Anything is Possible

Hanna de Sousa and the Transcontinental Race

By Peak Design

July 20^th, 2024

Hanna de Sousa is not that different to you or me — not really. She’s busy: a single mother to two boys aged 10 and 12, with her own massage therapy business. Time is tight. But she makes room for big dreams.

In her thirties, Hanna discovered Ironman triathlons. Where Hanna might differ from you or me is that she went ahead and did it. Not without the initial disbelief you’d expect from someone who’d just learned about the discipline — it’s a significant undertaking. They say getting to the start is success in itself, but often we don’t think about what happens when you cross the finish line.

“I started to train and I did the Ironman one year later. But I burned out: it was zero to a hundred. Then I met my husband, I had children. Life went on. I was cycling a little bit just for fitness.”

The trouble with dreams, of course, is once you’ve had them they never really die. They just lie dormant.

“We moved to Portugal. They have an Ironman here. The year before I turned 40, I said to my husband: I don't want a present or a party. I want to have one year and go for this 70.3. The years passed, I did more and more triathlons. I won Ironman 703 Vitoria Gasteiz in 2022. And I went to Kona.”

For so many discovering sport and the Ironman discipline, Kona is a dream — an ultimate goal. Hanna is clear: it takes time, it takes commitment, but anything is possible. There will be things you can’t control, but if you make it your mission and dedicate yourself, you can make it. Everything has its cost, and for Hanna it came in the form of another burnout, but this time it was less about the physical.

“My passion has always been cycling. It was always the cycling I wanted to do. That's what I love, you know, and that was why I won.”

So, with that in mind, the dream redrew its lines. Hanna turned her eyes to the horizon — and beyond.

“I heard about the Transcontinental Race maybe eight years or so ago. You follow on Instagram and you're going, wow, what a race, I would love to do that.”

Now in its tenth edition, the Transcontinental Race is among the most prestigious events on the ultra cycling calendar, pioneered by ultra cycling legend Mike Hall. This year the race begins in Roubaix, France — a cycling destination in its own right — and will require riders to pass through four checkpoints and ride six sections of ‘parcours’, meaning set routes. The parcours total 260.9km, but crucially will mandate thousands of metres of climbing on and off road on the way to Istanbul. The rest of the route is up to the riders to decide. With this in mind, it’s understandable that this dream began in disbelief, just like the Ironman. How does anyone do it? But as you might have come to expect, that’s not deterring Hanna.

“I'm extremely excited. I know it's going to be an amazing journey. The problem is that I have no experience, right? I’ve done two long races. This last month I did one gravel and one road, 750K and 1000K. But before that, I had never done gravel. I had never done any bikepacking, even.”

To help prepare for the challenge to come, we introduced Hanna to Peak Design ambassador Boru McCullagh, who knows bike racing in a different way. Boru grew up racing with Velo Club London, where he became a coach at London’s iconic Herne Hill Velodrome. And like Hanna, he’s changed gears in his cycling, swapping hot laps of the 480m circuit for a 34,000km lap of the globe.

C/O Boru McCullagh, https://www.instagram.com/marlboru_/

Boru is currently in Australia on a trip that justifies the use of the word ‘epic’, having pedalled all the way from South London via the Himalayas, raising money for mental health charity MIND in the process. This breadth of experience made Boru the ideal first port of call for Hanna as she gets to grips with a new discipline.

“I really like Boru, he was really reassuring. In spite of the age gap — he's only 25 — I felt straight away I was in good hands, he knew what he was talking about. We chatted and he told me he’s going to do a training program. A few days later, he says, ‘Ookay, Hannah, are you ready?’ He hyped it up and I'm getting worried. I've already trained so much but this is totally new. So I say, ‘Ookay, bring it on Boru, on let's do it.’

The Finnish people have this saying, sisu. You don’t give up. You’re stubborn. You do whatever you said you’re gonna do. No matter what.

And when I opened the training program my heart nearly stopped — it was only 10 hours training a week. I’m used to doing twice as much as that. I said this is nothing, I'm gonna go mad. I build my life around training and I love that nice tired feeling you get in the evening night. I work and I train and that keeps my brain quiet. And it's very nice when my brain is quiet.

Boru worked with different intervals than I’m used to, a lot more speed and intensity. Coaches in the past had never really given me rest days, only in the run up to a race. And I found this was a very nice change, I've been kind of looking for that. We all need recovery — it's not just age — but that’s definitely making a difference.”

That adaptability is a feature of ultra racing, where plans can change. But wherever you’re coming from, a plan is crucial. Race organiser Lost Dot print it in the Transcontinental Race Manual: The most prepared will be the most successful. But there are different kinds of preparation, and experience can take many forms.

“In the beginning, when I got the place, I was very ambitious. I was thinking I have one year. I'll be fine. And in February, I was still doing triathlons. And I thought, ooh, maybe now I should just focus on Transcontinental. So I stopped doing the triathlons and just focused on cycling. It's been a very steep learning curve. And those two races I've done have helped me. Fitness wise, I think I might be all right. Planning the route and getting everything else ready is still a little bit unclear. Especially when you're speaking to people who've done the race and they go, how have you thought about this and this and that. I know that I am going in as a rookie and I just have to see what happens.”

C/O Nuno Pereira, https://www.instagram.com/huntingpedals.cc/

But the engine that’s honed with training for an Ironman and the competitive instinct that gets you across the line first instils a certain approach that can’t easily be quieted — Hanna knows that.

“I just have to admit for myself: I am competitive. I know when I start, yes, I would still like to enjoy it. But I noticed in the other two races [Hanna finished as first female in both] that this little devil comes out, and I just have to go with it. But the main thing is to get to the finishing line in one piece before 6th of August.”

So while preparation can and will make a difference for riders throughout the field — from the first across the line to those who set out solely to finish — there’s another element, beyond the physical and mental preparation, beyond the competitive edge and the experience of managing yourself in a race, even if the latter will have a bearing on how it comes to bear. Hanna has a special name for it.

“I used to say I'm fortunate enough to have this sisu. My dad is not alive anymore — he was Finnish. The Finnish people have this saying, sisu. You don't give up. You're stubborn. You do whatever you said you're gonna do. No matter what. And I have that in me, I think. If I said to myself, I'm going to go to checkpoint one, for example. It doesn't matter what happens along the way, I am not giving up until I get there, you know?”