Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

Wow that last climb is a brute!!

Looks tough!

Jakub will be finished in the next 15-20 minutes. Helluva ride from him, first ultra race too. A real shame Skinny was kept from making the top spot competitive. Dare say he’d be finished by now.

Strange. Jakub’s dot just moved back about 5km from where it was?

Edit. Control car seems to be coming out to him.

Skinny made up great time on Jeff. If he passes him and Jay I will be in utter awe.

If it is like last year, they will stream the last few km live on instagram

Jay's spot just updated and he hasn't moved all night, top of that pass is an odd place to sleep isn't it by choice?

Probably better than down it, as someone commented on that motorbike video. It looks like there are landslides now and again with some pretty chunky mountains.

"Wait, wait, go back - that looked awesome and we didn't manage to gram it - can you climb back up?"

Few km left for jakub. What a ride.

Jakub is done. Chapeau, incredible ride.

Fantastic!

Such an impressive ride from Jakub. Would love to see Skinny put in some big shifts to beat Jay out of top 3
Probably the last thing on his mind but I hope he comes back next year to compete for first. He definitely has it in him

~10k gap

I'd love it if he could collect Jay as well and get on the podium.

Probably the last thing on his mind but I hope he comes back next year to compete for first. He definitely has it in him

For sure. Go @skinny !
Damn those robbers.

It maybe tells something about the race if a runner wins. Not saying he wasn't a phenomenal rider, but it does take different training/abilities to be fast on foot. For example I'm shit in cx races when you have to run, though not that bad on slower loaded hike-a-biking and carrying.

I also think noobs can have an advantage in that they don't know how far they can push some stuff whereas vets have gone deep before and are wary of it? I'm definitely moving towards the "how much do I want this? not that much, I'm going to a hotel" kind of thinking. Possibly because I've bitten off more than I can chew this year but perhaps also because I've driven myself mentally and physically into the ground numerous times before? I wonder then if rookies push on when vets would play it safer and stop?

Sure, I know how it feels to develob an injury and try to avoid. And for example on my first TCR I thought my dry nose and throat felt just irritating at first but ended up with regular nose bleeds and a cough that lasted for a couple of weeks, so now I take better care of that too. All that caretaking takes some time but keeps you going for longer and more reliably.

Difference might be that I've done RaTN, TransPyrenees, TCR and I'm prepping for Transiberica right now whereas lots of the rookies will be focused on smashing one event.

We are used to seeing people swapping into cycling at the top level in other situations.
Rowers become Olympic track riders.
Roglic moved over from ski jumping.

Maybe Jakub is simply one of those people. If he has done multiple mutli-day foot races and had prior mountain bike skills why shouldn't he do well in this race?

Yeah he had tools to maybe do well, but he put in a ride well ahead of experienced Ultracycling riders. Skinny said he put all the focus of this year on this race and Lael seemingly took it very seriously too. It's quite something.

Does skinny pass Jay? Don't know that he has the time to. Jay is on the final climb now, his pace is slower than skinny, but there is only maybe a hundred miles left and a lot of that is downhill.

Indeed.

Lael second