Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Great work, Leo!

This thread is amazing.
WEll done Leo!

Three more riders will finish today with three others between the fourth checkpoint and the end.

And then there is the mysterious David Coulon who appears only to have cycled around Sisak today and not made any progress toward CP3.

Every finisher is a winner in my book and so

COME ON DAVID!

Totally agree with this, amazing achievement to finish

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^finally managed to get one of his pictures in focus...

photo taken by @fluff !

Three more finishers today and that leaves five (not four as I thought) riders out on the road. Two of them are very close, possibly riding together, and so one dot was hidden by the other. They are:

65 Mark Booker
158 Marin Roso

Both currently in Komitini in Greece and 306 km from the end.

93 Remy Pedussel

Just entered Greece from Macedonia 627 km from the end.

127 Andreas Thier

In Albania, just outside Tirana with 769 km to go.

130 David Coulson

In Croatia and heading to the third checkpoint. He is just over half way to Istanbul having covered 2082 km out of around 3800. He is riding, on average, around 8 hours a day. If he can keep this up, he should finish in about fortnight. While this is slow compared to the likes of @skinny etc, he has still travelled a huge distance and has got up each day for the past 19 days and jumped on his bike and ridden. What he has done so far has been an achievement. If he can keep going to the end, it will be the stuff of legends.

great write-up

Morning update:

65 Mark Booker
158 Marin Roso

Both together at a fuel station in Turkey. 204 km left to ride. Might finish today.

93 Remy Pedussel

In Greece. 590 km to go. Not started yet for the day. Two or three days left probably.

127 Andreas Thier

In Albania, just outside Tirana with 762 km to go.

130 David Coulson

96 km from CP3. He's been riding for the past three hours and making good progress.

clive " i counted them all out and i counted them all back " o

dicki

I have to admit that I have far more empathy for those valiant riders still on the road than I ever could have for super humans like @skinny . I admire and am impressed and inspired by @skinny and the others but in the same way that I might be inspired and impressed by Geraint Thomas or Liz Armistead.

I can really feel for David Coulon and know that, if I ever attempted a ride like this, I would be in his shadow. I do hope we get to find out more about him and his journey.

I've never undertaken anything even remotely like TCR, however I do enjoy single day(ish) endurance events. I enjoy training, and going as fast as I can and usually end up about of a third of the way down the results sheet.

Still, exactly as Clive says, I'm just as impressed by the back markers as I am by the leaders. Those guys fighting just to finish, or battling to make cut off times can sometimes take up to 12 hours longer than I took. I've often been consumed by the thought that it's not like these guys were trying any less hard than I was, it's not like they hurt any less, they all have their own struggles and daemons to overcome. They just have an additional 12hours of suffering to go through. For me, the first few hours of suffering is enough... total respect to the guys who are out there for longer.

Come on Dave!!

One thing I noted on our 1000 miles in 8 days ride through Italy last year was that the skinny young riders had considerably more recovery time than us old fat people.

We were averaging 200 km a day. At that rate, if sustained, I would be finishing the Transcontinental today. I think that sustaining that level, keeping free of injury and mechanicals, would be very difficult. As it was, only four of us out of twenty seven managed to ride the entirity of the course due to issues on the way. And we had support and we had all our hotels and evening meals prebooked.

But remove the support, remove the requirement to stop and then you might find that you can 'slow and steady' your way past some of the faster, younger riders.

The sadness of it is that I will never have the time to try this until I am retired or semi retired. If my health holds out, I may well do something then but I will be very old and will not be sleeping in bus stops!

Old peeps don't sleep, right? You should be good to go for days on end when you're retired. :)

Credit card touring/racing. Hotel to hotel.

Also, once retired you'll have plenty of time to work your way up to this distance by doing a multi-day tour every month or some such.

One way to ensure that I am not under my wife's feet all day i suppose.

Anyway, a dozen or more years to go until that.

you are an inspiration to many of us clive x

Is this what happens in your 50's? You dream about the joys of retirement.

I want to retire at 40. What's the chance?

I want to retire today.

I am not sure I could contemplate retirement until 70. When i was younger, 60 seemed like a reasonable target - kids grown up and 60 seemed very old - but as I approach it (2 years and a month away), the thought of stopping work at this stage in my life holds less attraction. Economics also make is preferable to work longer.

I retired about 2 hours ago.