 So I'm currently in Melbourne for Christmas and today, we're going to be doing the Christmas Eve Hell Ride. Oh! Express! What are you doing? Look at this! Real fake! You haven't even got anything down there! The Christmas Eve Hell Ride! Today is WCI points for the winner! Tommy Owini's won 15 of them. Skippy's here, Skippy's 88 years old. He'll last about 200 meters. Look at that, Skippy! He's got the Ukraine Ribbons on, he's solved the war. Oh, Sherwin! Jewel Israeli-Australian champion tier! The biggest names in Melbourne in classic! Welcome to the Hell Ride. The fastest Hell Ride I've personally ever been involved in since I started doing it way back in 2012. And this is arguably one of the fastest, biggest bunch rides in the world, I reckon. If you know one bigger, you can let me know below. And here on the screen from left to right, you can see the course, which according to Strava, is a 62.5 km up and back with a decent lump in the middle, which we'll get to. Cadence, speed, power as average 3 second power and average 30 second power next to it with the gradient. And many thanks to Lee Hollywood Turner for the intro. We'll get back to that AliExpress kit story shortly because it's a bloody good one. So this is Melbourne, Australia. Some would say infamous fast bunch ride, although I personally would say it's the most fun slash best bunch ride that I've ever had experience with in my 13 plus years of road cycling. In other words, if I was on my deathbed and I was granted one last ride before bye-byes, this would be it. It's even worth travelling to Melbourne for all the way from the other side of the world, such as the UK, as the cycling tattooist recently did. I'll link up his video in the below description area. To add further excitement for me, given COVID lockdowns in Melbourne over the past few years, I actually haven't done the hell ride for years. So being here for the Christmas Eve edition, my excitement levels were very high. And if we go back towards the start line here, where I'm right at the back of the pack progressing towards the front, you can see quite a lot of riders. In fact, with a handful behind me, as I slowly went through this footage while in editing mode, I counted roughly 85 riders. So she's a big group, the hell ride, and you'll often see 100 plus riders here at the start line. And as a result of that sheer volume of riders, when it comes to the hell ride, the naysayers will tell you it's dangerous and out of control. And that might be true for those that jump on the back for a few minutes as the bunch goes flying past. But as you can see here, the train is smooth, predictable and safe. In fact, some argue the top third of the hell ride is one of the safest group riding environments you can be in. And as you can see with many national level riders here, ripping turns at around 55 kilometres per hour. I wouldn't argue with that point personally. So let's skip forward here a bit as we head towards the big dropping section of the hell ride up Oliver's Hill in Frankston, then in Amaliza. But before we do that, the AliExpress kit at the start of the ride and this little anecdote, Tip of Fire is one of the big aspects. I personally missed the most about the Melbourne cycling scene being the culture. So the Stitch and Dart amateur cycling team have been around in Melbourne for roughly eight years. And one of their riders is the very well-known Melbourne cycling personality slash Instagrammer Lee Turner. And I assume because of the Instagram exposure, some random has decided to copy the Stitch and Dart kit, grabs some pics of Lee and sell it on AliExpress. According to Lee, he was recently notified from one of his followers that there was a fake kit going around. He shared it with his mates and then Matt purchased it as a bit of a joke. And this was the pinnacle moment caught on video rocking up to the hell ride in the kit with spelling mistakes and all. That's right, it's Giant Ormond, not Ormano. And according to Matt, who was wearing the kit, this is what he said to me via text message. Miserable quality. I made many little micro tears as I placed the nix on. Very thin quality as you can see from a bit of bum crack shadow and it doesn't leave anything to the imagination in the front. So I'll provide a link below. If anyone wants to join Matt and let me be clear, I'm making no affiliate commission from the sale of this fake kit. So we're now headed up arguably the most challenging part of the hell ride moments earlier. We passed a BP petrol station on the right hand side of the road and for those without the fitness to get up the hill, they often stop and catch the hell ride coming back after its loop through the Mount Eliza Hills. Personally, these punchy anaerobic climbs I'm no good at. So I like to get close to the front and I'll slowly fall back into the pack. But you don't want to fall back too much. Otherwise, this punchy part of the climb, which is about three to 400 meters in length with a gradient roughly between 8 to 11%, you'll get dropped. So I see Pat's lane will go past, put in a bit of extra effort and it's a good wheel to be on. Pat was on the podium at the Australian Road National Championships back in 2016. Almost went pro and has recently been the director sport tip for one of Australia's premier cycling teams. The inform team, an example of the type of regular rider you will see at the hell ride and in true DS style, you can see him giving Lee a little push to get back on track. So after that initial pinch, this climb here now undulates a little with a couple of rises that seem to just go on long enough to cause some hurt for many to pray that the traffic lights up ahead turn red at the right time. Now it's a loop through the manualizer village and a descent down Oliver's Hill. We're now headed back on a very flat section of the road before we finish the hell ride. So the final part of the hell ride is back into these little rollers and it's a sprint back into black rock where we started. Unfortunately, I'm never going to get up the front for a sprint finish. So the best you were ever going to see was the back of the sprint. You're not even going to see that as shortly my memory cart fills on the GoPro with only a few hundred meters before the finish line. I haven't run a GoPro for this long in years so it was a bit of an oversight. It wouldn't make the distance although I'm sure there will be many of you saying bullshit mate, you got dropped. But at least you'll see some early attacks go and just know that after this rise, it's a downhill into the sprint. Not sure who won the sprint. If you know, drop a comment below and I'll pin it. And if you want to see this full ride, well most of it anyway, check out the link below.