Transcontinental No.12 2026

RACE OVERVIEW

722,817 data points across twelve days and four hours. From the fjords of Trøndelag to the southern tip of the Peloponnese — one of the longest self-supported bike races on the planet, recorded second by second.

—km

GPS Distance

Trondheim 🇳🇴 → Kalamata 🇬🇷

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Total Elapsed

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Moving Time

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—kJ

Total Work

≈2.5 kg fat · ~108,900 kcal

—TSS

Training Stress

≈26 century rides stacked

—m

Elevation Gain

≈4.4× the height of Everest

—W

Normalised Power

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Off-Bike / Sleep

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—km/h

Moving Avg Speed

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Countries traversed · in order of crossingNorway → Greece

A ferry across the Baltic (Trelleborg → Świnoujście) links Scandinavia to continental Europe; the rest is ridden. The Balkans are threaded through six countries in four days.

Full race stream · power / heart rate / altitude · hover or touch any point12d · 5-min resolution

Green bars = power output. Red line = heart rate. Blue line = altitude (scaled). Gaps between the daily blocks are the overnight sleep stops. Hover for exact values at any moment of the race.

Power (W)

Heart Rate (bpm)

Altitude (m, scaled)

DAY BY DAY

Thirteen calendar days, each a full ultra-ride in its own right. The signature of a transcontinental effort is consistency: the ability to wake up and deliver 400+ kilometres, again and again, as the terrain and weather transform beneath the wheels.

—km

Avg Distance / Day

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—m

Avg Climb / Day

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—h

Avg Moving / Day

In the saddle, most of every day

—h

Longest Riding Day

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Distance per daykm ridden

Bar height = kilometres covered that calendar day. Colour intensity tracks the day's climbing load.

Elevation gain per daymetres climbed

The mountain days stand out immediately — the Norwegian fjelds early, then the Balkan ranges from Bosnia to North Macedonia.

Moving time per dayhours in the saddle

Blue bars = hours moving. The dashed line = average moving speed for the day (right axis).

Average power & heart rate per dayW · bpm

Green bars = average power. Red line = average heart rate. Both settle as the body adapts to the daily grind.

Complete day-by-day log

Day	Date	Slept near	Distance	Moving	Avg speed	Climb	Max alt	Avg power	Avg HR

ROUTE & TERRAIN

4,818 kilometres and 39,302 vertical metres, drawn continent-scale. Sea-level fjords, the Baltic crossing, the Central-European plains, and finally the savage Balkan ridgelines guarding the door to Greece.

The full route · coloured by altitudescroll / drag to explore

Blue = low, green = mid, orange = high. Markers show the start, each night's stop, and the finish in Kalamata.

Elevation profile · the whole race0 → 4,818 km

Every metre of ascent and descent, plotted against distance. Vertical guides mark where the route crosses each national border.

Power by gradientW vs %

How hard Peter pushed on each slope. Power climbs sharply as the road tilts up; on descents it drops toward zero as gravity takes over.

Speed by gradientkm/h vs %

The mirror image — speed collapses on the climbs and soars on the descents, peaking at 80.5 km/h.

POWER ANALYSIS

135W average, 160W normalised, over 200 hours in the saddle. The transcontinental art is restraint: riding endlessly sustainable so the engine never blows, while still holding the punch for 39 km of vertical.

—W

Average Power

Across all moving time

—W

Normalised Power

—

—W

Peak Power

Single best second

—IF

Intensity Factor

Deliberately, sustainably low

Mean maximal power curvebest effort · each duration

Peter's best sustained power for every duration from 1 second to 5 hours — the full signature of the engine, logarithmic time axis.

Normalised power by day30-min rolling NP

The intensity of effort across the whole race. Remarkably flat — the mark of disciplined, even pacing over twelve days.

Time in power zones% of recorded time

The overwhelming majority is spent in endurance and recovery zones — exactly where a 200-hour effort should live.

Peak power tableabsolute · W/kg

Best power for key durations, with watts-per-kilogram at 63.5 kg.

Duration	Power	W/kg	Zone

CARDIAC RESPONSE

Average 122 bpm, peaking at 181. Over twelve days the heart tells the story of accumulating fatigue and adaptation — and of the daily rhythm of hard mornings and softer nights.

—bpm

Average HR

Deep aerobic, all race long

—bpm

Max HR

On the steepest Balkan ramps

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Power : HR ratio

Aerobic efficiency index

—%

Cardiac Drift

First half vs second half

Time in heart-rate zones% of recorded time

Zones set from a 185 bpm functional max. The engine lives in Zone 1–2 — sustainable for days on end.

Efficiency over the race · power ÷ HRper 10-min block

Higher = more speed for each heartbeat. The downward drift across the race is the visible cost of twelve days of accumulated fatigue and heat.

WEATHER & CLIMATE ARC

No single race crosses a bigger climate gradient. Peter started in 6°C Norwegian mountain nights and rain, and finished in a 37°C Greek heatwave under a cloudless sky. The body had to be a chameleon.

—°C

Coldest Night

Norwegian fjelds, Day 2

—°C

Hottest Day (ambient)

Greek heatwave, finish stretch

—°C

Peak On-Bike Temp

Sun-baked sensor in Greece

—km/h

Windiest Day

Baltic coast crossing

Daily temperature range · ambientmin → max, °C

Each bar spans the day's low to high air temperature at Peter's position. The colour warms from Nordic blue to Mediterranean orange as the race marches south. Source: Open-Meteo reanalysis along the GPS track.

Wind by daymax sustained · km/h

Arrows show the dominant wind direction each day. The Baltic days (4–5) were the roughest.

Heat vs heart rateon-bike sensor buckets

How heart rate and speed respond to on-bike temperature. Above 35°C the cardiac cost of every watt climbs and speed falls — the thermoregulatory tax.

SLEEP & STRATEGY

A transcontinental race is won and lost off the bike as much as on it. 92 hours of the 292 were spent not moving — roughly seven and a half hours of stop time per day, carefully rationed against the clock.

—h

Total Off-Bike

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Major Rest Stops

Gaps of 90 min or longer

—%

Riding Done at Night

21:00 – 05:00 local

—h

Longest Single Rest

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Every major stop of the race≥ 90 min

Bar height = length of each rest. These are the sleeps, the resupplies, the recovery windows — the strategic backbone of twelve days of racing. The very first bar — marked ⚕ fell ill — was not one of them: Peter got sick on the first night, and the 15-hour halt was forced recovery, not strategy.

⚕ The first night — illness, not tactics. By far the longest stop of the entire race — 15.3 hours, after 551 km — was not planned rest. Peter fell ill on the opening night and had no choice but to stop and recover before he could continue. Every other rest across the twelve days was 8.6 hours or less; this one stands alone on the chart above as the price of a bad night rather than a strategic decision.

Day riding vs night ridingpower · HR · speed

How the effort changed between daylight and darkness.

Rest stop log

Each stop of 90 minutes or more, with its location on the route.

#	Started (local)	Length	At km

PACING & MECHANICS

Ten-minute blocks, cadence, speed distribution — the mechanical fingerprint of how the effort was actually delivered, kilometre after kilometre.

Every 10-minute block · power vs speedcoloured by heart rate

Each dot is ten minutes of racing. Warmer colours = higher heart rate. The cloud maps the whole envelope of effort across twelve days.

Cadence distribution% of pedalling time

Where the legs spent their time. A lower average reflects long loaded climbs and heavy touring gear.

Speed distribution% of moving time

The spread of speeds, from grinding climbs to 80 km/h descents.

Strongest 10-min blocks

Highest power-to-heart-rate efficiency of the race.

Day-hour	Power	HR	P:HR	Temp

Most fatigued 10-min blocks

Lowest efficiency — the deepest, hardest moments.

Day-hour	Power	HR	P:HR	Temp

KEY INSIGHTS

What 722,817 seconds of data reveal about a 14th-place finish in one of the hardest bike races on Earth — the strengths that got him to Kalamata, and the levers that could move him higher.

✅ Metronomic consistency — Peter averaged 371 km every single day for thirteen days, with normalised power holding within a tight band from Norway to Greece. On a race this long, the rider who never has a catastrophic day is the rider who finishes strong. There was no blow-up.

✅ Astonishing aerobic durability — 200 hours of moving time at an intensity factor of just 0.53. That is textbook transcontinental pacing: riding well within himself so the engine could be restarted every morning without fail.

✅ Climbing where it counts — 39,302 m of ascent, the equivalent of 4.4 Everests, absorbed without the power ever collapsing. The biggest mountain days (Day 11's 5,388 m through the Albanian–Macedonian ranges) were met head-on.

✅ Climate adaptability — the same athlete raced through 6°C Nordic rain and a 37°C Greek heatwave. Surviving a 30-degree ambient swing without a performance cliff is a genuine physiological achievement.

⚠️ Sleep is the biggest lever — 92 hours off the bike over twelve days. Every hour trimmed from stopped time, if the body can absorb it, is a direct move up the leaderboard. The data shows the stops were fairly long and regular; a more aggressive, polyphasic sleep pattern is the single largest time gain available.

⚠️ Heat cost late in the race — cardiac drift ran to +16% across the event, and the heat-vs-HR data shows a clear tax above 35°C. Better heat acclimation and pre-cooling into the Greek finale would protect both speed and decision-making when it matters most.

⚠️ Aerodynamics on the flat days — an estimated CdA of ~0.38 m² is respectable for a loaded ultra setup, but the long, flat, fast Central-European transfer days (Days 4–6) are where a cleaner aero position converts watts into free kilometres.

ℹ️ 14th overall in a field of the world's best ultra-endurance cyclists, on a route from the Norwegian coast to the Peloponnese. A superb result — and the analysis points clearly to where the next step up lies.

Complete race statistics

4,818KM.12 DAYS.

4,818
KM.
12 DAYS.