Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Roughly what are they charging for the ~2 weeks if you don't mind me asking?

£17

Are they just for cars?

That's a good question as I've come across that somewhere else. I've just asked on the facebook group

Oh, ok I thought it was going to be expensive.

It says "Motorway" on Google maps so technically banned road I think. I'm going to stick with the alternative road - they're both showing up on Strava heatmaps which is annoying. Probabbyl a bunch of TCR riders doing it illegally last year :)

There's a very brief snapshot of my bike on the J Laverack site http://www.jlaverack.co.uk/transcontinental-jack/ and I'll be trying to put a page together on my blog in the next couple of days.

Getting sick of Edge 1000 crashing. Ditched my EU CN NT maps for free OpenFietsMap.nl Europe. Looks like they favour bike paths - either that or the A40. I've now installed a Garmin update to see if it makes any difference.

My 810 has met a fiery death. It crashed more often than I do. I've made the jump to a Wahoo ELEMNT which, despite some minor bugs, has proved much more reliable than the Garmin and is still benefiting from an ongoing development program, with updates being pushed every couple of weeks.

I sent my 810 back for a refund after arguing with the retailer that it wasn't fit for purpose. I still use my 800, which is much more stable and the 1000 which was rock solid right up until the point I added an external SD card and EU maps.

I've seen some of the ELEMNT dev chatter and it looks really good, really promising. I'm not ready to jump on it yet though - for me it's still unfortunately a case of better the devil you know. For the amount of rage they induce, I've bought a lot of their shit... 800, 810 - returned, 1000, nuvi ??, Etrex Vista HCx, Etrex 30x.

That's very cool (especially as a J.Laverack are local), thanks for the link. Looking forward to the post-TCR updates on the blog too!

Your problem is that you started buying Garmin kit when they reached the Microsoft Vista stage! From a usability perspective, their product peaked about 7 years ago. Since then they have had to scratch around adding functions to support their business model.

I've finalised my set-up now:
Main navigation: Garmin 705. Old, but just works and gives 17h battery life with backlight.
Back-up. OSMAnd running on my phone (Blackberry) mounted on my stem cap. Tested this yesterday and it gives really good quality maps (better than Garmin 1000). Too power hungry to keep on but will switch it on in cities. May not bother taking the second 705 now I'm confident in this.

Yes, pleasant surprise. I even added a couple of days on the end, just in case...

My Garmin 520 has been pretty reliable, and it looks like the 820 might share a lot of the same internals - but with enough space to store maps.

So for long stuff I'm thinking about using an 820 primary and a 520 for back-up recording & gpx line following. Backup maps/re-routing are on my phone - I also use OSMand which is so much better than a Garmin for fiddly city navigation.

The Transcontinental Team have been monitoring events in Turkey
closely this weekend and have had several reports from our friends in
Çanakkale and Istanbul who all report that things are continuing as
normal. There are currently no plans to alter the race schedule.
However riders will be contacted shortly and asked to prepare a route
to an alternative emergency finish point in case of any further
significant events affecting the region between now and the race. We
will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Posted on FB earlier

To be fair, I bought the HCx exactly 7 years ago and years later the 800 was given to me.

It has been a constant battle from then on to get a bug-free cycling GPS suitable for the kind of shit I do. The Edge 1000 was close but they screwed battery life and it's still not 100% stable.

Currently: 1000, 800 and etrex for backup when the other two crash. Not if, when.

But I may change this and run a phone with RWGPS or similar installed instead of the 800.

IMO The main issue with the 810 is that it cant receive Russian satellites- the other models can. So in areas of poor or obscured satellite reception (valleys, mountains, forests) the 810 is more likely to loose sat reception and freeze.

PS don't watch the film Baskin before going to Turkey.

I run my other units GPS-only and none of them were as crashy as the 810.

[Alternative Finish Point]

Finish Point: Lighthouse of Alexandroupoli // 40.843575, 25.875073

Parcours Start: Roussa // 41.300323, 26.018348

Note that the start of the parcours may be passive (no staff will be present) and the parcours is open - meaning that locally no roads are specified.

More routing? I'm out. RWGPS is dead to me motherfuckers. I'm going to Cannakale.

Are they just for cars?

"no vehicles allowed." / "Restricted vehicular access"

I'm riding them. They can penalise me. Fucks given: 0.

Beer in every country I visit.

Still need to get one of these...

It's not so bad: I was going to go through Alexandroupoli anyway so prob hardly any more routing needed! I was worried we'd have to do a route to Athens or somewhere.

Makes noes difference. Race will finish in Turkey.

@bananaskid how's your preparation?

... I've just seen where Rousa is: it would mean mapping an alternative version of the last stage.
I'll work on the basis that it's going to go to Canakkale. If I get a message when I'm riding saying that it's not, I expect I won't mind stopping in Alexandroupoli, but I don't think I'd be arsed to go up some more mountains to Rousa to get there. It's easy for me to say that given I'm not expecting to win!