Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

Is that comparison fair? I thought the route had be rearranged a bit, wasn't there a massive climb/hike right off the start last year?

There was more climbing in the first few hundred km last year indeed.
https://www.komoot.com/collection/1367757/silk-road-mountain-race-2022
https://www.komoot.com/collection/1883607/-silk-road-mountain-race-2023

True. Guess my point was more that skinny looks to be moving ok. Hs line here is comparable to Josh. Just more of a gap between him and sofiane than last year at this point in the race. Due to Sofiane resting less(?)

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Similar paces indeed, but more rest for skinny after 13h, and again 36h (quite a long one this) into the race. Only slower pace than both of Sofiane and Josh was between km 140 and 220 though, which put him a couple of hours behind.

Race is still long, with a lot of climbing to do, front 3 have not slept much this far, let's see which strategy pays off. One patch of bad weather or a mechanical at the wrong time could seriously slow things down.

From the Dotwatcher digest yesterday morning:

"Unphased by the parcours, Sebastian Breuer, former European MTB Marathon champion, reached the top of the pass in 9 and a half hours. For most of the first day, Seb continued to lead, closely followed by relative newcomer to the scene Artis Žugs. Artis has raced MTB in Latvia for many years, making a habit of hard racing and podiums. Back in 2015 Artis climbed Mount Kazbeck (5054m) in Georgia with his bike on his back and symbolically rode the last 10m to the summit. He is clearly familiar with the demands that SRMR requires of riders and last night reported that there was a snow storm at 3800m elevation that slowed the progress of the leaders. This may perhaps explain why Tour Divide veterans Sofiane and Justinas closed the gap throughout the night and seemingly appear to be building up their own slim lead going into the second day. The top 15 are all setting a blistering pace and it will be fascinating to see how sleep strategies, resting and refueling play their respective parts in reshuffling the leaderboard on day 2."

Artis Žugs having problems with his fork. Asked for assistance on FB but Nelson was quick to point out the rules.

Read the rules ffs

Read the rules

LOLz

Madness!

Just wanted to clarify why Artis, who was in the front at the beginning of the race now isn't anymore. But fair enough, isn't that special.

I was just making a really bad Suggs/Zugs pun.

Looks like a properly hard headwind in skinny's IG stories and Josh and Max mention it too. Wonder if it the first oes managed to avoid some of it or if it was there all the time. Max says he's coughing blood and stops for a while hoping it will pass. Might just be the dusty headwind, I've had problems with my throat too when riding into a headwind for days.
Looks like it might a bit of a tailwind now for the ones turning south at Naryn, like skinny. A big but relatively smooth climb up before they get up high towards the CP2.

The plateau at 3500m after the CP2 could be pretty tough in an "extreme" wind like that, it's so open, will be freezing at night. The terrain is slow and rough, nothing hard core as such but a long stretch of like dry riverbed and such unmaintained 4x4 tracks.

Skinny’s Instagram story showing what that wind is like… looks unpleasant

https://instagram.com/stories/jamesmarkhayden/3169228071739107820?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Slight breeze. Bring me my double disc setup.

The climb out of the valley where the CP2 is can be amusing, it's only a grassy slope but so steep it took an hour for Josh Ibbett for less than two kilometers.

sofiane and justinas got friendly for 4 hours there :)
also skinny top 10 awesome.

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I really look forward to hearing skinny's take on this race. To me it looks like a load of riders are going with very little sleep while he is trying to hold a sustainable sleep pattern.

I can see him getting to 4th or 5th, but hard to see him winning from here.

He'll ride his own race and not try to copy what the others are doing. Maybe a few of the others did copy what eg Sofiane was doing?

I haven't been through all the data so not certain what is going on. But I've just looked at average moving speeds and, now, skinny's is 13.6km/h. That's higher than most of the guys above him. But there are two who are over 14: adrien leichti and one of the German guys. Sofiane is similar at 13.5.

That means most of those guys have had much less rest, so may struggle in the closing stages, while skinny will most likely maintain his place and wind back his stops. So I expect he'll go up a few places. Will be exciting to see the finish. Given the low sleep strategies there's potential for some people to get exhausted and need a long rest.

Looks like the top 5 didn't rest much in the beginning but have had longer breaks now for a couple of nights. Which means they won't get any further ahead but might be rested enough to keep it up now. Or not, anything could happen, someone could break a rim or something. It looks like a decent road from the small town of Baetov to the CP3 but off road tracks again after that.

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He's into 8th now. Manu scratched and he's gone past Josh and someone else.

skinny is moving up which is great to see. Justinas pushing the pace like he did in TD. Going to be interesting.

‘mon skinny! Doing it for the sleep-deprived dads.

From what I can find Jakub is the fastest rider out there so far. The others up top will have to continue to rest less than him to keep up. He did the same thing in 2019, looking very organized and risk averse. Very impressive.

Yes it does look like that and he knows what he's doing. The trackers might not be that accurate sometimes but it does say his moving average is a km faster than Sofiane's and he's been sleeping regularly. Then again, reading his race report from the last time it seems he really needs to sleep, while Sofiane can mostly cope with a lot less.
http://jakubsliacan.eu/srmr/2019/09/03/srmrno2_3.html