Hello, welcome back to my daily Transcontinental Race updates.

We're now on day nine, so let's get over to the tracker and have a little look to see what's going on.

And at the moment, it looks like we've got a bit of a runaway.

I wouldn't say winner is a bit too soon.

Leader Victor Buzzoni.

He's got a clear gap over Martin.

Reading a bit of Martin social media, I think he probably dug a little bit deeper than he wanted to go chasing that ferry, and I had a few problems with his punch as we saw yesterday on the social media, and I think maybe his head's gone down a little bit.

He was saying that he's having a bit of a had a bit of recovery day, so he's lost that time.

Victor seems very motivated, but I mean he would be is ready ready for the win really?

So yeah, Victor's got a pretty big gap almost I'd say a hundred miles or so.

However, as I keep on saying it is a trans continental race, anything can happen.

But at the moment, he looks like he's gone through Serbia.

So we have a little tour about roots in a minute, because there's there's potentially a couple of options, I think, but it looks like he's gone through well since since the ferry crossed Albania, through north North Macedonia, cutting through Serbia, and I suspect he's going to cut into Romania and then potentially back down into Bulgaria again.

Like I said, we'll look at a couple of options in a second now that that's relevant a little bit further back, so our second chase pack.

I did wonder whether they might start closing the gap, but it looks like Martin's gained a bit more momentum today and that gap looks fairly solid.

And there was a bit of I wouldn't say drama, that'd be a bit over the top, but we I talked about this, this park court and the off road section, the potential off road section, and it looks like all there's there's five riders, all of them apart from Christoph Strasser went direct over.

They're the first riders to take that off road options.

You can see here when we turn Christoph's track on.

He went up, back down and rounds and that was i'd say fairly predictable.

A predictable given Christoph's kind of dislike of off road riding.

I think that's fair to say.

And you can see the difference here, and it looks like it was worth a round an hour or so.

So actually Christoph lost a bit of bit of ground there.

He seems to be starting to catch up a little bit.

Not quite sure where Nicholas Chatealat is going.

It looks like he's decided to go a little bit further north.

I suspect that means that he'll be looping.

Will you go through Kosovo?

I mean, it'd be a major mistake if he does go through Kosovo, so we'll see how that develops.

So basically, the rules, I guess all the the situation with Kosovo is if you cross into Kosovo and then try and cross into Serbia there you can cross basically the Kosovo Serb border without any border checks.

However, if you then try and exit Serbia, they don't.

Basically, there's there's a long running, I guess, political feud.

There's been wars about it.

Serbia claims Kosovo is his own, Costvo claims itself as its own country.

I'm not quite clear on the full politics.

I won't go fully into it, but essentially that border is not recognized, so the Serbians won't let you out unless you've got a Serbian stamp in passport, which you won't receive on that border.

So if Nicholas decides to cross your Kosovo, he could find himself in a bit of trouble.

The other option would be to go in and out avoiding the Kosovo border, but it doesn't doesn't make much sense.

It's so easy.

You can see most drivers so far, and I'll just highlight Victor's route as well because it seems to be the The one that's kind of most popular is to head in into Macedonia through Sculpture and then north into Serbia.

And it looks like everyone apart from Nico is going to do that at the moment.

So yeah, but I'll go a bit more into the route in a second before I get onto that.

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Right, there's that's that section done.

The race is now pretty much split, well, I guess in two with two leaders.

I guess with the women's race, and that's going to be really exciting.

So basically our three leading women are now waiting in Bari for the ferry.

So as we speak it is maybe nine pm local time.

That faerry goes just before midnight.

So Cynthia Carson, Jannichessenheimer and Leo Wilcox are all in Barrie waiting for the ferry.

And it looks like there's another four or five riders, including Eustine's Lavaca.

We saw him earlier in the race near the front.

He's slowed down the dot.

His dot is shown just outside barrier at the moment, but he is there.

I think he's just got a bit of a tracking issue, as we'll find out in a second when we start looking at the tracking, there's maybe two or three other riders who may get there, but again it's tight.

The ferry game is not so much of an issue now.

So tomorrow there's two ferries, so one PM and then the usual kind of midnight or so you will take a few minutes slot and it looks like that's going to be consistent now until Sunday.

So for the next well, the next what day is it today?

Tuesday?

So the next five days or so, it should be two fairies a day, which which easy that pressure a little bit on the midpack, but then those riders further back that is going to start causing an issue on sort of Sunday into Monday.

That's that's basically well.

We discussed this earlier on the Uld Escape podcast, which I run with my co host Becky Waters, and she pointed out that a lot of those riders who were aiming for the cutout cutoff for the checkpoint basically have to get the Sunday night ferry otherwise they won't be sort of able to complete the classification because the checkpoint shuts.

I think it's Monday, so yeah, So if you want to listen to that podcast, I'll put the link up on screen.

Now we discuss not only the trans Continental Race, we did a preview on the upcoming silk Row Mountain Race, and we try and round up the news from the world of bike packing and ultracycling every every episode.

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So yeah, check that out for a bit more sort of in depth discussion.

So there, that's pretty much where the race is sitting at the moment.

So tomorrow is going to be pretty exciting when when the three lead women basically the podium that they're fighting for the podium spots.

Now, as I've already discussed, Lale kind of dropped off the pace and I'm kind of speculating that she may have taken a bit of a gamble on the Tuesday Night Fairy, gambling that anyone ahead of her wouldn't get on the Monday night Fairy.

It seems to have paid off.

She has, she saved some energy.

Is she fresher than the others, Time will tell.

And also she's riding that gravel bike, so on this park course section or the after the parkle section up to the control point, she could have a little bit of an advantage Yana.

I know Ayana's she's not super experienced off road, but she's ridden a couple of events I've like the Japanese Odyssey, where there was some thirdly chunky gravel in it, so she won't be too inexperienced.

Cynthia's won some big gravel races bad Lands and Unbound Excel, but she has been experiencing these these these tires.

It sounded like as well.

I had a report or read a report on the trans Continental Race Instagram that she'd had to replace the tire that she'd already replaced in Turin.

So yeah, she wants to I mean, the riders want to be making sure their bikes are in tip top shape before they do that crossing, because once you get to the Balkans, you're going to struggle to find a bike shop.

You might find one in Sculpture, and that's pretty much it.

Pretty much it.

I don't think they'll find anything else.

Maybe if they went to Sofire in Bulgaria, but that's probably a bit of a detour.

So yeah, it's queuing up to be a pretty epic race too well.

And the final sort of a few days once the lead women get across the the adretic.

So let's have a bit of a discussion or a look at the route now.

So if I zoom out, we're on Ribery GPS here you can see this as the checkpoint here in near Tarana, and the riders then have to basically cross the bulk.

And I think there's a couple of options that they may be able to take here.

So I think the key thing that's gonna kind of inform the riders on the the root choices is going to be the terrain.

So this is the finish parkourt in concert Or towards Constanta.

You can see obviously it's a fairly long one hundred and just under one hundred and fifty k one thousand meters of climbing, but you can see that it's basically starts on the Danube.

The Danube obviously running down the border here of Bulgaria and Romania.

So I suspect most riders want to try and get up to the Danube and trace it and do something in the flattest way, flattest way in a mountainous region.

You can just see from the terrain here north Macedonia is particularly mountainous, and you know the Albania's mountainous.

You've got to skirt around Kossovo for the reason I just explained.

So it's going to be a case of cutting through Bulgaria or potentially it looks like the front runners so far are going north first through Serbia, and I suspect they'll be cutting across either maybe cutting across Bulgaria or going up to is it Negotin and crossing there and basically picking up the Danube and then taking a flatter route.

The complication though, for the route planning is as you can see well, referring back to the road resource map from the TCR, there's a lot of red band roads.

There's a lot of band roads in Macedonia, especially around Sculpture.

I remember when I was trying to plan my route for my failed last year's attempt.

It's a bit of a nightmare to try and navigate around Sculpture, just because you know that the nature of the area is that there's not that much space for roads.

There's hills and there's valleys, and all the traffic gets forced into the valleys, therefore making the roads pretty busy, and the roads aren't necessarily developed enough for the amount of traffic that's kind of developed or you know, is created over the years.

So yeah, it's pretty tricky.

So I suspect that the reason most riders will be going north through Serbia's because to avoid the band roads, and the reason I suspect they will be going through Romania is again band roads.

You can see there's just all the main obvious roads here are quite banned.

And when you kind of zoom in the roads in the north, let's do this on rubber GPS just to be a bit clearer.

The roads north of the Danube in Romania they seem to run a bit more parallel, whereas down here in Bulgaria are a bit more kind of over all over the place, I don't necessarily run parallel to the Danube the whole way.

They kind of in and out, probably making it a slightly long journey.

So yeah, I suspect we're going to see riders do that.

But then the riders do have to cross the Danube potentially, well, they do have to cross the Danube to pick up this park or if they're going through Romania.

And as you can see, there's a ferry here and I've got a few question marks over this ferry.

We saw a lot of drama a few years back.

We discussed this on the podcast as well with the Danube ferries.

I suspect this could be quite intermittent from what I've heard in the research I've done.

It's kind of like a lot of trucks take it, and it's a case of they run it when it's full rather than at a regular schedule, so that could catch a few people out.

I mean, Victor's got a big gap at the moment, so it may not be so much an issue for him if he decides to take that route, but when it's busier and more congested further down, that could become an issue.

There are also a couple of bridges, so there's this one at Rousse.

If we look on the map here there's the roads from the south of band but it does say you can use this little section here, so that kind of suggests that you might be able to cross that bridge, but I don't know for sure, so again it could be a bit of a risk.

So yeah, I mean other riders going to cross a ride in the north across that road bridge, which we have a question mark about or stay north and catch the ferry, which again there's a question mark about before that final park or so, like I said, said, it's not over to it's over.

It's not clear cut, and I guess, I guess we'll find out, and the only way to find out is to keep on watching.

So I'm sure if you're watching this then you probably will be doing so.

So yeah, that's that's what I'm thinking at the moment.

And yeah, we'll have to see how it develops over the next couple of days.

And I just thought i'd finish with just a couple of stories a bit of social media, just to round the day out.

And we've not heard much from Eustina's Veka.

Normally he's very entertaining on social media.

I kind of clocked that, you know, the lack of updates meant that something might be a little bit wrong.

Obviously he lost a bit of time.

I think probably got a bit demotivated.

But yeah, he's back.

This is Eusinus, and this is what he's got to say for himself.

So one day may but being boys having a feast, I've been told that yeah, Mozzarella, here's good.

For Cratcha here is good.

I bought all of that and plus plus plus, so I'm start and there's still like three or four hours into the theory.

Might go for a pasta to ride pasta in Almania and Albeli, but anyway, I might do some more sties because.

Time to kills like himself in the Giant Doctors.

So yeah, it looks like he's back on form.

I suspect he's I suspect he's used to winning these races and he so he's basically made a bit of mistake in the apps, lost a lot of time, lost motivation because he used to be upfront, not kind of I won't say mid pa, don't get me wrong.

I think he's still probably strong for a top ten here.

But yeah, it looks like he's lost motivation a little bit.

But yeah, it seems happy.

We get his Instagram post back, which is great.

So everyone's a winner, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Eustina's goes in the Balkans.

It's an area He's already run one two races in the Balkans this year with Your Cursed Race and the trans Bolcan Race, so it's familiar with with the way it works out there.

So I think he'll do a good ride and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how Eustinas gets on.

And here's our women's leader, cap number one, Jana Kssenheimer.

She's looking happy and she's looking pretty fresh.

Actually, these are photos from the TCR, kind of a look at what it's been like riding through southern Italy.

And again she's eating a lot.

I think all these riders are eating a lot.

And you know, when you've got that time to catch the ferry, it just gives you a chance.

You don't really you rarely get on an ultra race just to really refeel and recover mid race.

And it'll be interesting to see how that impacts the second half because sometimes these riders are just absolutely on fumes in and hanging on there.

But there's a lot of fresher and more fueled up riders, so yeah, going to be exciting.

And then this is that photo again, but this is just on the Transcontinental Race, and I think this sort of confirms, you know, how she looks in the photos, So it just says she reached CP four at a little past eight o'clock in a wonderful mood.

She's clear on her plan for the days ahead, and looking forward to riding the Balkans again.

Like many of our followers, she's got swept up in the excitement of dot watching Victor and Martin for the race of the Ferry yesterday, enjoying the thrill or through her phone screen.

So yeah, even the races do feel like a bit dot watching and maybe even listening to this you never know.

By twenty three oh seven, Cynthia Carson had arrived tired, hungry, and still struggling to find a much needed hotel.

With her head in her hands and the exhaustion weigh heavily, she took the scouring into to find somewhere to rest.

That is also telling.

Has Cynthia dug too deep, or certainly deeper than Yana.

I guess sometimes it's it's easier to to be leading and be comfortable, and maybe Cynthia's really buried herself to try and catch up.

That could again tell.

As the riders cross over into into the Balkans and there I think you can just see in the the kind of just the the expressions there that Janna's probably feeling a lot fresher than than Cynthia.

Cynthia, bearing in mind she just had all these tire issues, and you know, the mental state and mental fatigue can also build up in the same way.

So yeah, so that's that's pretty much everything I've got for you this evening.

I'm i endeavor.

I'm going to endeavor to do updates.

I'm actually traveling to Kyrgystan tomorrow.

Tomorrow evening, I will have a five hour layover in Istanbul airport, so I'm hoping I might be able to bring something to you, depending on internet and time, and I'm not quite sure what that's going to look like, but do my best and then I should at the minimum have another update in Bishkek once I arrive in my hotel.

If I leave to ride at the start of the Silk Silk Road mountain race.

So yeah, keep an eye out, keep an eye out for the updates.

I'll do my very best and yeah, see you then