Episode 018 - Talking Transcontinental Race No12. With Co-Host Millie Gibbons, Esther Lloyd & Conor McKenzie.

Yeah.

Well, we've got a few races to go over, which aren't the transcontinental race, which are taking place over the past month.

First to mention is the pan Celtic race, which was back after taking a break on the 12th of July this year.

There's three distances ranging from 1000 kilometres to 2200 kilometres and big starting field of 255 across all the distances.

The route, the way that the route was formed really shaped the outcome of this because there was a ferry from Wales going across to Ireland.

The riders then did a loop of various distances around Ireland and then took the ferry back.

I think it was about 100 kilometers back from the ferry to the finish in the north of Wales and it was quite a decisive moment.

Ferries again seem to be a recurring theme in the races this summer and so this return ferry was a decisive moment in the outcome of the long route where the first two riders David Scott and Chris Dickmans both took the same ferry coming back from Ireland to Wales So a bit of a hundred K sprint finish there.

And it was only on the last climb that David got away from Chris finishing 17 minutes ahead.

So as finishes going ultra distance races, that was a really tight one.

I think it was similar at the third place as well.

I think there was a good few of them on the same ferry and they had a going to sprint finish.

So for the whole podium, they were sprinting, dealing with the ferry situation.

So, yeah, exciting.

I

think they weren't that frequent going across.

I think Chris had arrived at Dublin quite a bit ahead of David.

So...

Yeah, it really, really shapes the outcome of these races when the fairies are that infrequent.

And the first woman was Leah Wilcox in Knife.

So, yeah, it was interesting to see how she pivoted from her world record around the world attempt to come back fairly soon after to take on this one.

Yeah, for sure.

I think...

She obviously, she ended her run on the world record due to high temperatures and just general ability to be able to compete it.

So I guess she was, I think she was in Europe and wanting to do a race and there was talk of whether or not she would do, the TCR and I think the route planning.