Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

May just be opting for a different gradient profile

Be interesting to see who's taking the first few days steady but will ride flat out for the back part.

trans am taught me that the front runners tend to be doing longer miles rather than more speed, and they tend to maintain it quite well, will be nice to see if this remains true

Possibly, but the two routes are:-

a) A single climb of 16.69km climbing 1547m in total. So ~10 miles of 10%. Ventoux-esque.

b) A 20km descent/flat from 1397m to 888m and then a 26km climb from 888m to 2761m at about ~7%.

So the longer route is nearly 3 times longer, has more climbing (in total), shallower grade (7% compared to 10%) but way longer due to the 500m of descent to get to the bottom of the 7% climb.

Anyway, looks like no-one has taken the pass so there must be another reason.

what an amazing race! Subscribed.

Mäkipää doing his thing again, it seems. (The guy got a special trophy last year for going the scenic route instead of easy ways.)

He's not gone that wild, a bit of a dogleg through the Alps, but he's still with the pack. I wonder how grouped up it feels when your part of it

Probably not grouped up at all. I've done plenty of Audaxes where I've ridden on a 100km stretch completely on my own only for other riders (on exactly the same route) to have arrived one at a time at 3 or 4 minute intervals before and then similar arriving after me. Or, if you puncture, you often see the steady drip of riders coming past.

(The fast lot at the front often work together, but I prefer to do the whole ride myself; I love having the time to think to myself. If I do ride with someone it's usually side by side rather than trying to form any sort of paceline.)

number 55 is in the middle of the lake...
@Greenbank dont know weather i would rather be on my own or constantly with a guy on the horizon and a guy on my tail

How the hell is Allegaert already that close to Bosnia, does that man never rest?

Stopped time 9 hours 33 minutes according to the SPOT tracker, that's some serious sleep dep he's building up. He can't maintain that for long and he's got at least 1000km to go.

As for the choice of routes, looking at the live tracker it seems they've all got to do the same climb up. There are highlighted red routes up to the two mountain control points (Stelvio and Mount Lovćen).

How much sleep did Strasser get during RAAM? An hour per day or something?
I know that's supported but if he can do 7 days on very little sleep then so can others.
Allegaert won it last year, no?

where is Kristof Allegaert going? Looks like the ferry crossing is illegal

Could that just be GPS inaccuracy because he's under the roof of a boat?

nah go on his page he's been all the way to the signing point and ridden back on himself by about and hour

http://trackleaders.com/transconrace14i.php?name=Kristof_Allegaert

I see. That does look odd. Does their twitter feed mention what's going on?

nothing from either transcont or his personal one.. nor facebook,

Looks like he has a plan. Maybe a more favourable route to Istanbul?

well thats my second thought that he's going through Niksic where the range is narrower and less of a maze but there is a shorter flatter route there if he had come up the east coast of the bay

Yes, it's very odd why he didn't press on East after CP3. Maybe he did fail to get that last ferry crossing cleared, the rules state:-

"Ferries are permitted for expedient coast to coast travel, by approval of the Race Director."

But I doubt he overlooked something like that.

If it is intentional, and turns South then maybe he's aiming to catch up on some sleep by doing Dubrovnik to Bari and then Bari to Durres or even Igoumenitsa.

Nope, he's gone North so maybe it is a dodgy ferry crossing.

Some other riders opting for a ferry from Ancona (to Split probably). That'll be a nice rest for them!

Yeah that ferry looks like it would be worth it as you make a little additional progress and get a good rest break, feel bad for him if he has lost that 3 hours, will see where he goes at this junction

Position updated and he's on the road round the lake back to Kotor so I guess the ferry wasn't legal. I wonder how many others will make that mistake (and probably why there have been no tweets about it).

I'd have thought they would have posted on twitter and facebook right away like they did for the trans am to keep riders informed

Not far off 5 hours that cost him.

wonder if he will do that climb again kind of has to