Summer 2025 could have looked like any other for Pierre Rollet. A master of giant waves, the Basque surfer usually spends long hours in the ocean – in Hawaii, in Nazaré and at home in Hossegor. Eight hours a day in the water in summer, surf lessons and the physical training his job demands: everything pointed to him staying focused on his chosen discipline. But at the end of the season, almost on a whim, he threw himself into preparing for the Ahuña Gravel ultradistance event: 750 kilometres, 12,000 metres of climbing, 100 hours maximum to cover it all, completely self-supported.

This new challenge began with one man: mentor and friend Jean-Patrick Mothes, the creator of the legendary Ahuña triathlon (3km swim, 146km off-road cycle, 32km trail run). A few years ago, JP had opened new horizons for Pierre. “He didn’t just act as my main sponsor back then – he put my ass on a bike,” Pierre says, laughing. Thanks to him, Pierre discovered gravel riding and its demanding, raw, uncompromising world. The idea of a race linking the seven provinces of the Basque Country, inspired by the writer Pío Baroja, had become JP's obsession. When JP mentioned its name to him in passing, Rollet knew he would have to take part. “It was his event, his crazy idea. And I wanted to be part of it,” he says. But the timing could not have been worse. While other riders were racking up the training miles, Pierre was living his surfer’s summer: days spent entirely in the water, surfboard under his arm instead of handlebars in his hands. The bike appeared in his routine only sporadically, usually in the evenings, to unwind. One night over dinner at his parents’ house, he dropped the news: “I signed up. Dad, are you coming?” His father – who would be the oldest participant in the race at 60 – eventually agreed to the challenge. Training started then and there, at the tail end of summer.

At the pre-race briefing, the organisers warned: the fastest might reach the finish at Pamplona at five in the morning. Pierre’s plan? To be there the evening before, around 8pm. In the briefing room, his father looked down, doubt creeping in. “I’m not starting tomorrow,” he said quietly. Pierre tried to reassure him. He himself had already flipped into race mode – imaginary checkpoints mapped out, timings clear. He was aiming high, aiming hard. Saturday, 5:30am The peloton rolls out. Ahead of him are strong riders and two solid pairs. “I decided not to let the lead group go. I swallowed the first 70 km of flat terrain at a fast pace, then the Iraty climb appeared.” There, the Basque stuck to his plan: climb according to his recon timings, don’t get carried away. At the summit, he was already twenty minutes ahead. The race had truly begun.

Pierre is used to refuelling haphazardly on surf trips — sandwiches, chocolate bars and litres of Coca-Cola. This time, he followed a nutritionist’s plan to the letter, sticking carefully to the prescribed routine — a recipe that would pay off in the end. “My bike was mostly loaded with food,” he grins. No room for improvisation. Stops would be rare and brief, meals precise and high quality. Night fell as he reached the Bardenas. A lunar landscape, a crushing solitude. He’d been riding with a companion, Anthony, for a while when Anthony suggested stopping — his standard strategy being four hours of sleep before starting fresh. Pierre refused: three years of sleepless nights with his daughter, mastering the art of insomnia, were about to pay off. He kept going alone, headlamp on, drawn forward by the desert’s strangeness. “I was scared to be alone but so excited, I just really wanted to ride,” he says. That night, he crosses a threshold. Riding into a trance state. The notion of time disappears, only motion remains. “Four hours to make a gap…” a risky gamble, but it pays off. He pushes ahead, alone, in front, with the heady feeling that nothing can stop him. On every climb he hits his marks, every descent carries him further. At the next checkpoint, our Caravan athlete is comfortably in the lead.

But ultras always collect their dues. After more than 40 hours of racing, his body gives out — uncontrollable shaking, legs gone, mind clouded. At the bottom of a climb, Pierre collapses. His brother, waiting at the roadside, helps him come back to his senses. Later, he’d say it was “his brother’s carefully chosen words” that kept him from breaking — clear, sharp words that rekindled the flame. He sets off again, fragile but upright. He reaches Bilbao in a daze. At the hotel checkpoint, he orders every sandwich on the menu and collapses in the lobby. Even the shower is an ordeal: his socks have turned to cardboard, his tights stand up on their own. After three hours of sleep, he is back on the bike. The body has woken up again — and so has the mind.

All that remains is the final stretch to San Sebastián. More climbs, more absurd gradients. A sign reading “No caravans, 25% slope” draws a bitter laugh — what if the course actually goes that way? Of course it does. Of course JP, the mastermind behind the race, has slipped it in. Of course it’s going to hurt all the way to the end. At the finish, emotion erupts. Pierre throws himself into JP’s arms. “I did it,” he keeps repeating. Not just for himself, not just for the personal victory, but because Ahuña is a clan, a state of mind. Because to ride here is to belong. Beneath it all, the story of the Ahuña Gravel is also a family story. The Rollets have grit in their blood – endurance, resilience, the will to go beyond. The rugby-playing grandfather, the ultra-cyclist brother, the tireless father, all share the same obsession: never give up. Pierre embodies it, from ocean to mountains, from surfboard to gravel bikes.

Beyond the result — 750 kilometres, 12,000 metres of climbing, leading almost from start to finish — Pierre takes away one revelation: the bike is a journey. A geographical journey, through the passes, deserts, and Basque valleys, and above all an inner one, when the night turns every pedal stroke into a meditation. From Nazaré to the Bardenas, from ocean to mountains, Pierre Rollet has shown there are no borders between his worlds. Only one and the same quest: to keep going further, to that place where effort becomes revelation.