TransAm 2016 - www.transambikerace.com

Yeah it does. It says 'solo'.
Spirit: Above all, attempts are intended to be solo / self-supported, self-timed, and observed as one stage, i.e. the clock runs non-stop. The challenge is complete upon arrival to the opposite Trans Am terminus from start. There are no required checkpoints or designated rest periods on course. There is no finish time cut-off!

If they aren't sharing kit, and aren't drafting, don't see a problem with it. They are still pedalling under their own steam, sorting their own food, and sharing lodgings is legit. What wrong with passing the time riding side by side having a chat. Or is that in the rules too, that you can't talk to anyone else?

Dunno, I just don't think it's very significant and wouldn't have made a huge, if any difference to the outcome. Riding with someone else can also be slower, more time faffing, decision making takes longer, etc etc.

NBD IMO

When did 'solo' mean 'riding next to someone for thousands of miles'?

You can't ride a time trial next to another rider. Even if there's no drafting there's 'taking pace' in psychological terms. There's an article about side winds out there too but I can't find it.

We won't agree on this solo thing but personally I've lost some of my previous 'hero status' for her since this race.

Is it in the rules that you can't ride with someone? They weren't drafting as far as all the photos show us.

Doesn't it say no pacing?
It would be hard to argue they weren't pacing each other from these photos
http://transambikerace.com/day14/

Solo doesn't mean that I guess, and I guess you and @skinny have a point. But then SS took some shortcuts, no-one is bitching about that, funny.

I'm not bitching, that's a bit unfair comment. I'm just pointing out, that in my opinion, I think the 'spirit of the race' has been abused.
I did ask before about SS shortcuts, but I don't know what the rules are for trans am on that, as it doesn't say.
And IMO, he could be totally DQ'd. Unless a fair explanation. As they're given a route to follow.
I called out BP on TAW, for his missing of routes, and said he should be DQ.

You asked if it was in the rules. So I quoted the rule, to answer your question.

Sorry, bitching was unfair. I guess riding side by side with my mate on Tour Divide wasn't an issue because we were mid-pack-obscure, and no-one cared, but if you're at the front of the race, solo is solo.

Here's SS's shortcuts that I could find.

The third one looks like defo a short cut.
Apparently the first is an allowed alternative (was discussed earlier)
The second could be just the tracker as there's no blue dot on the wrong side of the lake.

Playing devils advocate the one of the left and the top right don't actually have a GPS point recorded in his diversion, if he was going fast it could make it look like a shortcut.

The one on the bottom though is definitely dodgy

Back to the race - looks like she's stopped now and he is 16 miles up the road

In tour divide, riding with someone is covered.
'TD is a solo challenge, however, racing in the company of other challengers is tolerated. Again, no drafting,'
So that's allowed, well tolerated. And yes, mid pack finisher is different from top 10.

Yeah, the first 2 could be tracker issues. The 2nd that's a deviation.
I don't know what trans am protocol is on deviations.

In the end of the day, it's down to teh race director and their decision is final.

'No rider will be notified of possible relegation mid-race. It is the sole responsibility of all riders to know the rules, police themselves, and in cases of course deviation, recognize their error + correct it before proceeding on route. Ideally any rider who defaults on any part of rules 2 through 5 will honorably scratch from the GC. Trans Am is…a do-it-yourself challenge…racers alone must police themselves.'

First one, yeah, you're right, it is an alternate. Shame that it's legit though.
The second one, you can see the trace follows the road, pretty sure he took that route
Third one, shortcut.

Yeah, TransAm's rules seems pretty vague, but if you've seen his videos on Facebook, I think he's pretty vague generally.

Lael's in the lead. Well, appears to be, I think they're neck and neck based on the timings. Maybe they've agreed they are both cheaters and are going to share 1st place!

TD is a solo challenge, however, racing in the company of other challengers is tolerated. Again, no drafting

Yeah, that's explicit, and we were careful not to draft, and didn't share kit. I guess TransAm has a pair category for a reason, but maybe they should think about writing up the rules properly.

From FB about lael and steffen

Nathan just confirmed he caught up with them riding together

and this

We found Steffen and Lael together riding through the night, might wanna catch a power nap people, it's still a bike race.

https://m.facebook.com/?_rdr#!/groups/524758520982933?view=permalink&id=923202751138506

Sprint finish!

Both now DQ for not riding solo ;)

Will be an interesting finish. They can't ride together forever. Someone will need to stop first.
Just depends who want's it more and who can go deeper.

The second one, you can see the trace follows the road, pretty sure he took that route

The only real true points are the dark blue boxes.

The light blue line is trackleader's interpolation of a possible route between those points. It adds in a few extra points to make it kind of stick to the roads, but not too many that it sticks perfectly. It may not pick the TA route even if the rider did take it.

Neither of the first two examples are proof of deviation as none have dark blue tracking points off the route. He could still have gone the correct way on both of them but trackleaders is just guessing at a different route and interpolating.

Some times the algorithm trackleaders uses (probably provided by google mapping) can't provide a suitable interpolation, so it just sticks in a big straight line. We used to see exactly this on Ivan's tracker (over on yacf) for Steve Abraham on his OYTT. Sometimes it would guess the missing data correctly, other times just a big straight line.

The other one is the detour coming up to Murphysboro:-

1 Attachment

Yeah, interpolation sounds about right, and trackleaders is really awful software. Wish I had time to make something better, wouldn't be that hard either.

It's hard to prove anything in a race like this...

Actually, I take some of that back.

It looks like the SPOT data is being culled right back when the data is about 12 hours old. Zoom out and you see the tracking spots suddenly get much more sparse.

The light blue lines might not be interpolation, in which case all 4 are deviations but the 'proof' is no longer displayed on the Trackleaders site.

Hmm.

Lael is in the lead now, she's got 5 miles on Steffen and their trackers updated at the same time...

I didn't recall he'd taken any shortcuts. Where were they?

Nevermind.

See my screen grabs up top of this page. It's not hard evidence, just discrepancies I noticed on Trackleaders.

According to Nathan the organiser on his super dull live feed, Steffen has only 1 garmin, and it keeps fucking up, he rode 30 miles the wrong way earlier because he GPS died.