Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Skinny smashing

skinny was 139th at the checkpoint this morning... 13 hours and 355km later he's 64th!

Now up to 45th.

Hippywatch sees hippy moving south along the shore of Lake Lugano rather than turning east along it's north shore. Is there a good reason to avoid the SS340?

Well, there's the Lago di Como in the way, as well as a couple of mountains. He's going south around that.

The only other rider so far to take this route is Jürgen Knupe.

If he's heading towards Como (the town) then it suggests he's taking a route across the Lombardy plain.

David Coulon did the Col de Ceyssat control today and has now started heading towards Grindelwald.

Lara Prior-Palmer seems to be at Lyon Airport and should probably have scratched, but is still shown as active.

If he's aiming for the Morbegno, Sondrio route, then it looks like he could have gone along the SS340 to Mennaggio and then along the west shore of lake Como.

However I wonder if this route is unavailable due to prohibited tunnels along the Galleria Alborgassio?

Gotta say, this is such a top event! Much analysis, emotional empathising, physical empathising etc - this is one of those rare events you can 'live and feel' in a big way, much more than TdF or RAAM. Ace job, Mike and team.

Some shit weather looks to be on a collision course with the riders for Thursday/Friday

Jurgen not that far behind hippy now..

Hippy's coming up to the Italian enclave of Campione D'Italia. Enclaves are fascinating because they're usually the result of some kind of historical stubbornness and usually have some weird compromise of laws and services with the host country. This one has an hilariously out of place looking brutalist casino on its shore thanks to some special VAT status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campione_d%27Italia

enclave

It's actually an exclave. :) But interesting, I don't think I'd heard of it before.

I still don't understand why he would go along there--it looks like a big detour to me? He'll get to Como much more quickly along the route that he is taking.

Looks to me like he might be thinking of the south route as an all or nothing gamble to make up for yesterday. Wouldn't be surprised if he stays out of the mountains nearly all the way and just chucks a left somewhere north of Treviso. Using the relatively flat roads to churn out the miles to the power-meter and riding clean through the night.

It's technically both an exclave and an enclave but yeah exclave would be the better word to use. There's some great ones between Antwerp and Tilburg with second-order enclaves that cut across streets and through houses.

By the spirit of Hainault. #TCRNo4 #TCRNo4S142

— hippy (@firsthippy) August 2, 2016

I assume he's gonna drink 10 pints, do some poor quality cocaine and cop off with a girl in a short skirt and white stilletoes.

@Oliver Schick I'd do the flat route too if I had one on my Garmin. The main problem I'm having with the mountains (aside from them being mountains) is that I can't really cycle downhill after 11/12.

Although it is nice having some guilt-free hotel stays for decent amounts of time knowing that the majority of other riders are doing the same

The madness kicking in... https://twitter.com/firsthippy/status/760536650845945856

Hippy looks to have an extra 150k to the next control relative to the group he was closest to earlier (I think it was Sallnow and Trees?)

Obviously with his ample glutes he'll be crushing it along the flats and in the warmth and can expect to leapfrog back into the top 10...

The point is moot since he's now obviously not going that way. However when we were originally speculating which southern route he would choose I thought that going:

Lake Lugano > Around the north of Lake Como via the west shore > Sondrio > Cles > Bolzano

might be a possible option. I figured that this route may be a "slightly longer, slightly less hilly" compromise between the "very long very flat" southern plains route and the "short and hilly" route that most seem to be taking.

I was going to map it to compare distance elevation numbers but all the mapping sites I use seem to fall over when I try to route across international boundaries (presumably because I don't pay premium).

Anyway, I imagine Como is a lovely spot for dinner :-)

Looks like he's stopped for a pint or 10

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Also slightly concerned by the route choices of @Keiway#152.

Last year he rode fixed, this year I can only presume he thinks the route isn't hard enough because he seems well on his way up a dead end col... http://trackleaders.com/transconrace16i.php?name=Stephane_Ouaja

Unless he plans to go XC down to Davos which would be a brave thing to do at night!

Map shows a tiny wee bawhair thin track going down to Davos-must be some kind of fire road?