Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

indeed, Melons, Trucks and Angry Dogs

It finished at 7.30 this morning :o just short of 8 days

josh vs richard will be interesting though

I wonder how strict they'll be about completing all of the mandatory road at Mount Lovcen (do they even need to?). I can see a few (#50, #89) that turned off early (after the control point obviously).

Is it mandatory or advised?

Rider down/ #74 apparently hit by a car

Wake up Josh your about to loose second place

Rider down/ #74 apparently hit by a car

Some odd tweets on his timeline in the last couple of hours, and his tracker has him in the hospital in Verona.

Ah Mike hall has just said Josh's tracker is on low battery so he's not actually stopped

Oh it seems he's not the person who was hit but he's a friend of the guy the guy hit was evangelos

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Transcontinental.en/

Really interesting to read your post, it's sort of inspired me to look into audaxes, but I think I need to get serious about a saddle that I can sit on for longer periods first.

I wouldn't have replied but the last part of your post had a story about you stopping in Eskdalemuir, a tiny village in scotland where I happened to grow up, I don't think I have ever seen it mentioned on the internet before. Strange, small world. I wish I had been into cycling when I was a kid, its fantastic round there.

I thought I knew the name. I've ridden nearby to Eskdalemuir this year. To a little bike shop in Moffat, actually.

Road.cc reports josh had a shifter malfunction... riding 'singlespeed'.

I hope you got some of the world famous Moffat Toffees!

Sorry, no. Moffat was only visited as a detour to get an emergency fix done to my bike.

Big thanks to Gordon at Annandale Cycles for fixing my machine
http://www.yell.com/biz/annandale-cycles-moffat-7882989/

Blockquote I wouldn't have replied but the last part of your post had a story about you stopping in Eskdalemuir, a tiny village in scotland where I happened to grow up,

In 2009, the nearby town of Canonbie responded to the organisers of LEL that they didn't want to be a control point again. Apparently the notion of lots of cyclists passing through, dropping money into the local economy is a bad thing there.

Eskdalemuir, being the next place up the road, was approached and, as I understand, the prospect of a big event with simple demands looking for a place to stay fairly much sealed the deal for the community to purchase the old school and refurbish it as a community centre.

#csb

Canonbie Suck Balls?

I thought that Canonbie Primary School just didn't want the hassle again.

I test rode the LEL route prior to that control moving from Canonbie to Eskdalemuir.
a) I didn't spot any useful shops in Canonbie anyway. The only stuff with a chance of being open odd hours is in Longtown.
b) The back road route from Canonbie to Langholm (over Byre Burn and then the B6318) is very lumpy indeed. My legs did not like it on fixed. The A7 is much kinder.
c) The route went past Eskdalemuir anyway (the B709 is a gorgeous road)
d) The Samye Ling Buddhist temple just up from Eskdalemuir was also touted as a possible control or sleep stop

Anyway, back to the TCR. I hate the way that the trackers effectively stop working when they get near Istanbul.

Allegaert 7d 23h
Ibbett 9d 5h 59m
Dunnett 9d 6h 34m

Edit: Allegaert went 7:13 last year, i wonder if he would've been faster this year if he didn't fuck up at cp3?

As wall clock time goes he lost just under 5 hours at CP3 (that was the elapsed time from passing the junction where he should have turned left to the time he got back to that same junction and continued on round the bay).

Whether not doing the extra riding (~50km and 900m+ climbing) would have allowed him to shave off another 5 hours is a much harder question to answer. He may have pushed harder at the end knowing that he was still in a chance of beating his previous time had he not fucked up.

Wicked!

Canonbie is a bit of a dump though... Whoops old rivalries die hard!

Funnily enough I went to the little school in Eskdalemuir before it was shut down 10 years or so ago, there were 15 of us spread over the 7 years! Also my best friends dad is one of the leaders of the community group who now run the centre. There are a lot of great people round there, not many cyclists though!

Samye Ling is a slightly strange place, that has become a bit commercial and a bit of a circus these days. But I suppose its the reason I ended up there instead of growing up in Hackney where I was born, so I have something to thank it for (no offence meant to anyone who grew up in hackney).

Josh won by 35 mins

First place lady was Pippa 12 days 6 hours 50 i think