TCRNo11 – Part 4: The Balkans

For more context, see my Transcontinental Race report at https://www.sykkel.org/topic/5154-my-tcrno11-ride-report

#tcrno11 #transcontinentalrace #bikepacking #ultracycling

[Music] I am again seriously considering scratching because my saddle sores are not good at all. The painkillers aren’t they don’t seem to be working or they if they do they take half the day to start working. That’s that was the case yesterday. I am also worried about getting an infection and uh you know there are stories about people needing to go to the hospital and I guess it can also do permanent damage. If things don’t improve within the next couple of hours I will be scratching. I can see Kuya in front of me halfway up the mountain there. It’s not super steep, but any opportunity I can have to not sit on the saddle, I’ll take it. It’s I I think it’s fine for for now. It’s only a little bit of yellow in in my wound. But I uh that was one of the guys from the ferry. So he’s ridden the parkour then going back down and around the mountain and and the more a better road to the checkpoint. That’s interesting. So uh then we can see who gets there first. Of course, since I’m walking, I’m not exactly fast, but I will get to the checkpoint and then I will find a hotel and I will see tomorrow. I’m not feeling too optimistic about this. Now, it’s one of the first of these shortcuts that I put into my route a long time ago. Pretty much as soon as I started planning. It’s only a short cut, so uh it doesn’t make a big difference either way. But it’s time to load up the final parkour except for the Yeah, the Finnish parkour. This one is 6 kilometers. There are no hotels available in Burell on booking.com. There is an apartment in Claus which is a bit further on. I’ve messaged them to hear if it’s okay to arrive late there. I understand why they’re putting in the these parkours is partly to make sure you can’t just win this on a TT bike. It’s a bit too bad, you know, that we go to these great places and we can’t or I can’t fully enjoy them. I was lucky on the Tur Malay. It was I had a pretty decent day there. I was able to ride all of it up, but of course it was slow and it would have been nice to do it with fresh legs instead. This is the end of the parkour. A lot of people, including the two front runners, decided to turn and take a long detour to Burl. I’m continuing straight up here for the the shorter route. But I mean, you can’t call it you can’t call it gravel. It’s like a mountain bike track. It’s a descent. I mean, first we have to get up up there. And the next time I finish a parkour, I will be at the finish line most likely after closing time. It certainly is a very beautiful climb and I have 400 more meters to go. This is the top of the climb. It’s where this dreaded so-called gravel will be starting. Let me check my tires. Both tires already had less air than I thought and and the rear one I I actually had to pump up a little bit and that’s not encouraging. Yeah, that the scent was every bit as bad as I expected it to be. I guess it was even worse because I expected it to have at least some sections that were somewhat smooth and ridable, but it was um close to impossible to ride all the way down. Took an age and it was not fun at all. The the rear route around was definitely uh the smarter option for sure. Very good. Oh, thank you. Good. Huh? Good to have you. Yeah. Are there any? Yeah. So, there’s a hotel just inside that door. Uhhuh. Um they have uh food and drinks still, I think. Got some lovely stew at at the checkpoint. And now I’m on my way to um the next little village where I have my Airbnb. It’s 20 km. Google navigation just did a funny thing to me. So Google wouldn’t just stop me when I had arrived, but it wanted to continue 6 km to uh cross in order to make a Uturn there and get to the correct side of the road. Well, anyway, I have 4 km left now going the wrong way. I’ve calculated I need 261 kilm. So, I’m going to try that today. see how it goes. I’m on a 800 m climb. Pretty steep in order to get closer to North Macedonia. The Airbnb uh that I slept in was actually a quite a big apartment or a house and there was even a washing machine there. That was good timing also because this white shirt that I’m using uh was all brown on the right side because on the gravel descent or gravel I mean the mountain bike descent I had a fall not a serious one. I was uh trying to get down some something with one foot in on the ground. Anyway, I fell, landed on my right side and uh they commented that on the checkpoint immediately asked me if I had fallen. But now it’s washed and all white again. I got a puncture on the rear tire or I’m not sure if it’s an actual puncture or just the same one that I’ve had since day two, but anyway, I’m going to need to pump. But I’ll do that when I find some shade. If it doesn’t hold air, then I’m going to have to put even more sealant in. Good wedding. real headwind here. Now, I already had one pretty big climb this morning to take me from Albania to North Macedonia. And here is the the other big climb of the day which goes over Marovo uh which will lead us to Scopia eventually. So I’m not going to be able to reach Scopia this evening and Mro is probably too early to stop. So I’ll see if there is a hotel somewhere in between. You know, on one hand, I am getting very fatigued and ready to end this ride, but then on the other hand, I am on the biggest adventure of my life. And I’m going to remember, think back on each one of these days when I was just riding and sleeping and eating, nothing else. Even though it can feel hard and tough right now, these are the moments that I’ll think back on and cherish. Okay, I managed to leave my helmet at the water filling station up here and I hope it was at this last one. I left it then a lot earlier. Here it is. Thank God. Oh my god. One thing I found is a bit unfortunate. It seems every night just as the sun is going down, the temperature cools down a bit. I start feeling great. It’s this is the best time of the day for me. So, it would be great to be able to extend the evening ride, but if you rely on hotels, it’s not so easy because uh well, I mean, most hotels don’t have a 24-hour reception, so you need to be there by early evening. Luckily, there are frequent water springs. Okay, so I I just made a reservation for a hotel in Scopia. It is um 95 km there and it’s now 18:30, but they have a 24-hour reception, so that should be fine. I have a lot of descending. Some of that is a bit horrible like maybe not quite as horrible as the bural descent but um I’ve reached Mroi at 1250 m. Uh I’m not quite at the summit yet. Another 80 m or so now. There should be some shops. I should I need to resupply for the night. I’ve been stopping at a lot ofarmacies in Albania and Macedonia asking for compete blister plasters because I rely on them in order to be able to sit properly and I only have a few left. Now we reached the summit and we have 2 km to our gravel road. So, this is the gravel road. Our first impression is that it looks a bit better. And by the way, I’m going to let out some here. Hello So, apart from a bit of loose sand here and there, this is actually quite ridable, and I’m so glad for that. I’ve been hearing some unusual sound from my front wheel. Some of the spokes have been loosening. Finally made it down from there. There’s a lot of life going on in these small towns out of Scopia and we’re still quite far from Scopia. We’re finally taking off this party road and turning east towards Scopia. This was certainly a less traffic road. Yeah. I can’t put on something. Hello. Yo, [Music] Scorpia. This is uh one of the highlights of the trip for me to reach this place. Let’s [Music] see. Now the disadvantage of these long uh hotel sleeps is that when I start in the morning it’s the sun is already high on the sky and it’s really hot. Yeah. I mean, back in Italy on this final day in Italy, I had I the second half of that day down to the ferry was yeah, my best day on the on the bike on this ride so far. Well, I I say so far, but it’s probably in total. I was really committed to getting to the ferry and I was riding really well. I had super strong legs it felt like. But once we um landed in Albania, things were different. My saddle sores were hurting quite a bit. And we were arriving late in the day. The the boat was was late, delayed, and so it was very hot, very hot indeed. And I spent some time also in Dudes. um some admin stuff, you know, getting money and uh so when I eventually made the checkpoint, I had spent all day doing 100 kilometers. I knew at that point, I mean, I was several hours behind my worst case schedule in order to reach uh the finish line in time. But the volunteers, you know, they they had the attitude that yeah, but it’s like it’s almost a bit like 250 km per day. So, it’s still possible. Uh, which is true, I guess, but like I said, I only did 100 km that day and I did I did 200 yesterday. There’s no way I could have done 250 for the this four days in a row. Now, if I take a couple of extra days, it should be fine. So, I actually actually can just tour to the finish now. And that’s that’s a pretty good feeling. But today seems uh better, actually. But I have some serious climbs. I have uh a climb at the border with Serbia, but then I have a really big climb leaving Serbia to go up to Bulgaria. My impression of the Balkans so far is that everybody seems very friendly. It feels safe. Also, the dogs haven’t been a big problem so far either. I just had a few dogs chase me a little bit, but before leaving the hotel, I uh looked over the spokes on my front wheel. So, I have just tightened all of that up. So, nothing is loose. I’ll do one final check to see if there can be any comp plasters in Macedonia. They actually had something very similar to what I’m looking for. You can see it’s the same packaging as comp. This can work. Oh yeah, there’s even some like this. That’s very nice. Okay, that’s brilliant. Two things. It seems the balcon is completely full of car washes and uharmacies. It’s very cool that even after two weeks of riding this, I’m still finding places that I remember from my route planning and from Google Street View. So, this is a minor road, just um just an alternative to the main road. But when I get back home, I’m going to have fun looking over my route and all the decisions I made in retrospect and uh particularly the first part in Galysia in Spain and compare that with how it would have been on the main road instead. Of course, it wouldn’t be a minor road if it didn’t have a little steepness in it. I keep thinking about what it would take to uh actually make the the cut off at the finish. I mean, I’m assuming I’m using an extra day to get to the finish. So, I would need to be one day faster, which means I would need to take the ferry one day earlier. And how could I have done that? I mean, uh, the easy answer is to say, well, I could have stopped less. So, of course, I’m standing still a lot. Improving that is, of course, easier said than done. I mean, I know Scandinavia well. At TCR, you have all these different uh countries that operate differently. Yes, there is a climb on this road, but I’m meeting up with the other road up here now. So, I I would have had to do this kind of climbing anyway. Somebody just stopped, gave me a bottle of water. That’s sort one of the kind of outside assistance that is actually allowed because I didn’t ask for it. The first few days I did have a bit of pain in my lower back on the left side, but I actually don’t have much of any problems apart from the saddle source. So this is Kumanov, last city before Serbia. It’s getting really hot again. I’m 3 kilometers from the border and there’s supposed to be a petrol station coming up here. Now I still have m Macedonian currency, so I might as well refuel stock up here. Doesn’t look like it. No. Okay, let’s continue. Thank you. [Music] No, Norway. No, Norway. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I’m at the TCR pier at the bottom of this climb. They said something that got me thinking, which is that they intend to get to the finisher party in time. And uh because I’ve I’ve basically already decided that that’s not possible. But doing a quick calculation now. I have 800 km left and a little less than 2 and 1/2 days. Just over 300 km per day, which is tough. I’ve not done over 300 many times on this ride, that’s for sure. But it does get flatter once I’m into Bulgaria. And if I don’t stop at any hotels, I just sleep when I’m tired in a ditch. I guess there is a chance. I have one more mountain to climb today. So maybe do that one first and then do another calculation. But I mean, it’s worth a try. The nice thing is that this is giving me the motivation I need to press on. Made it up the top of this first climb. We’re at 730 m. I just skipped the dirt track on my route that goes over that way. I’ll rather go a little bit further down here to a proper road. He probably saved me both time and frustration. So, the plan was to go straight through Serbia without stopping for the supplies, but that’s not going to work. First of all, I need water. There hasn’t been any water taps along this main road. Okay, so let’s do the final mountain pass on the TCR. We’re going up 800 m. Starting here at 500. feel my legs feel empty. I uh so this stretch in the heat sucked the energy out of me and also running out of water didn’t really help. 100 m remaining and it’s getting cooler, a little bit darker and that’s nice. Okay, so this is the final mountain pass of TCR. I’m from Norway. From Norway? Yes. Such a cold country. Cold. Yeah. So, what do you do for a living in Norway? And I work with computers, bro. You probably good paid. Yeah. How much approximately? Well, it depends because I have friend who went from my city to Norway like a medical uh right technician. So, he needed to learn the language. Yeah. He need to know level A. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But do you have so many immigrants like in Sweden for example to know? Uh, it’s not the same. I If you mean I mean I know you’re not the member. So European Sweden. I I that’s cool. Well, we are a member of Shyen. Yeah, I know that. Is there a time limitation with this race? Yes. Yes. We have two more days. Ah, are you going to make it? I don’t know yet. I mean you still need somebody who know what to to tell the artificial intelligence to do. Uh so I don’t know. We will see. Yeah, we will. But they they moving forward so fast. I will reach the finish line anyway either on time or not on time. Yeah. Okay. See you. See you. Bye. Hello. Uh, where I’m going? I’m I’m going uh to Romania to uh Romania finish. Yes. Constant start in Spain. Santiago de Compostella. Thank you. The border police was coming by while I was getting ready to leave and they saw my lights and then they turned around saying come out on the calling on their calling uh system and so I had to explain to them what I was doing here and what I’m in a race and where everybody else is and so on. It is true unfortunately that we are getting a bit of a headwind. It looks like all the way to the finish line. Anyway, Ro and Bulgaria so far there’s been very little traffic. The few towns I’ve been passing through have been small. just had to lie down in the grass a little. I was about to fall asleep, but that helped. In 34 kilometers, we’ll be in Sogia and uh I guess I’ll be able to get breakfast there. One thing they do have here that they did not have in Albania and Macedonia is garbage cans. You actually don’t see all that much garbage lying in the ditch. Like here’s a garbage can. I believe I set my alarm clock for um 4 to 4 and 1/2 hours last night, but I woke up about an hour before that. So, it’s about 3 hours sleep. I think I slept okay, but I mean it’s 3 hours is short for me, so I probably need more power naps. All right, I I stopped here to try to buy a coffee. They don’t want to take euros. They want a Bulgarian Lev, which makes sense. Um, honestly, I I uh I didn’t even realize. I thought Bulgaria used the the Bulgaria and Romania used the euro. So, uh, last night after I crossed the border and I stopped in Tran to buy some supplies at the shop, I just handed handed her the a euro note. That’s when I understood that they don’t they don’t use euros here. But it was okay. I was able to pay with euros there. Um but I really need to I’ll just go the final 8 kilometers to again now and uh find um an ATM, get some local cash and then I can buy coffee and supplies. I also need to find a toilet. So, I’ve done 64 kilometers and it’s not even 8:00. So, that’s good. Can you believe this portable toilet here even had toilet paper? [Music] So, this is Soga. And my route goes to the left. According to um my map, the cash machines, the ATMs are down here. Got some fruit to fill up in my vests. They fit so fine in these pockets. Now I have resupplies that should keep me going for the entire day and then some. Yeah, I have almost exactly 600 to do plus three. I have 39 hours. I mean, normally in random earning you have 40 hours to do 600 and now I have 39. It should be enough. Well, the difference is that when you do a 600 event, you typically start rested. [Music] Took a break at the petrol station here. Got some ice cream and coffee and also got a Red Bull which I don’t normally drink. Even though I’m done with the mountains, it doesn’t mean it’s flat cuz this is the highest climb of today and it’s going up to 550 m. So 200 more tomorrow will be a bit flatter but this is the advantage for those that are going north of the Danube. They are getting almost entirely flat route but longer. So this was the toughest climb remaining on the TCR. Just had a long water fountain stop here with fellow rider Stevie. We talked about our chances of reaching the finish in time. We we both agree that it’s not going to be realistic. It’s partly due to the the heat and it’s also this headwind that we have and uh people are saying that the Finnish bar core is really slow. Even the fastest ones take 8 hours. So, I mean, I I basically have the choice of trying to go hard to sleep as little as possible, to ride sleepdeprived all of tomorrow, and then most likely still not make it. Or I can just go back to touring mode right now, enjoy the rest of the ride, and be relatively safe that I’m I’m going to be able to finish this. I’ll still be a TCR finisher. And what what difference does it really make to be at the bottom of the list in the general classification or to be a finisher? It’s uh it’s fine. And I’m sure there’s going to be people still hanging around and other people that are finishing and it’s not going to be the same, but it’s it’s going to be something. So, that’s the plan. Uh maybe I could even try booking a hotel for tonight. That would be nice. I don’t want to get woken up by the border police again. I’ll be crossing one of the forbidden roads. I need to take this minor road to Cleven. getting a burger for breakfast. Now, that was a long stop in Pleven. It’s 6:00 now. And uh when my alarm went off at 3, I just stopped it, slept for another hour or so. It’s amazing what what a little rest and recovery can actually do because I feel so much better now than I did entering this town yesterday. The temperature is 17 1/2° and it feels amazing. Temperature is dropping and it’s down to 15° now. And it actually felt a bit cold, but I’m definitely not going to complain about that. And the route I’ve planned actually takes to the right in the corner here. And then it goes onto a gravel road, which is a shortcut going east. But I won’t be taking that. I’ll be following this main road or the tarmac road like everybody else. I’m sure it’s it’s going to be faster. And I actually have a much bigger gravel adventure later today. We and I’m going to do the same thing there. I expected everybody to do that. I just wanted to do something a little different, but uh I just now I just want to take the easy road really. So when I get to Swishdov, I have two options. I can either continue in Bulgaria on the south side of the river like I have planned to do or I can take the ferry across and go through Romania on flatter terrain uh all the way to where I need to take a ferry back over the river again to start the Finnish parkour. And right now that option is quite tempting. Yeah, I’m definitely going to have a look and see when the next ferry goes. Oh, yesterday I I can tell you. I mean, how is it possible that you go more than 4,000 km and then you have this like devastating puncture? Really super annoying. Uh I’m I’m at the ferry here and according to the time table the next one is at 12:30 which is 2 hours which is strange given that the ferry seems to be arriving. But I guess it could still it could still be staying put here for for a while. And this looks like it will take a while to unload as well. So, I guess I’ll just ride my planned route. The temperature has been nice until now. This is where I’m choosing to not follow my route in there uh to take a shortcut directly east, but I’ll go a bit south on this main road instead. It’s probably going to be faster. [Music] It has become really hot now. It’s showing 36° here. And here I am in the flatlands walking up another 8% hill. I’m getting to the village where I need to do a slight trick in order to avoid riding on the E-ro. It is quite cool to be riding on these places that you’ve been planning by looking at satellite maps because this particular road doesn’t even show up on the map. [Music] Here we are. Starting a gentle descent down to Rousa now, which means that this is the final time on the TCR that I’ll be above 200 m. That was a nice meal. painkillers are not working that well at the moment. To the left is this much talked about bridge between Romania and uh Bulgaria and you can see all the lorries queuing up. What an uncomfortable piece of road. And I’m going to be staying on this for 100 kilometers to Sinistra. All right, final resupply for the night. Got some coffee, some Red Bull, and some food. I’m in Celistra and 10 km left on my free routing. Is that station open? Yes, it is. That’s good because I do need some more food. Uh, okay. We’re leaving Bulgaria. Okay, ready to do the rest of the stint. [Music] There was a shop here, but I don’t have any local currency. I would like to find petrol station and a toilet, but I haven’t seen that anywhere. I just had one of my top three worst toilet experiences of my life. That uh that petrol station was one of those very small ones. No space for a toilet inside. So instead there was um pora potty outside and the stench in there was unbearable and I very nearly threw up. Uh to be honest, I would have been better off just doing it in the wild. The shop itself was modern and even offered mobile contactless payment. I guess I’m all set to finish this. Now, the pair that I met in Serbia who thought there was a chance to make the finish and who inspired me to have a go as well, they did ride very hard because they were quite far in front of me. remember I had this long hotel stop in Levven while they apparently just rode on but they didn’t get to the finish and they’ve stopped for a long sleep stop a bit further back. So now I’m I’m I’ve overtaken them again and also there are some other people from the ferry that were faster than me uh who are also behind now. So, I’ve been going quite well for the last couple of days. This is where we leave the main road. We take this detour which is going to contain a lot of gravel. I can see the Black Sea in the distance. Not far left now. didn’t actually get any uh gravel. So far, it’s been all nice tarmac, but we’re now again turning left. So, despite having like 60 km remaining, I we only according to my Garmin, we only have 186 m of elevation. So, it’s virtually flat. did my final adjustment of tire pressure and my final change of derailer battery. You know, my number one goal for this event was to see if it was possible for me to ride for this long without being completely crippled by saddle source. While it’s not been a 100% success, it’s certainly been a success. And testament to the success is that I’m now riding this horrible gravel and my ass is pipe. Go. The kilometers are moving so slowly on this terrain. And I still have seven until I turn off. Don’t do that. There we are. Hey. Yes. [Music] Hey. Congratulations. Welcome for the finish. Thank you. Well done. Well done. Unbelievable. Baby, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Well done. Oh, great feeling. You want to come inside to the shade? Yeah. Yes, please. Is it young guy? Estonia, right? No. [Music] So you went south of the right. Yeah. Yeah.