me a couple of days after, and it was the most touching thing — my dad and I both cried. He said that I’d sparked a revelation in his journey of grief and sparked Maddy’s choral command of grabbing life and enjoying it,” she says.
Those unexpected moments and messages afterwards have hit more than what I’ve achieved physically,” says Bloor.
What’s next?
After finishing her ride across Australia, Bloor headed straight up to Alice Springs to race the Shimano Gravel Muster — which she won.
She tells us, after such a big base block, that she is trying to scrape together some intensity ahead of XCM Worlds in Snowshoe West Virginia, Big Sugar MTB and Little Sugar Gravel in Northwest Arkansas and the Iceman Cometh Challenge in Michigan.
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Beyond that, Bloor doesn’t really have a plan.
“I’m loving bikes more than ever, and I’m loving racing more than ever. Beyond that, it’s just what opportunities come and what excites me.
But you definitely won’t see me in Emporia,” she laughs.
With her Down the Road ride, Bloor is raising money for the Leukaemia Foundation. You can find out more here.
Photos: Phillip Sage / @phillipsage, Tim Bardsley-Smith / Cape to Cape, Wil Matthews / Life Time Grand Prix, Flow MTB
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