A Kiwi cyclist has battled lightning storms, freezing conditions and avoided being eaten by wolves, to win the world's toughest mountain bike race.
Christchurch's Joe Nation rode to victory in the gruelling 2000km Silk Road Mountain Race, through Kyrgyzstan, in just six days.
To make things even tougher, it was an unsupported race, meaning no crew to restock you along the way and no soliciting help from locals; any assistance must be freely given and unplanned.
Nation told RNZ's Checkpoint programme today he was very pleased with his victory but was dealing with swelling and soreness.
"There's not much of it that doesn't hurt at the moment it's pretty gruelling on most areas, especially the backside obviously doesn't get too much of a relief.
"A little bit of nerve stuff on the hands and the feet just from the repetitive shaking and hanging on and things. But it all heals pretty fast."
The race was the hardest he had ever done, especially because of the hot temperatures and high altitude.
"When you're down low it was 35 to 40 degrees, obviously coming from a Christchurch winter that was hard in itself and then most passes go up to about 3800 metres. That's top of Mount Cook and that makes you really lightheaded and dizzy," he said.
"It's just repetitive up and down and up and down and to be honest, most of those passes don't have too much of a path at the top, so you're carrying your bike on your back and slipping over and doing all sorts of stuff just to get over it."
He said cyclists tried to be as lightweight as possible, so he slept in a bivvy and in a lightweight sleeping bag.
For re-supplying food, the cyclists visited small shops along the way across Kyrgyzstan.
"They might be spread out between 200 to 300 kilometres at times, and they really just have a few dry biscuits and coke. You've got to make what you can happen and just try and keep the calories coming in," he said.
Nation said on one of the nights, he spent a couple of hours in a yurt to take a break from a storm and he was able to dry out his sleeping gear.
"I got to the top of a very high pass, and it was uncharacteristic cause rather than just dropping down the other side, it was about 20 kilometres before it went down and a storm hit right when I reached the top and it was snowing with lightning. The mud was clogging up my bike so much that I couldn't pedal," he said.
"A shepherd popped out of his yurt to see me struggling and called me over. I had some soup with his family and some bread. I tried to communicate with them and said I'm going to race, and I've got 2000 kilometres to finish and thanks very much."
He said to get through the race, he kept going back to the reasons why he wanted to do the race in the beginning.
"There's actually quite a few points where that sort of crosses my mind, why am I doing this, this is a crap idea, this is hurting, and this is going to do a fair bit of damage," he said.
"But you just really got to want to finish it, and you've got to have your own reasons to get that done and just keep coming back to those, that all helps to get you over the line."
Nation said he wanted to do the race as it was one of the world's toughest races.
"I thought it'd be a pretty incredible experience, which it's proved to be. I've just really enjoyed sinking my teeth into this bike pack racing discipline and working my way up and doing better and better," he said.
"I thought well this is not only a race that's going to push me to the edge, it's also going to be a cultural experience and take me somewhere I've never been before, and I might not have gone without this race being here, it's been well and truly worth it."
