Multiple stacked te form verbs

Sentence from the book:

自転車がわたしに向かって迫ってきていた。

I started reading a light novel and although I got the meaning of the sentence with no problem (the bike was coming at her), and I know all the verbs in it I didn’t understand how the grammar works. I’ve never seen that many verbs in te form stacked on top of each other like that.

So I was wondering is that just a wording choice by the author? Could some of those verbs be left out and still mean the same thing? Is there a grammar point that covers cramming multiple te verbs together like that?

(I know if I want to get any reading done I really should just go along with the gist of it, but I can’t help but ask ‘why’ a lot :P)

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Well the last two te form verbs are mostly grammatical, the coming towards you and past progressive. Then the other two verbs may the the real meaning of advancing towards. It’s clunky in english to say that, “the bike had come to be heading towards me” but in japanese it is relativity natural to links verbs this way.

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