Καλώς ήρθατε! A new Bikepacking race and with it a new evaluation of bikes and equipment: as of this morning, a total of 111 riders* are on the road to conquer almost 1,000 kilometres and an incredible amount of altitude in Greece.
The Hellenic Mountain Race (HMR) is the third race format of Nelson Trees, who also set up the Silk Road and the Atlas Mountain Race.
And now the HMR is taking place for the first time and Nelson has naturally chosen a very mountainous country, Greece.
937km in total and 31,420 vertical metres (according to Komoot, so probably more) are on offer. That’s around 3,400 HM per 100km, making it a very strenuous race.
As with other races of this type, I looked at the bikes of the participants based on the Bikepacking.com article “Rigs of Hellenic Mountain Race” and evaluated them accordingly.
As you would expect, the majority are using mountain bikes. The bikes are single-speed with 12 gears and wide gear ratios. Small cranks (32, 30) at the front and wide MTB cassettes with up to 50, 51 and 52 teeth at the rear are also popular for this terrain.
Of course, the majority rides flat bars and uses suspension forks (or suspension stems), because it gets rough.
When it comes to materials, steel and carbon frames are more or less equal. Carbon, however, is used for the majority of the rims.
Not surprisingly – and also to be seen in the other Bikeanalytics evaluations – the most popular tyres again come from Vittoria with the Mezcal. But this time there are more Rene Herse tyres.
Another thing I notice is that the HMR is a young race with an average age of 37. In comparison, the AMR this year had an average age of 44, and last year’s Silk Road was 39.
Dotwatching HMR 2023
You can follow the HMR live here:
