Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

I do hope that they keep going. We have seen a few scratches in the past day or two but, having ridden for over two weeks, the remaining few clearly have the staying power - both mental and physical - to finish.

It should be noted that one Transamerica rider is still underway. I suspect that the TCR riders will not be as slow.

The vast majority of the remaining riders are at or over the border with Greece and so should finish within 2-3 days at most. A good number will finish in time for the informal party on Tuesday.

Let's look, instead, at those further up the course.

Mark Hunter #118 is in central Macedonia but has not moved for a day and a half.

Simeon Jurukov #113 is a little behind him in Skopje and, although currently stopped for lunch, still underway.

Rose McGovern #136 is a little further back and stopped, no doubt to tweet or instagram.

Laurent Carlier (a former pair but now solo) #205 is at CP4.

Pierluigi Talamona #126 is just beginning the parcourse to CP4.

Cheng-Hui Hseih #92 is about to leave the coast of Croatia for Bosnia and is only a realtively short ride from CP4.

Daniel Nicolas Munoz and his pair Guillermo Nicolas Munoz #209 are on his heels but using a slightly less coastal route.

Finally the #228 pair of Mattia Biffi and Alberto Varni are down by the sea in the town of Senj in northern Croatia.

Helmut Wagner #23 is still shown as active but is at CP3 and hasn't moved for over 5 days. He may be riding with a defunct tracker. He may be well down the course now.

I'm afraid Helmut Wagner was announced as scratched yesterday, as was the lanterne rouge van der Werf. Current LR seems to be Alberto Varni, currently making steady progress down the Croatian coast.

Varni is a pair with Mattia Biffi.

The Trackleaders map is easier to follow if you use the filter "active".

Rosie McGovern is stopped at a wonderfully named Restaurant Diesel. Presumably to refuel.

You have to feel for the people scratched now
Ralf Hemman, rider 38, scratches at Gorazde, BA after 3172km and 16 days, 14 hours and 23 minutes. @PEdALEDjapan #TCRNo4 #TCRNo4S038

Henning Bock, rider 165, scratches at Mosko, BA after 2802km and 16 days, 1 hour and 36 minutes. @PEdALEDjapan #TCRNo4 #TCRNo4S165

She was at a Nazi Mercedes garage yesterday.

I expect its pressures of time, jobs/lives to get back to that will be the scratch determining factor now :(

Confirmation of recent finishers just posted at https://twitter.com/transconrace

Rose would appear to be cycling along the illegal motorway south of Skopje. Doesn't matter from a race perspective I guess and wouldn't blame her for wanting to avoid the R1102. Hope she stays safe out there...

Rose McGovern has just had a puncture follwed by a tracker failure. Although, that said, she appears to be moving and is now beynd Skopje and has overtaken Simeon Jurukov #113

That might take me a bit longer...

No probs dude. I tried to see as many people in as I could stay awake for :)

Still smiling like a Cheshire cat I bet.

That was a little tougher than I expected. My body really told me to scratch at CP3 but it's hard to quit a bike race when you're riding for people fighting cancer. The tracker was playing up but I was blown away to hit CP1 just 40 minutes behind @hippy in 15th place. CP2 in 19th place and then I found that 24% climb out of Bolzano and blew my achilles. My race was never going to recover from that and it was largely going backwards from there. I decided to stay in it and concentrate on fund-raising, which worked well. Currently over £11k raised for Cancer Research, so it was worth every moment of pain.

That wind in Croatia was a bitch. 215kph. I've never experienced anything quite like it. At one point a whole tree flew past me. I saw four riders and a biker blown clean off the road. It took a day and a night to get clear of it into Bosnia, but just as I was clear I picked up a chest infection that I still haven't shaken. I was coughing blood when I woke up in Bosnia. Two short days to try and heal didn't really do anything at all. I was getting bored and depressed watching my position fall backwards so I decided it wasn't going to heal and I should just crack on anyway.

The Balkans weren't bad. Montenegro was lumpy as fuck, which was a challenge with two blown achilles, but damn it was pretty. I was learning how to 'lock' my ankles and ride around the injuries. It was only the chest infection that was seriously bothering me now. That stopped me riding much after dark as the air was really damp - arms, glasses, helmet, all glistened with moisture riding along in 17°C.

I was flying through Macedonia and thinking about doing the last 1,000km in one hit, but then ended up on the R1102 at 2:30am and it took the wind out of my sails a bit. 20km of gravel bullshit in the dark. Stopped just before the Greek border for a couple of hours and then rode through the next day and night in Greece to Alexandroupouli, where I charged my phone and realised there were 10 riders within 50km, with 180km to go. Unfortunately those 50km were all lumpy and into a massive headwind, so I could only catch a couple.

80km to go and my right achilles twanged properly. I tried it again and I felt another part go. In fairness, I'd pushed my luck already so I decided to just nurse it home and only put power through one leg. I had 20km lead over the guys behind, but they still came romping past me within a couple of hours. That was pretty soul-destroying. Then another pair came past about 30 minutes later and I hit a new low. Then some dick pushed me off the road and onto an exit ramp at 50kph with his car. Luckily the tap was fairly gentle and I was able to stay up. 40km still to go though. The longest 40km I've ever ridden.

With 8km to go I could see the Dardanelles and was scouting for ferries. The four guys who'd passed me were pairs so I wasn't officially racing them, but official means nothing. Losing those places hurt a lot and I thought of a way to get them back. Their trackers showed them still waiting in Eceabat for the ferry. I had a clear gap behind me and nothing to lose, so I smashed it to Kilitbahir as fast as my one leg would carry me. The ferry was about to leave, so the Disney ending was still possible, but the guy in the booth wouldn't take a card and I'd not picked up any Turkish Lira. He could see how much that crushed me and let me through for free. I rode onto the ramp as it was moving away - 3-4 seconds later and it wouldn't have been possible.

The phone was dead and my route files ended this side of the crossing, so I didn't actually know where the clock tower was. I ran upstairs to plug my phone in and waited, and waited, and waited. It finally pinged to life just as the ferry was docking. I spent 30 seconds booting Google and figuring out where it was, hobbled down the steps to the bike and sprinted off through the crowds. I saw one of the pairs and rode around them. They'd presumably stopped 'racing' once they reached the ferry so I don't think they had any idea I was coming. I screeched into the finish seconds behind the Dutch pair.

The volunteer at the finish confirmed I'd beaten the second pair but as they reached the ferry together we'd all get the same finishing time. I asked him about the finishing order and he said "well, as you're a solo rider and they're a pair it doesn't really matter". No, it really does! He did'nt know what it'd taken to gain that spot back. He recorded that I arrived between the two pairs.

What an event. If I've not done any permanent damage to my achilles then I think I'll be back. I quite like that my personal race was so tough but I'd really like to be competitive in another edition and I think the experience has been very useful. I'm pretty new here (only been riding two years) but it was cool to put some faces to names and I'm looking forward to catching up with everybody soon. Hopefully somewhere with cushions.

Well done @TheAdventureCapitalist- I think the most impressive thing you achieved was the amount you raised for charity- £10k plus? ( and thats given the fact that personally I'm not a fan of mixing charity with doing something you would do anyway, but that's irrelevant).

I don't really believe there was an Achilles problem at all, didn't see any Tweets from it/them. :)

Well done for finishing and staying extremely competitive to the end.

Several people who didn't finish last year did very well this year, some with unusual problems like skinny's Shermer's neck, so I can't help but think that if you're back next year you'll do very well indeed.

I have the same thoughts about 'sponsor me to do something I want to do anyway'. What changed it for me this time is I realised I had an opportunity to raise a meaningful chunk (£11k+ at the moment) and I'd have felt bad if I didn't exploit that. That's not meant with any disrespect to riders who didn't. Cancer has been a bit too present in my social circle this past year so I just had a particular opportunity to do something. Kristoff might be unbeatable (though I think skinny proved otherwise) but cancer isn't.

From a selfish point of view that also helped to give me strength when I may well have scratched at CP3 otherwise.

The arse and everything else was just pain and the Twitter stuff was a useful coping mechanism. The Achilles was a real problem and I was genuinely worried about that from CP2 onwards. I didn't really want to put it out there and admit I had a problem.

SPD's are the answer to Achilles problems in my opinion. You need as much float/movement as possible.

OT (The worst is those people that spend x thousands to go on a glorified and sometimes subsidised holiday and raise insignificant amounts- if they are that interested in charity they wouldn't fucking do it and would donate the money they would have spent instead )

I had 6 degrees float but I think my problems were two-fold. My Fizik shoes don't allow to bring the cleats very far back. Scherritt was recommending another 10mm really. The other issue was simple conditioning. Mine wasn't really up to the level needed to be competitive over a course that lumpy.

Assuming I've done no lasting damage then both things are relatively easily fixed for another crack next year.

Sounds like an amazing and awful time at all at once @TheAdventureCapitalist! Enjoyed your tweeting, too.

I'd also like to say thanks to @WornCleat for their contribution to this thread. Very much appreciated.

The Achilles was a real problem and I was genuinely worried about that from CP2 onwards.

A lot of people had achillies issues and quite a few had to abandon as a result.

My right one started to bother me at the end of day 2 and into day 3, so I lowered my saddle by quite a bit to take the heat off it, just before heading up into the Jura. At that point I was starting to think it might be a ride-ender, but the change fixed it, or stopped it getting worse. It's still a bit stiff even after a few days rest. Funny, as I'd never had an issue with it before.