Day 19 // Emotional Topography
August 8, 2026
Words by Jake Thorpe
Photos by Michael Drummond, Tomás Montes, Sam Dugon and Weronika Szalas
A Measurable Proportion
Clocking in a day earlier than his customary schedule might’ve predicted, Mikko Makipää (044) arrived at the stroke of midday to close the 12th chapter of his TCR story. As the only rider to have ridden all editions to date, Mikko has become known for favouring paths less travelled on his continental quests – often diverting from the most direct routes to take in local landmarks or scenic segments of riding. As Maris Goldmanis (255), who arrived in Kalamata a few hours behind Mikko, sagely noted: “If people are told to take the quickest route from A to B, then they will take the worst route from A to B, right?” Mikko endeavours to buck this trend.
The only condition of Mikko’s route? Any diversions must still allow him to reach each control point ahead of their time cut-off, and the finish line before the party. With a full set of GC finishes to his palmarès, anything less than a finish with honours simply wouldn’t do.
It’s a fine balance to sustain, and one that Mikko admits, this year, was a little more stressful than anticipated. With question marks emerging along the final stretch, first from forest fires, and then from Greek border strikes, the optimal pace became ever more obscure. These worries kept him up at night – literally – as he pushed into the evenings to ensure he had sufficient time in hand should anything threaten contact with the proverbial fan.
Mikko needn’t have worried. In the end, he arrived with a day-and-a-half in hand. More than enough time to soak in the charms of his 12th TCR finish line before beginning his overland travel home. “Here I am. Twelve in total,” the Finnish rider beamed as his brevet card was stamped and finisher’s beer cracked.
Mikko had calculated, I presume in one of the quieter moments of the ride down south, that he has now spent 1% of his life riding the TCR. That’s quite a statistic. It’s no wonder, then, that charting the race's emotional topography – for many, one of the most significant challenges of the experience – has, for Mikko, become second nature. “You get all kinds of feelings throughout two weeks,” he acknowledged, “but that’s not just during the TCR, that’s life in general.” But despite his wealth of experience, the race hasn’t yet become something he can do in his sleep. “Even after all these years,” he smiled, “you still have to wake up every morning. You have to plan all the kilometres, ride all the kilometres, everything has to go right.”
Twelve editions have not removed the unknown from the TCR; they have simply changed Mikko’s relationship with it. The race, for him, is no less challenging – just less uncertain. “I know what can happen,” he concluded, “but I never know what will.”
Arriving at Gratitude
In contrast to Mikko’s even keel throughout the race, another TCR veteran, Jesko von Werthern (189), had found himself leaning into the emotional ebb and flow of his journey. Reflecting on his why with our own expert on the subject, Andrew Phillips (00a), Jesko considered that the heightened states the race provokes had, in many ways, compelled him to return. “In Norway, I thought about why am I doing this? And I realised it was probably to uncover and to feel these emotions that I can't really get to in normal life,” he concluded. “Since then, I've been looking forward to when I start crying.”
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Jesko views the race as an opportunity to peel back the layers one by one, delving ever deeper into the true source of his feelings. Through exhaustion, anger, and helplessness, he eventually arrived at gratitude – for the kindness of people around him, and for the rare privilege of experiencing something that continues to move him, year after year.
Perhaps this is one of the strange gifts of a journey like the TCR: by stripping life back to movement, fatigue, and necessity, it creates the conditions for emotions usually buried beneath the surface to emerge.
For Maris Goldmanis (255), the emotion that revealed itself was pure, unadulterated joy. “I mean, what’s not to be happy about?” he glowed. “You put every concern on hold; the biggest worry is what am I going to eat? Where am I going to sleep? You never normally get that fully removed from everything.”
Going Deep
With the focus settling on life’s simpler instincts, while the body moves through a landscape, the mind is afforded the space to move through itself. Pedalling through the days and into the nights, as Jesko discovered, can loosen the sediment of old thoughts and feelings, shaking up the internal snow globe to see what settles where.
For Mike Hall Bursary rider Luca Bessems (214), the road provided the headspace to go deep. She described the experience as a harmonising of mind, body, and spirit; liberated from more rational constraints, Luca found herself able to explore “deep emotions, deep thoughts, deep spirits, and deep willpower.”
Once the wheels stop turning, however, that rare harmony can feel harder to access. “To be honest, now,” Luca admitted, “if you're out of the race mindset and you're back into normal life, it's really hard to come back to this feeling, but I have recorded a few voice notes to myself to help me to come back into that headspace sometimes.”
Yet while the numinous spell cast by the road can often lift, come the finish line, the lessons of the experience will remain. For Luca, this was a commitment to tapping into the sense of presence she felt throughout the race. “Living in the moment, and at the same time, knowing that everything is temporary, gave me a lot of strength,” she reflected. “There is always light after the dark.”
An Indelible Presence
In contrast to the quiet of the road that had been such a feature of his race, Mudit Kohli (128) was welcomed by a packed finish line as he arrived last night in Kalamata. The marina had already been treated to several rounds of applause by the time the TCR debutant eventually arrived. As riders flocked to join the growing reception committee, their headlights triggered whoops and claps from those already gathered, only for the familiar cry of false alarm to ring out and the cheers to dissolve into a ripple of shushes.
Yet Mudit’s arrival proper was far from a foregone conclusion. After all he had carried with him across the continent, the welcome waiting in Kalamata was a moment of collective recognition. Waiting to greet him were the Lost Dot team, a gathering of fellow riders, and Sarah Bosslet (120), our FLINTA Category winner, who had also carried Mohit’s memory across the continent.
Like Jesko, by the end of his journey, Mudit had arrived at gratitude; and like Luca, he, more than anyone, had ridden through to find light after the dark. “Before the race, I didn’t have the words, but my family and I, we’re so grateful that you’ve kept his name alive in this ultra world,” Mudit said, embracing Race Director David Ayre. “Throughout the race, I met so many riders who had spent some time with him. They shared their stories, and even though he was only part of one race, so many people remembered his presence, and that really touched me. That helped me, as well, to connect with him a little more. It’s a beautiful community, and that’s why my brother loved it so much.”
The contemplative space of his self-powered journey had brought Mudit closer to his brother. “His presence is still felt, through his aura, the memories he left, his laughter, everything; he’s still here,” Mudit shared, before turning to Sarah, “and she proved it as well with her ride, doing what he believed in. I couldn’t be happier.”
But Sarah was not the only one carrying Mohit’s belief forward. After a long hug, she offered Mudit a reminder of his own role in that story: “You proved it as well. He believed in you as well, and you did it. You’ve never done such a long race, but you just flew across the continent. I am so proud of you, and your brother is as well.”
A Shepherd’s Life
Love can often draw riders on through the race’s closing bars; the gravity of that feeling can exert a strong pull. For Mudit and Sarah, that pull came from riding in honour of someone no longer with them; for others, it comes from knowing that someone they love is waiting at the other end.
With his wife waiting for him at the finish, Dan Jones (081) admitted that there had been another hand on the tiller as he approached the race’s final stretch. “I was under a bit of pressure really,” Dan explained, “because it’s our 22nd wedding anniversary today.” There were moments when such a perfectly timed arrival looked less likely. The Welsh sheep farmer had been enamoured by the life of the Albanian pastoralists he’d encountered along the way. There had been a moment when we wondered if we might lose Dan to the shepherd’s life. “It's what I would love to do, really, something like that,” he’d reflected, at CP4. “But there's absolutely no money in it, so I just couldn't do it,” he’d concluded, before adding, with a smile, “I like the finer things in life.”
Now at the finish line, life’s finer things could finally return. “I never want to see a chocolate croissant ever again, to be honest, or a Fanta,” Dan declared. Fortunately for him, date night was due to take a more refined route: a proper restaurant, a sit-down meal, and, the mother of all luxuries, cutlery.
Ceri, Dan’s partner, is also no stranger to an ultra-race, but the couple admit they’re not in a rush to sign up as a pair. “If we did that,” Dan winked, “I’m not sure we’d have a 23rd wedding anniversary.”
The Full Taylor Swift
But for some, rather than tempting the end of a relationship, sharing the road on the TCR spells the beginning. Slip back in time to the race’s opening kilometres. Norway is vast, beautiful, and utterly indifferent to the riders passing through it. But somewhere among its mountains, a love story begins.
On one of the country’s first climbs, a rider is overtaken by another. As he watches her glide away, oozing souplesse, something inside him stirs. A thought begins to form. Slowly, inevitably, he realises: whoever she is, she’s the one.
Fast forward through Sweden, and a ferry awaits. She’s on it; so is he. They share a cabin – their first date. Then they’re cast out, once again, across the continent. She quickens; he slows. She arrives; he presses on. She messages; he replies. And now, at the finish line, romance finally blossoms. Whoever said the TCR was a lonely affair?
