Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

Great ride @skinny dude. Sorry you couldn’t get to the finish

Yeah ditto this. Great ride skinny. Having asthma is a ballache and there are no prizes for dying.

awesome ride skinny.

Sofiane appears to have stopped for half an hour or so. With night coming, I wonder if they'll just wait for light for the big ascent.

Looks like Angus Young's scratched too.

Angus was having a tough time of it. Posted a signature nose bleed recently

Don't think it's stopping time, must be a mix of hike a bike/slow going/limping tracker signal. The route seems to follow a highking track for the first part off the valley rather than going the long way around to take the double track. Wouldn't be surprised if it takes 1h to do 1-2km.

Looks like their gap is closer to 2h now.

Seems he moved 0.km in about half an hour. Tracker was off but when it update after half an hour or so but when it updated he hadn't moved.

there are no prizes for dying.

Are you for serious?

All these years...

• that I'm aware of.
  

I hope they take care on that descent.
It's so close. Best dotwatching for a while.

Yeah only a few kilometers between them and Sofiane is soon on the descent. Looks like he's got it if the wheels and tyres won't break this time.

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Sofiane has this in the bag now. Great effort from Jakub to keep it competitive.

Sofiane finished. Beast of a ride, even if I feel uneasy about his no-sleep strategy. Chapeau that man.

Whole new dimension being opened up now. Not sure where it’s headed or how I feel about it, but it is fascinating.

Saying this, @skinny self awareness and care for one’s person resonates with me me a lot. There’ll be more boundaries pushed, but I feel like this is a lesson to learn from him about being wary of how much to push and not being dragged by the rest to prove something.

Salute @skinny as usual, you’ve done us proud.

Sounds like he was on a Highway to Hell.

Thanks all. Some make it look easy, but it's not. And I seem to suffer setbacks more than others. It sucks. I'm not sure what I did in a previous life. But when it goes well it's worth all the more.

I tried to find some photos of the final pass from 2019. There is a gate at the top, you can see it on the map, and it is like an illusions, never getting closer. You can just see it in the final photo in the saddle.
When you hook south in the valley, first photo, it just goes vertical for a bit and is then steep all the way, it's not ridable much, or wasn't as you can see the loose scree rock on the old road, but apparently it's been bulldozed since 2019.

On an ordinary day it wouldn't be so bad. But it summits at 3850m and you feel all of them after the days racing.

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He actually sleeps a bit here in Kyrgyzstan for sure, though less than Jakub who is a sloth. Justinas is the one that didn't sleep, from what I saw, and seemed to have no real strategy, if he had one and slept, he might well have won. The racing is so hard here, you need rest.

Thanks for pics and context. Sorry it didn't work out to plan, but nevertheless, well done! I enjoyed following this, incredibly strong field. I was shocked how fast the leaders started.
Enjoy the recovery!

uneasy about his no-sleep strategy

With the sleeping I feel uneasy too about the boundaries getting pushed beyond what is safe and healthy. Given what they do on RAAM, it can potentially go quite a bit further, but without the support crew, the risks are higher and things will inevitably go wrong.

I read about Strasser's sleep strategy for RAAM and he has about 45 minutes, and I think a bit more after the first 2-3 days. For TCR he upped it to 3 hours, which is the minimum I do.

I used to be against rules about sleeping but am being persuaded now.

I think shorter events are worse as people have to go unsustainable to be competitive. I'm about to do PBP and almost everyone will miss at least one night, and the fastest won't sleep at all. The numbers mean there's usually incidents: first time I did it in 2011 a guy in a recumbent fell asleep and rode into an incoming truck.

Even the race was shocked, Sebastian was at CP1 before any of the team got there! Overall it wasn't that fast a start, I started incredibly slow with some energy availability issues and creeped through to cp1.

Great battle for top 5 today

Race winner deserves a picture. Sofiane must be in the very top tier now after three SRMR wins.

He raced without a phone, having broken it on the first day during a crash which left him far back in the field on the first day. He got sporadic updates on his competition by borrowing phones occasionally from locals but was otherwise without news for much of the race. He knew Jakub wasn't far at the end because he could see his lights lower down the mountain.

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Chapeau @skinny that's some impressive racing.
And all the others too obviously. Has been an interesting race to follow with so many pretty close to equally strong riders with different strengths. It really is rough to ride there at race pace (even at my personal race pace back when I was there) and you need to get everything so right to keep that speed up.