The Traka looks beautiful from the outside: Girona gravel, big names, fast bikes and perfect spring light. From the inside, it is a blur of tyre choices, last-minute recons, feed-zone stress, empty bottles, full-send attacks and riders finding out exactly how deep they can go. We followed Posedla athletes through race week to capture the real story behind the documentary.

The Traka effect

Girona has a way of making cycling feel bigger than cycling.

For one week, every café table seems to hold a half-finished espresso, a GPS file, and someone debating tyres with the intensity of a WorldTour directeur sportif. The Traka sits right in the middle of that energy.

It is one of the most talked-about gravel races in Europe, bringing together WorldTour names, privateers, ambitious amateurs and riders who simply want to experience the atmosphere. Across the weekend, Posedla supported athletes in multiple distances: Merida Miller in the Traka 100, Ivar Slik and Ramon Sinkeldam in the Traka 200, a full crew in the Traka 360, and Nol van Loon in the 560 Traka Adventure.

Watch the documentary

Watch the full behind-the-scenes documentary from The Traka 360, then scroll down for the stories, race moments and takeaways behind the film.

Before the race: small choices, long consequences

The race starts long before the start line.

For Piotr Havik, preparation meant getting deep into the small details that define modern gravel racing. In the episode, he talks through tyre width, rim choice, clearance, and even trimming side knobs to reduce the risk of clogging or frame rub. The point is simple: in gravel, everything has to work together. A bigger tyre only helps if the rim, frame and conditions agree with it.

That is the kind of thinking The Traka rewards. It is a race where equipment choices are never just equipment choices. They shape how confidently a rider can descend, how much energy they save on rough sections, and how much risk they carry into the final hours.

Petr Vakoč came into the week with a different kind of focus. Two days before the race, he still wanted to recon the final 70 to 75 kilometres because the course had changed late. He knew the last part could decide the race: steep climbs, singletrack, technical sections, and places where being badly positioned could cost more than just a few seconds.

That is The Traka mood in one sentence: check the file, check it again, drink coffee, pretend you are relaxed.

Race day: dust, bottles and live-tracking stress

Once the flag drops, the whole day suddenly becomes very simple. Find the riders. Get to the next point. Do not miss the feed.

At around 50 kilometres, the race had already started to form. There were riders up the road, a strong group behind, and several Posedla-supported athletes still right where they needed to be. Piotr Havik, Petr Vakoč, Daan Grosemans, Arno van der Broeck, Lars Loohuis and Thomas De Gendt were all visible near the front as the race moved from the early climbing into faster terrain.

From the outside, gravel racing can look like romance: dust hanging in the air, beautiful roads, helicopters of social content buzzing around the pros. From the support car, it is mostly logistics with a raised heart rate.

There are spare wheels in the trunk. Hydration packs. Musettes. Bottles. Carbs. Food prepared exactly the way the rider wants it. A live-tracking app that may or may not be telling the whole truth. And somewhere on the road, a rider who needs the right thing in their hand at the right moment.

The first feed zone was a key point. Roughly a third of the race was done, the decisive middle section was coming, and the riders needed more than calories. They needed a clean handoff, full bottles, and a tiny mental reset before the next hit.

When the race changes

One of the best things about filming from inside the race is seeing how quickly the story moves.

A rider who looks perfectly placed at one point can be chasing later. A group that seems settled can split apart on the next climb. Someone who planned to attack after the second feed may suddenly find themselves in the move earlier than expected.

The northern part of the course reshuffled the field. Positions changed, groups reformed, and the race became harder to read from the car. That is where The Traka becomes more than a long gravel ride. It becomes a tactical puzzle played at threshold, on rough roads, with limited information and very little room for comfort.

Which, honestly, sounds like a terrible idea.

So of course everyone wants to come back.

The beauty of blowing up

Daan Grosemans’ race gave the episode one of its most honest moments.

He had been riding strongly, making the important groups and staying in the right part of the race. Then the body started to close the door. No big mechanical. No dramatic crash. Just the slow realisation that the tank was empty.

Every endurance rider knows that feeling, even if the speed is different. The legs stop answering. The head starts replaying every earlier effort. Could I have saved ten watts? Did I eat enough? Was the pace too hot, or was today simply not the day?

That is what makes long-distance gravel so compelling. The result sheet only shows what happened. The race itself shows how it felt.

And sometimes, what it felt like was a rider sitting at a feed zone, disappointed, honest, and already learning something for next time.

Comfort, without the fluffy stuff

At a race like The Traka, comfort is easy to misunderstand.

It is not about making a hard race feel soft. Nobody rolls into a 300-plus-kilometre gravel race expecting a spa day on carbon wheels. Comfort is more practical than that.

It is about reducing the small distractions that get louder over time. A pressure point that feels minor after one hour can become the only thing you think about after seven. A saddle that feels “fine” on smooth roads can feel very different when the course gets rough, the pace stays high, and your position keeps shifting between climbs, descents and fast flat sections.

That is why contact points matter. Hands, feet, and saddle. They are where the rider meets the bike, and when one of them is wrong, the whole ride can start to feel wrong.

For us, The Traka is a good reminder of why we care so much about fit. Posedla’s Joyseat uses rider data, a home imprint kit and custom 3D-printed padding to tune the saddle’s size, shape and stiffness to the individual rider. The goal is simple: make the contact point feel less like something you have to think about, and more like something that quietly does its job.

In a race where everything hurts eventually, removing one unnecessary problem is already a win.

More from our Traka week

The race was only part of what we captured in Girona.

Coming next on the Posedla YouTube channel:

• Kate MacLeod, nutrition specialist, with tips on fueling long and intense races
• Tereza Szabo Neumanova, former WorldTour rider and bike fitter, on women’s saddle choice, bike fit and racing at the highest level
• Fara pop-up visit, where we spoke with the bike brand's founder Jeff Webb, who also completed the Atlas Mountain Race on a Joyseat

The Traka gave us everything we hoped for: strong racing, honest moments, beautiful chaos and a very clear reminder that gravel is never just about the finish line.