We’d like to share some words about how we feel ourselves.
Zsofi: at the beginning (first few nights), Zsofi sometimes woke up at night to feel spasm in her leg muscles. This lasted until Arad. We gave each other massages regularly. Then after Deva, her left knee started to ache – this lasted for 1 week and it was probably because of the too much strain (maybe because she tended to use higher gears than needed – she got used to not switching back in Budapest for shorter uphills, like Lágymányosi bridge). In Istanbul, she realized that she cannot walk as much as at home. In Eregli, she found it hard to walk up the stairs to the 3rd floor. Around Sile, she was very exhausted because of the steep hills and ate a lot. Now her wrists hurt a little – she finds it difficult to hold the bike (when for example it starts to fall). We have a cream for easing such pains. She also falls sometimes with the bike (when descending to a lake in Bulgaria, she had to get off the bike, and then she fell into the bush). She is full of green-blue spots everywhere – she hits the pedal with her leg, etc.
She just fell here (uphill) - there it hurts
Otherwise, my opinion is that she stands the challenge quite well. 
Sometimes I am more tired than Zsofi!
Felix: at the beginning I was OK although I also asked for a leg massage. I started to exhaust in Turkey after Edirne because of the ups and downs. For me, climbing a high pass (above 1000 m) is not a problem but if the max. elevation is 100 m and the total daily ascent is 1000 m, then I get tired (and pissed off because of the silly pointless climbs)! At around Sile my thigh muscles started to hurt (not continually but only when I hit them with my fist or stretch them). I also had some small red spots on my skin because of the Sun (UV). First they appeared on my ears, we thought they are mosquito bites. After I bought a hat they started to disappear. Also there was some on my arms, which disappeared after I wore a long sleeve white shirt. And now on my back, after I started to undress in the heat on the steepest slopes…
Both of us: When we start pedalling on a steap hill then after a few seconds our thigh muscles hurt for a 10 seconds. We call this: “Sugar!”. The phisical background of this is that the muscles have some spare fuel which lasts only for a few seconds. After that the muscles take energy (sugar) from the blood. Or something like that.
We start to find the weather too hot here in Turkey (although it was only the first half of May). Zsofi likes hot weather more than me – when we have a rest she sits on the sun while I prefer the shade, but I remember times when even she longed for a shade.
We are tired maybe because on average, our days were just 23 hours 58 minutes 20 secons long instead of 24 hours! (We came approximately 13 degrees to the East in 31 days – you can calculate.)
What we eat: a usual food (breakfast) consists of bread, butter, sausage (not in Turkey), cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, paprika, onions, garlic (we ate more garlic on this tour than at home during our lives), Nutella, jam. We cook (usually in the evening): rice, pasta with some sauce, paprikáskrumpli (paprika is not so good here and is usually too hot), pancakes, chicken stew. On the way, we eat tons of chocolates, biscuits, peanuts, raisin (only Felix), icecreams, fruits. Sometimes we eat on the street like döner, etc. Yesterday we ate out in a restaurant (we were invited). We drink a lot, maybe 3-5 litres a day. We pour a fair amount of salt onto the vegetables (because we sweat it out). We consumed 4 rolls of toilet papers in one month (Felix 1, Zsofi 3). Spending: about 1000 HUF (5 USD) /day/person (excluding visa).
Our mood: we feel that the tour is a rush, we don’t have enough time to enjoy the landscape, to rest, to hang on Internet, to cook a more complicated meal, not to mention reading a book. We feel that there is a bright yellow circle on the sky that is flying very quickly from east to west – we don’t understand where time disappears: we cycle 4-5 hours a day, what do we do in the rest? Here in Turkey it’s understandable because we have a 30-day time limit for the visa, but in Bulgaria? Looking back on it, we could have had more rest days… Never mind, we’ll rest a lot in Georgia (if we can reach it).
We had a strange finding: we left our daily routine (getting up, preparing, going to work, going home, etc.) at home but created a new one instead: getting up because the heat is unbearable in the tent, packing things on the bike, drying the tent, switching on the GPS and tracking, installing the solar panel, riding the bike, stopping to drink, to eat, to take a photo, to go to toilet, to change clothes (uphill it’s too warm, downhill we are cold), buying food, after 6-7 pm: finding a place to sleep, setting up the tent, washing ourselves, changing clothes, doing the netbook routine jobs (download photos and star them in Picasa, GPS data, fill in statistics), eating or cooking in tent, going to sleep…
There were times when we annoyed each other – a few days between Edirne and Istanbul. But otherwise we get on well with each other. Recently we started to laugh a lot – I make Zsofi laugh so much that she cannot climb the steep slopes and she has to stop (and of course she cannot start on steep slopes).
Our overall impression of the tour is good, we like it!
