Why Not Me? Dilara Tuna on Building Confidence Across Trail Running & Bikepacking
episode
Detours: Bikepacking, Ultra-Cycling and Adventures by Bike
1h 3m
3 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What sparked Dilara’s confidence to start competing in ultra‑endurance events?
I think it's more about having confidence that I can actually race and can be competitive because I feel stronger and I realize that I'm actually getting faster. Because I always thought, oh I'm so slow, I'm a slow cyclist. So I don't I can't sleep long enough because everyone else is so much faster than me. The moment you start feeling you're like, oh, maybe I could actually win the women's race. Maybe I could actually and then you also start looking around. Like is there someone else I could catch?
Delara Tuna is a Belgian adventurer both on two wheels and her two feet. She is often pairing bikepacking races with multi-day trail running challenges. She most recently took the women's win at the 2026 Trans Balkans race and then went on to run 192 kilometers across the peak of the Balkans over three days. In this episode, we talk all about the parallels and differences between running and cycling, women's place on the start line, how she's learned to embrace wrestling. And the ongoing practice of building confidence and quieting our voices of self-doubt.
My name is Mel Webb and this is Detours, a show about bikepacking, ultra endurance, and the many different ways people find freedom on two wheels. We share the highs, the lows, and of course, the detours along the way. This show is made possible by Albion Cycling, clothing and accessories designed to help you stay outside for longer. You can get 15% off your next order with Albion with our code DTORS15. Alright, on to today's episode with Delara. We caught up just a few days after she got home from the pilgrimage, which we'll hear all about.
So um little background story, it's got my friend slash colleague uh Simon who's organizing it and uh I used to work in the hotel in the winter. It's in the French Alps, close to the Ecran uh mountains and uh park and it's uh four day kind of stage event. So I really leave out the word race because it's really not a race form. It's really one of these social Gathering, it's all about food. Like really uh the food is incredible. The hotel is incredible, obviously. It's a small group of people. I think we were about thirty people attending and the idea is to just run one route every day. We did about uh twenty eight, thirty the first three days and then the last day was like the bigger stage was w which was about forty two kilometers.
And it's really like Beautiful designed route. He organized like uh checkpoints halfway somewhere with like a coffee stop or something and some Culinary surprises and uh yeah, and the base camp is basically in the hotel. Where you can just I mean, anyone can just arrive. Depending on how fast they ran or how wanna run or uh if they wanna stop halfway in between. Some people hang out at the checkpoint for a few hours. Some people just wanted to run as fast as they could. And then you just go to the hotel and you can hang out there and then in the evening everyone's having apro and uh and dinner together. And third night we spent in a refuge. So we just ran up to the refuge. Again, everyone could hang out there.
Me and Jenny actually we decided to leave the hotel later and then just arrive right for dinner. And uh because we just wanted to like hang out and talk and everything. Um, that was really cool. Yeah. And then the next day you just kind of run back in a big loop to back to the hotel. And then there was a kind of closing party. Um, yeah. Yeah. So it's really about like building a community during these few days and people from I th I don't know how many nations there were, but there were a lot of Germans, Dutch people obviously, Belgians, French Yeah. So it was really cool. It's a really like pure event and even some people decided not to do one stage. They could or a semin would help them shorten the day, find another route, or find something else to do, go for a hike.
So it was really, really nice.
Wow, cool. What a like lovely gathering of people and so so different from self-supported bike pack racing, right? Where, you know, you meet people, you spend a little bit of time on the trail with them, but you don't ultimately get to have that same amount of connection.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What sparked Dilara’s confidence to start competing in ultra‑endurance events?
0:01–13:25
2
How did the pilgrimage in the French Alps shape Dilara’s sense of community and adventure?
13:25–26:11
3
What did Dilara learn from racing the Silk Road bike‑packing event with a stranger as a partner?
26:11–38:09
4
How has working with a coach changed Dilara’s training, pacing, and sleep strategy?
38:09–45:50
5
What were the biggest challenges and decisions during the Trans Balkan race?
45:50–52:19
6
How did the thunderstorm and the stray dog affect Dilara’s race experience?
52:19–1:00:20
7
What emotions did Dilara feel crossing the finish line after the Peaks of the Balkans run?
1:00:20–1:03:45
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Detours: Bikepacking, Ultra-Cycling and Adventures by Bike
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