A view from the mid-pack
London-based Mark Kowalski was on a career break when he took up long-distance cycling eight years ago, diving in at the deep end with a threemonth, 9,000km ride across his native Canada. Back in the UK he began entering events, from one-day Audax rides to the 1,200km Paris-brest-paris.
Finally, after completing the 1,400km London-edinburgh-london in 2022, a friend convinced him to enter the 2023 Transcontinental Race. Going into the ride, the big target, he says, was simply to finish – caveated with the added pressure of his parents being there at the finish over a relatively compact four-day period before having to depart. “I’d agreed with myself, if I’m going to miss that window, I’ll just get on a bus or train and just stop because I want to see my parents,” says Kowalski. “They live in Canada, so it’s such a rare treat to have them there.”
During the event he was visited by good and bad fortune in fairly equal measure. A first puncture, deep in the Albanian mountains, found him with a faulty pump and a wasted CO2 canister – (“I just screamed at the side of the mountain”) – and that was only the beginning of his issues. By the time he reached Greece his tyres featured significant duct-tape accoutrements and he was on his third pump.
More fortuitous was his decision to hike-a-bike through a rough and tumble hiking track around the Stelvio pass, rather than attempt the 2,000m climb, which helped him leapfrog from around 75th to 39th. He also experienced the whole spectrum of emotions: “Coming up to Mount Olympus was quite a moment… I was just bawling and laughing at the same time, like, ‘What is going on?’” he says.
It all came together on the run-in to the finish, and Kowalski ended on a high. “I was like, I’m good to go… my bike is working, I’m on cloud nine right now, nothing’s going to stop me. And I managed to come back to 32nd place after all that. It was absolutely a dream come true.” And his parents? He beat them there by a day.