Mount Zas Doesn't Care How Fast You Climb It

Forty minutes in and the field's already split three ways. Front runners pushing hard through the scree, the middle bunch settling into a rhythm they can hold, and one bloke stopped dead over a fig tree taking photos like it's his last day on earth. Nobody's told him it isn't a race. He wouldn't listen anyway.

This is the walk up Zas, the highest point in the Cyclades at 1,004 metres, starting from the mountain village of Filoti in the middle of Naxos. Naxos is the biggest island in this stretch of the Aegean, and Zas sits right in its guts, a solid green-grey lump you can see from half the island before you've laced a boot. Today's session: 9.5 kilometres up and back, about 614 metres of climbing, rated hard by anyone who's bothered to measure it. Three chapters to this one, same as any proper contest. Warm-up in the village, the real grind through the thyme, then the reward at the top, if the legs are still speaking to you by then.

Filoti wakes up slow. Whitewashed walls, a church with a bell tower standing over the square like it's timing the session, old blokes already at the kafenio deciding nothing needs to happen fast. The trailhead sign is easy to miss if you're not looking, tucked past the last row of houses where the tarmac gives up and a dirt track takes over.

The first twenty minutes are the easy minutes. Old stone walls either side, olive groves holding the shade, the gradient asking questions but not shouting them. This is the low-intensity phase, heart rate settling, boots finding their footing on packed dirt before the rock turns up. Anyone who's coached a fitness test knows this bit: don't spend everything here, because the real work hasn't introduced itself yet.

Call the warm-up a clean 8 out of 10. Legs loose, lungs unbothered, the village already dropping away below. Filoti sends you off easy and lets you think that's the whole game. It isn't.

Past the last of the walls the track changes character fast. Red paint splashes and stacked rock cairns take over from any real path, and the ground turns to broken limestone that tests the ankles on every second step. Wild thyme and sage grow low across the whole slope, and every boot that brushes past them kicks the smell up into the air, thick enough to taste. Good conditioning work, this stretch. Uneven footing, a real gradient, the sun starting to ask for something back.

Halfway up, the trail runs past the Cave of Zeus, a black mouth in the hillside where the old stories say the infant god was hidden away from his own father. Whole group stops here without being told to, which tells you something about pacing itself. Water out, hats off for a minute, a look down into the dark before the legs get moving again. Smart squads use the breaks that are already built into the route. Nobody has to call it.

Past the cave the gradient properly commits, loose rock underfoot the rest of the way, no more pretending it's a stroll. Call this middle section the genuine contest of the day, seven out of ten for difficulty, marked down only because the thyme smell makes suffering smell fantastic. Full workload, honestly earned.