Transcontinental Race No. 5 - TCR5 - #TCRN05 - 2017

Can I ask, if you have time, to work out if Samuli's form in the last few days when he started picking up places, would have put him if he sustained it from the start? He appeared to have a slow first few days by bad routing, but then shot up the placings and has finished high in previous years. I wondered this morning if he could have challenged skinny or been top 3 if he had a better start?

The race usually spreads out as the faster people get further ahead, so what Samuli managed to do is unusual. He seemed to change up a gear after day 5, from averaging about 300km per day to 350km per day (ignoring day 1 when everyone goes further). If he had done an extra 50km per day on days 2-5 and an extra 100 on day 1, that would have put him 300km further up the road. At 20km/hour, that would have been 15 hours, which would have put him 2 places higher.
Of course, maybe he wouldn't have been able to go as fast as he did in the later stages if he had been more tired early on, so can never really be certain.
Would be interesting to know if it was a deliberate plan to stay fresh for when it got tough.
He wasn't challenging Skinny, Bjorn or the other guys in the top few places - even though he speeded up, they were still getting further ahead of him each day as they were doing (even) bigger daily distances.