In September of 2025 I was part of the media team covering the Alps Divide Ultra Cycling event. A 1000km off-road ultra bike packing event from Menton on the Mediterranean coast of France to Thonon-Les-Bains on the shores of Lac Leman. This is a series of interviews, footage and race commentary that originally went live on both my Instagram and the DotWatcher.cc Instagram to provide ongoing insight into the race.
In this clip I talk to Josh Ibbett about his surprise appearance on the start line.
Don’t know my account number, but I’m Josh and I’m from the UK near Cambridge. Now, I have to say it was a little bit of a surprise to see your name on the start line. You were last seen what, two or three weeks ago, uh, less than that, I think, on the Silk Road mountain race. So, talk me through a little bit what happened on Silk Road and what was behind the decision to come here. Uh, well, I essentially I scratched Silk Road race. Um, I was riding well. Uh, but I just developed a bit of a bit of play in my in the dynamo hub I was running. Uh, after the many river crossings that we did. Um, which was it kind of took me by surprise a little bit. I was expecting a bit more life. I knew that I had to make a decision on Arabel Pass. There was a big loop at the top and if I turned right it’d be another 200 o at 4,000 meters. Well, between three and 4,000 meters with another big river crossing and no resupply and no one to get you out of trouble. or I could turn left and basically freewheel to CP3 and scratch. And I decided to do that because my wheel was wobbling all over the place and it was like riding with the brakes on. Yeah. Oh, not good. Uh but you know, every every cloud has a silver lining and now you’re here in Montton to do the Alps Divide. Um are you excited? I am. Yeah. I just felt I wasn’t really done with with the mountains. Um so I got home pretty quick, like a week early. looked at the calendar, knew this was like around this sort of time, uh, and it was two weeks away. So, I sort of asked the question and, uh, here I am. Cool. And how do you, Obviously, there are similarities between this race and Silk Road, but also is very, very different. How do you set yourself up differently for a race like this versus Silk Road? Um, well, I guess, uh, the bike’s very, very similar. Um, the gears basically got washed and put back on the bike again. There’s not really much different. maybe like um slightly smaller down layers. Um not quite as extensive sleeping gear. Um sort of the lightest sleeping bag, light bivvie, new tires, new chain, new brake pads, bit of a service, and then I’m here. And then sort of psychologically is a tricky one because actually by by the time you get to the end of um the Silk Road race or the second half, you you kind of don’t consider a a mountain pass a real pass unless it’s over 3,000 mters. It’s kind of it’s a weird psychological thing. Um, and obviously we don’t we only just touched that here, so everything’s a bit lower, but there’s still big mountains, so I’ve got to be careful not to be complacent because Yeah. But I mean, clearly clearly you are in great shape. You were riding super strong at Silk Road. Um, how how are you going to approach this one? I’ll just see what happens. You know, it’s I I wasn’t planning to be here. Um, so I’ll just ride and see how it pans out. You know, I could be flying. I could get halfway and have a breakdown and just need like a 12 hour sleep. Um but equally I have been at altitude for you know almost three weeks. Yeah. It takes a toll on your body but also it can um you know it can do good things as well. So we’ll see. Cool. Awesome. Well look have a great race. Uh it is really exciting to see you here. Uh I’m sure we’ll see you right at the head of the head of things uh having some fun. So yeah, have fun and we’ll see you out on the