Live (-ish) Blog: Transcontinental Race No. 5

Thanks for the shout out to my blog, glad you enjoyed the post - a great race. So tempting... yet not!

Simon aka Human Cyclist blog!

Some of the characters have finished today. Their dots have been playing up though.

"Cock. All my inner tubes are riddled with holes - even the new one. Got a 10k walk back to the nearest town, losing much time  #TCRNo5"

I would have thought tubeless was the way to go...

Ian Walker has definitely been the most amusing. #OperationKickass

Hard luck, Jo and Gavin. But more importantly, well done. Scratching must sting a bit but hopefully you'll get over that in your nice hotel and keep the positives from what you've achieved.

Looking forward to your next blog.

Seems a brutal cut-off for CP3.

Out of curiosity, I've been looking where the leading women are. Unless I've missed someone, Melissa Pritchard (233) appears to be ahead of Karen Tostee (228), with Paula Regener (14) in third. 

Seems to of been a lot of scratched riders 30 odd minutes ago....

Hope all are OK

Herculean efforts all-round. When you look at the history of Jo and Gavin, it's 10, 20 hour blocks of riding, with comfort/food breaks. Immense.

After Hayden built a lead via avoiding Austria, I was willing Jo and Gavin to do the same, but they're doing Austria... Hopefully the brutal heatwave in S Europe will pass while they're in the bumpy bits.

Slightly disappointed that Hayden's given my one fantasy tactic for ever doing this away: go full gas for the first 100km to try to get in front, then flag every road as dangerous in an attempt to have the pack re-route I haven't worked out the completing-the-remainder bit yet...

I've been dotwatching tonight - it's strangely addictive - but I can't figure some things out.

How up to date are the dots? The feed below the map says Dragan M (92) tracked CP3 at 2:30 - which is over two hours ago - yet his dot's only just arrived there now. Is there some weird time delay due to the time difference?

A little too descriptive for me here:

https://twitter.com/VecchioJo/status/893436874534137857

Thanks for the updates, Simon. Chapeau to all. All the best, Jo and Gavin.

I'm a reader from Hungary, and your words just hit my ears. Bastard country? On what evidence?

Calling a whole nation "Bastard" becouse of choosing your route silly can only prove your navigation incompetence. Guys like James must ride on their home trainer only. There you wont get lost and you dont have to cry on the web, by falling on the carpet...

Wishing you a bad luck on the Balkans ladyboy

Thanks for covering this, it's really caught my imagination. Been logging into the tracker sporadically for a few days, then watched the videos of Bjorn and James arriving at checkpoint 3 this afternoon both looking remarkably fresh and willing to do a bit of interviewing. The photo of them having a natter in a petrol station has just confirmed that these guys are just super cool, as are all the people behind them. I'm usually ready to pack in cycling forever after about 120km!

**Doffs cap several hundred times in direction of all participants**

Also reading this post on James' blog is pretty remarkable: http://jamesmarkhayden.uk/transcontinental/the-power-of-fatigue-racing-t...

Sorry to bring the sad news that frank aged 72 has been killed by a hit and run driver in the early hours of this morning . 

Can you pin this onto the homepage please? 

I am rider 268a. I put it in Google images and got some Italian super car called a Martians 268a. As probably the slowest rider in the field this made me smile.

Cue the Blue Oyster Cult soundtrack!!!

Best of luck guys!

If I was 262b this would be me...