Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Id give it a bloody good go if you want to sponsor ;)

Depends on whether Kristoff is racing or not ;)

Realistically I'm aiming for a top 15 finish, but I've got 12 months to train and I'll be taking that training pretty seriously.

I think at least a couple of those are tunnel artefacts, where ridewithgps's elevation data doesn't figure in tunnels so shows the height of the mountain that the tunnel goes under.

Not fixed this year but still as crazy.

black is solo, grey is for pairs.

Sounds like a similar concept to the Rob English/BRP Tour Divide bike... Would be interesting to see how it turns out!

Looks like Darren is out, or at least that's what his arse is saying: https://twitter.com/darrensarse/status/760821500710678528

:(

Cheers! OK one more for you, grey with black border vs grey with no border - wassatallabout?

... and it looks like Darren was too sad about being out to do the "scratching Darren's arse" joke.

...Badum tish. Not sure I believe it. Freeroute still shows him moving, so we'll see...

I think (hope?) he's joking... Seemed pretty perky via his regular twitter account just a couple of hours ago. https://twitter.com/darrenfranks

I hope that he is talking through his proverbial.

Darren's tweets have been superb.

Yeah me too, he's been doing brilliantly so far would be such a shame if he scratched now.

can't see any 'grey with no borders'. which rider number?

Do they mean the faded out dots? In which case that's scratched riders...

I hope that he is talking through his proverbial.

Maybe that's the joke, he was after all tweeting through his arse

I still can't believe rider 144 went up Stelvio's pass just because.. As if saying, "Hey Mike, you could have make this race more challenging!"

this. epic work from darren. hope you still rolling dude

Apparently he did it by mistkae! According to his twitter

178 is taking a novel route.

Alice, Rider 109, has scratched due to an achilles problem that she's had for the last few days.

sightseeing?

There's no logic to heading there otherwise.

Can't work out whether the whole detour was an error or if he intended to do the Stelvio for funsies and his mistake was taking the road down to Bormio so he had to do it all again the following morning. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly an amazing bit of riding and has only cost him 2 or 3 places.

Trying to ride through bad achilles tendonitis on a long distance ride is one of the most painful and ill advised things I have done. I feel for her.