All sorts of events kind of become closer after visiting the places. Looking at the emerging floods in Thessaly along #tcrno9 route are no different. Already lots of local severe events, but the rain goes on for another 1-2 days.
"Und bei den Parcours ist eben sehr oft Schotter und Gravel drinnen. Das ist ein bisschen eine Scheiß-Idee, ehrlich gesagt."
-Christoph Strasser #tcrno9
Congratulations to @mkpaa for completing #TCRno9. Been scary at times watching your dot. Also entertaining wondering where you were going. Enjoy your well earned rest and diet change.
So one more proper hotel night before finish. Aiming for early start though. 170 km left, most on the parkour.
Some earlier rest might have worked, but by now I was just too much sweat and dirt from the last 24 hours. Too much heat often means too many lazy breaks. #tcrno9
Had a proper route around Larissa, but decided that Sunday 4 am is good time to ride through downtown. Spent more time looking for route than any benefit would be. At least Garmin didn't guide me to goat path as I'm pretty sure these are sheep... Joining my route soon. #tcrno9
Pleased to see @mkpaa made it to CP4 in time. Looks like he's taking a well deserved rest before he continues to the finish. 500km to to and just under 2.5 days to do it in.
Had the most absurd wild life experience on the gravel parkour. Tires where throwing loose rocks around as they often do. A rock hits a bush and a 1-2 meter black/green snake falls and goes "hsssssss". 🐍 #tcrno9
Keeping the fingers crossed 🤞🏼 and hope all is well with Maria Holdcroft #TCRNo9Cap41. She seemed to have gone off her route and spent the last three hours at the General Hospital of Katerini 😥 #TCRNo9
"Will need stitches in knee, quite a deep cut
"Head seems ok
"Will try and continue in a couple of days if possible, but don't know how likely that is
"I was thinking the Greek roads were ok..."
14 riders have finished, quite a few are on the last parcours and will finish their race later today.
Jacquelinet (cap168) and Makipaa (cap44) are back in the bunch after CP3. I hope they have some more weirdness in store for us before they finish.
Brandi (cap40) is doing something strange. After riding the preferred route for 9 days he deviated hard just after CP3 and went west, he's now on the Albanian coast. I'm really wondering what's the story there
@hugovk that's indeed a very reasonable possibility. He's not on the official scratch list but there can be some delays. We'll know in half an hour. The ferry to Bari leaves at 12 o'clock local time.