What's that?

I don't know.

I was hoping maybe I could pull it off, you know? It was...

I mean, you know, all of this food and stuff.

[sighs]

I know

... no one even got close to my pace on the climb, and I rode zone two endurance, no problem.

But just having like, I think, did Benedict pass you on the way down? Yeah, he came

bombing down.

Yeah.

I didn't want to take that much risk.

And obviously he was on the full suspension with dropper and flat bars.

And I was on the full compromise bike with... drop bars uh yeah hardtail and semi-slick tires so i had to get off a few times more definitely than him and i also didn't ride as fucking quick than him he was really quick down there i wasn't too stressed like people were talking about rick all the time obviously But then you never know if a race in the race like this, like Hellenic, you know, like last year, how many people scratched in the top 10 on the last day.

I wasn't too stressed about it.

But somebody who you're good friends with, did that add any kind of challenge to things?

Can you describe the hike up, Max?

Super slippery.

It's mine, right? Yep.

Rock plates at the beginning.

And then basically too steep to ride.

And then getting more rocky.

And then a lot of snow.

Yeah,

Tell me about the first edition and that experience.

Yeah.

So nobody really knew what was going on, but Nelson obviously said it's very mountain bikey, it's very techy, and a lot of climbing.

You can see that from the profile.

Uh, the thing that we sort of also knew from the weather forecasts and everything was that the weather was not like you see on Instagram with Greece.

So there's [laughs] a lot of rain, and it's cold and muddy, and it's, it's not beaches here.

Um, and the first edition, I mean, if I maybe had half a day that was dry, that must have been a lot for the first edition, so I hope this time it's not that brutal.

Can you describe the scene that's going on up there and what we can expect?