 So, Evans, why are you here again, mate? Come on! It's a good question. A question I've been asking myself a lot. Yeah, after Western States, I've recovered really well and just wanted to give myself the opportunity to be on another start line this year and it's very difficult turning down a place at UTMB. It's such an incredible race and an amazing atmosphere and you get a race against the best in the world in some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. So, yeah, I'm here to have a great time. What is your motivation? Because, you know, it doesn't get much better than winning Western States. Couldn't you just live off that for a year or two and then come back and go for UTMB another year? What's driving you? I think, for me, no one's done it. No male has done it before. No one's finished on the podium in both races in the same year. I've got the closest with... It's within 12 months. It's like 10 months apart. And, yeah, I feel... I've just come off a really good training block in team and, yeah, I'm just super motivated to race and my season's ending on Sunday, regardless of the result. And then, yeah, I can then just relax and enjoy it but, yeah, I feel great. I'm loving my running. I'm completely injury free and I'm really motivated to, yeah, see how far I can push and... Yeah, that's why I'm here. When you sit back, do you ever sit back and think, gosh, I remember that bet with my mates to go and do the Sahara and where you've come from there? I mean, do you ever contemplate that? Yeah, I do think a little bit sort of how different things could have been had I not done it and could be leading a completely different life and, yeah, I guess you never know what avenue you're going to go down and, yeah, it's pretty... I think I always would have ended up doing something like this, testing myself. I needed something outside of regular work to really be able to push myself physically and mentally. So, yeah, I think I would have got here maybe a year or so later but, yeah, for me it's still pretty wild and pretty crazy to be here. It still feels like a rollercoaster even though you're, you know, you won CCC in 2018. Yeah. I mean, so that's five years ago now, so you're not exactly a newbie, are you? No, yeah, that's actually what I keep telling myself. I always say, oh, yeah, I've not been here for a while and then you've realised, yeah, the first time I raced here was 2017 and CCC and then came back in 18 and improved on my performance and, yeah, this is now the fourth year at a UTMB race and, yeah, they come around quickly and, yeah. What's going on with your data? Because you are a data freak, aren't you? I mean, I've been seeing your videos where you're sticking needles in your arm, analysing your blood, oxygen, saturation. What's all that about? Do you enjoy that stuff? Yeah, I think there's a certain amount of data collection that can be really useful as long as it's then analysed correctly. I think a lot of the time people, and your watch does the 95% of it, but people then just don't use it the way that they could and there's a lot of stuff that you can collect that's useful but there's also a lot of stuff you can collect that's not that useful, not that relevant and for us, because we've started collecting the data now, we don't actually need to collect that much, but you can sort of, then compare yourself to where you were at a certain point in training last year, so it either gives you confidence or it gives you a bit of a reality check that, okay, I'm able to do this or I'm not able to do this. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting, but then also you can just for me now, like my training is so specific, I'm not doing any training just for the sake of it. Everything's leading to a race, whether it's Western States or UTMB and I want to make sure that the training that I'm doing is actually working, rather than getting to race day and then realizing only using race day as a marker for is my training working. I want to be able to measure how things are going, maybe not on a day-to-day basis, but definitely by a week-to-week basis, so that there are no surprises on race day and I know what I'm capable of doing, certainly for the first 10 hours and then after that, sort of the muscles switch off and the mind switches on. Do you ever just leave your watch at home and just go out for these days? No. I don't either. No, I don't. For me, it's sort of, it doesn't, I'm definitely not governed by my watch and I listen to my body as much as I can. Yeah, using a watch is just tracking the load, like it's just helping build the overall pitch of exactly what's going on because it all adds up, like for the final two weeks for Western States are exactly the same. I've done almost exactly the same load and burnt the same amount of kilojoules of energy in the last two weeks before UTMB because that worked and it might not work here, but it's just trying to build this blueprint of what works. You had a plan for Western States which didn't necessarily, I mean I know you're racing, but it didn't necessarily involve the other runners. You had a time in your head correct me if I'm wrong. You had a time in your head that you thought was going to be the winning time and you kind of set out to go for that. Is there a similar strategy, if that's correct is there a similar strategy going into this race? Yeah, that was correct going into the race, but then the snow section from Olympic Valley to Robinson Flat was really slow. We were like 25 minutes slower than I thought it was going to be, so at that point all of the timings kind of went out the window, so I just ran at sort of the pace that I felt comfortable. It was pushing, but it was comfortable and that sort of ended up me and Dakota Jones separating from the pack and the plan was always to pick it up sort of between Forest Hill and the river and regardless of what people were doing, if I was on my own I'd have done the same thing and yeah managed to get a six-minute lead going into Rutgers Jacket River Crossing and then yeah just sort of kept my foot on the gas till six kilometres to go and then so just relaxed a little bit as I had a 26 minute lead and just thought right let's just back off and let's just carry this one home. So we know what your plans are for this race, we know you're going for the week. What's happening after the season's over, what's the next step for you? Regardless of what happens on Sunday, what's the next step? Yeah I think for me it's going home, I've definitely not enjoyed my Western States result at all. I've not celebrated with friends or family because it was pretty much back straight to the grind and I think you definitely need to take time to appreciate things that you've done and you put a lot of effort into and done really well. My wife's a pro triathlete and is in the process of trying to qualify for Paris Olympics so I'll do what I can to help there. I ride my bike a lot, we did some gravel bike racing. You're going Zwift? Loving Zwift, yeah using Zwift both on the bike and on the treadmill which is great. You've got to come and run with us again man. It would be very cool, I would love to. I might race in cross-country, try and qualify for European cross-country championships. Yes, you had a little flirt with the Olympic trials is that something that's still in your brain? Yes but the marathon's too fast I can't run 208, 30. There are some other events on the track that I think I could run or get pretty close to. A lot of it's not dictated by me I have to race on the trails so yeah if I can balance things out it's definitely, I definitely have an itch to scratch there but yeah my main effort will be getting so for my wife as well prepared as she can for her Olympic trials. Western Sates again next year? Very difficult to say no as M1 but we'll see. Brilliant, cheers man. Thanks very much.