Silk Road Mountain Race

elsewhere in europe we saw the last edition of the alps divide that's the off-road event around around the alps that josh raised last year or the year before

yeah last last year my redemption from the silk road scratch

well it's not an easy redemption i hadn't quite clocked um before the race started but i was looking at the map progress uh tracking page before the this record and the The elevation profile is mad.

What do they say? It's like a saw or a shark's

So I do think it's fitting that we bring some of the community in to remember him.

And it was only a few months ago I last saw Max at the Hellenic Mountain Race.

uh which is a bit bizarre now to you know to think that was the last time but but yeah i've seen max and spent a bit of time with him over the years um i remember going on a really really sketchy journey from bishkek uh to the start of the silk road mountain race in 2023 that was the first time i really spent time with him um i mean it's surprised we all got that far this far given the given the driving um yeah we're doing almost 100 mile an hour over blind rises and around blind corners and i think the three of us max myself and man who were pretty much um just closing our eyes and hoping for the best at that that point in time while being jet jet lagged as well um and then yeah we spent some nice time up in the mountains pre-race um And yeah, I've seen him a few times and spent time at races with him since.

And yeah, the last time was Hellenic, like in May, the race which he won.

I want to talk about expert mode and dirt mode and your route planning.

I was watching the latest documentary with Nelson Trees about Silk Road Mountain Race, and a lot of that was dedicated to how Nelson plans his routes for the mountain races and how he recces all the routes himself and personally.

And I think I recently interviewed Hannah Simon.

Hannah, you're a legend.

It was too recent.

It was like last year.

When I think about what you were sharing before about the first – peak of interest into ultra racing, watching a documentary about Silk Road Mountain Race.

knowing that I'm speaking to someone who really enjoys climbing and mountains and those scenes, I can see you maybe at a start line of a mountain race perhaps.

Sofiane Zahili has won it.

You know, our tires still have the FKTs in the Silk Road Mountain Race and so on.

Because...

Well, because A, we have a lot of experience on making these tires.

I think it, it does slow you down, and I know there's a lot...

I have so much appreciation and respect for people that are doing like the Silk Road Mountain Race, these high endurance, big, really fast-paced bikepacking and bicycle races.

But for me, that's not really the stuff I enjoy.

I enjoy stopping at the local little hamlet, little village houses-

Well, he's done a lot.

I'll leave the catching up for today's episode, but most recently and notably, Ustenis came in first place at this year's edition of the Silk Road Mountain Race.

Before the event, he said that his expectations were lower than the floor.

He started off a little rough, a little rocky, a little sick, and a little bit behind the leaders.

But it's not how you start, it's how you finish, and Ustenis finished 21 hours ahead of second place on a brand-new Silk Road course that was the longest to date and maybe the hardest, with only about 35% of the field actually completing this year's Silk Road edition.

So we have a lot to talk about in today's episode.

It is always a pleasure to have Ustenis on the podcast.

Podcast.

don't i'm quite good at putting up with those sort of things to be fair that's my one thing i'm pretty confident with is just sucking it up with hiker bikes

you know that's why i think i struggle with tcrs as well because i've certainly like him well no just because like you do atlases and silk roads and a tour divide and well loads of off-road races and then they're different because you're racing you're yeah you are racing but you're kind of riding against the terrain yeah and then you go to tcr and it's pretty easy compared to like silk road or something like that but you've got a ride all day in your own head and that's a whole different thing but it's when you get into it once you've gone through your highs and your lows and i've had it like this year reminded me a lot of 2014 just ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs and then i kind of got my level And then it's like meditation almost just riding all day.

And you wake up and get going.

Like I was probably going about sort of half four or five every morning.

Um, I did Highland trail 2015, but that was May.

So I had plenty of time.

um but this year i went for hellenic and i trained pretty hard for hellenic and i did all right um you know a fairly good form wasn't absolutely flying i've not really found absolute top form this year and it was six weeks ago and i only confirmed to do it for various reasons yeah after hellenic the week after hellenic i did have an entry for silk road might dodge the bullet there to do it then and then i think it was just a bit too close um yeah and i only got sort of on the road bike on the aero bars in the position i did in 2015 quite low like when you're when you're mid-20s you can go very low on the front of your bike um on the aero bars and i just was like i was training hard but just you know when you're just fighting it and it's not yeah yeah so i was a bit like head was a bit off before i went in um and then i got the new bike just before and i just put loads of spaces under the aero bars and just hope for the best um so yeah i was a bit kind of i wasn't in the groove i think when i started and the head was a bit you know can i actually finish this and i had it was having like like knee anxiety i was like what if i just get two days in and my knees blow up again i like oh totally kind of unprecedented like you know why yeah

that's not typical josh behavior as far as i'm aware anyway or like yeah i was really scared actually i think that's probably

But yeah, like the way you see it on the bike like that, just on your own, self-supported, just getting through, it was just unbelievable.

As we speak right now, the Silk Road Mountain Race is happening and Mel Webb is the podcaster over there and she does an amazing job.

If anybody out there is into this kind of racing, Mel Webb and her work with the mountain races is incredible.

And what an interesting dynamic for you to simultaneously enjoy the solo experience.

I was

following McPhee for a while, because now for the podcaster, sorry, listener at home, we're having no really deep on Atlas founders.

This is the Silk Road Mountain Race, which is in Kyrgyzstan.

Carrie McPhee was leading for quite a while.

just for the safety of the ride but because of this how spread out everyone was that also makes a big difference because people different races experience maybe different weather patterns depending on where they are so

yeah especially with yeah we're talking about a big a big area here well we won't cover the whole of the conversation just now but yeah we'll come on to that in our roundtable first up we've got a few races to recap the we're going to start with the silk road mountain race nikki

yeah so the hot race of the month in august with the silk road mountain race or not not hot because yeah

a bit of both it seemed

so it was the longest route to date I believe it's the first time it's been over 2000k and 35,000 metres of climbing and a lot of riders did notice the toughest addition to date extreme temperatures approaching 40 degrees during the daytime and then I don't know minus freezing temperatures at night as well so altitude deal with storms and severe hyperbike and there was a huge scratch rate this year as well.

So 65% of the field actually scratched.

I don't know how that compares with previous years.

Do you think that's one of the highest scratch rates we've ever seen in the Silk Road?