Max Riese 2025 FRTHR Recap

For Max Riese, performance has never been a simple measure of results. It’s a state of mind. One shaped by obsession, self-imposed pressure, and a quiet refusal to ever feel finished. In 2025, that mindset was largely aimed at one clear objective: committing fully to the FRTHR event series. While the season also included standout efforts at races like TRAKA and the Tour Divide, it was FRTHR that framed the year, a sequence of events that demanded consistency, focus, and the ability to perform in remote, deep landscapes.

So why Further? A series known to test the endurance, navigation, and resilience across some of the most remote landscapes in bikepacking. Designed by Camille McMillan to challenge riders while fostering a tight-knit, passionate community, the events reward preparation, adaptability, and focus. And for Max, the series is the ideal mix of adventure and performance, where he can push his limits while discovering new terrain.

With FRTHR as the backbone of his season, Max's preparation followed a familiar annual pattern: structured training, relentless volume, nutrition tracked to the gram, and equipment refined endlessly. For him, the goal wasn’t simply to complete the events, but to show up ready to perform at each one. “The margins matter,” he says. “An athlete will never be satisfied. It’s a slippery slope — getting lost in the details and forgetting why you ride in the first place.”

For Max, Ultradistance racing is a complicated pursuit. While riders often say they’re racing only themselves, the reality is more nuanced. “Even if there’s no prize to win,” he reflects, “we still want to be the fastest.” That drive for perfection, for efficiency, control, and execution, brings with it an internal pressure driven less by competition than by expectation.

That tension between performance and purpose followed him into the racing itself. Early in the year, events like TRAKA offered sharp, performance-focused tests, while the Tour Divide provided a longer, more demanding proving ground — both shaping his form and mindset heading into the FRTHR series. Each came with lessons, setbacks, and reminders of how quickly plans can unravel, even in a well-prepared season.

In 2025, the FRTHR calendar featured three events: Perseverance in the Pyrenees, Equinox in eastern England, and Elements in Scotland. Max committed to all three, motivated in part by the newly formed partnership between FRTHR and longtime sponsor 7mesh, a collaboration he felt was instinctively right.

Max describes them less as races and more as “challenging art experiments,” shaped by history, place, and constant evolution. There’s no prize money and no categories — just routes that demand something deeper than speed, inviting riders into wild landscapes where performance and experience are inseparable.

FRTHR I: Perseverance.

Perseverance remains one of Max's favourites. Spanning roughly 500 kilometres across France, Andorra, and northern Spain, the event is a patchwork of rugged sectors that demand hiking, careful navigation, and sustained mental focus. Riders traverse remote mountain passes, centuries-old shepherd trails, and abandoned mining infrastructure, winding through forgotten villages and historic pilgrimage routes. Each sector offers not just physical challenges, but a deep sense of history — a story embedded in the landscape. Despite his affection for the event, Max arrived depleted. “I was empty,” he admits. Fatigue and lingering frustrations crept in, focus wavered, and he finished third — a solid result, but far from the performance he had imagined on a course that rewards precision and persistence in equal measure.

FRTHR II: Equinox.

Equinox, held across eastern England, presented a very different type of challenge. Covering roughly 360 kilometres through fast-rolling countryside, technical gravel paths, and occasional woodland sectors, the route pays homage to decades-old clandestine time trials in the region. The course encourages speed and efficiency, but in 2025, repeated punctures in freezing fog began to unravel Max's momentum. A crash on a downhill corner left him injured and stranded in the dark, forcing a rare and bitter DNF. “The worst feeling you can have as an athlete,” he reflects, recalling a night spent battling both the elements and his own disappointment.

FRTHR III: Elements.

That left Elements as his final opportunity to complete the series. Held in Scotland in November, the event demanded not only endurance, but the ability to handle unpredictable highland weather and full winter kit. Riders covered roughly 500 kilometres, navigating small Caledonian roads, remote gravel tracks, and stretches of open moorland.

From the start, Max went all-out, pacing himself as close to his endurance pace limit as possible and distancing the pack before the 100km mark. Riding alone for most of the rest of the race, his measured high-pace effort worked, giving him enough time to stop for dinner and even breakfast close to the finish without getting caught. “Finally,” he says. Executing his plan exactly as intended, he crossed the finish line first. “This was the moment where everything came together,” Max reflects. “The focus, the flow, the execution — this is what all the obsession was for.”

Looking back on the year, Max is unsparing in his assessment. He didn’t check every box in the Further series, but he was able to round off the year with a win, a reminder of what’s possible when preparation meets persistence.

And the fire, he says, is still burning.

As winter training kicks in and thoughts turn to 2026, Max knows the cycle will repeat. The numbers, the details, the obsession. He’s especially excited for the Further Unceded in Canada, a new challenge that promises to test every ounce of grit he’s built, and is grateful for the support that allows him to pursue it.

“I’m done,” he says of the season. “But I’m not finished.”

And maybe, he admits, that restless edge is exactly what keeps him moving forward.