Between capture and care: borders, rhythms, and recognitions on the Transcontinental Race

The Transcontinental Race (TCR) is an unsupported ultracycling event stretching this year from Santiago de Compostela to Constanța on the Black Sea. Riders plan their own route to reach the checkpoints and ride the mandatory sections known as parcours. The TCR is often framed as a contest of endurance and strategy, a cartographic dash across Europe mapped in dots, watts, and checkpoints. But riding it reveals something else: that borders are not just lines on a GPX file, that time is not simply measured in segments and splits, and that surveillance can unexpectedly refract into moments of recognition and care. From an officer at the Pelince border crossing who handed me water, to a night guard in Mezdra who let me into a Soviet-vibe hotel at three in the morning, the race unfolded in a series of encounters that exceeded data capture. What endures are not the numbers, but the rhythms and relations that resist them.