Transcontinental Race No. 5 - TCR5 - #TCRN05 - 2017

How can dot watching be as exciting as I'm finding it?!?

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Of the women, Karen Tostee and Melissa Pritchard are currently front-runners. Emily and Shusanah Pillinger are at CP1.

223 Paul Galea still off course, will be fun to see how it pans out. 154 Matthew Falconer is heading in a different route too.

A few of the pace setters might blow up in the next few days and the more conservative, experienced ones eventually take over. At least that's what happened in the TABR this year.

Yeah I expect/hope @skinny has a plan and will stick to it, this ain't his first rodeo and as we saw in the Transam with the leader that pulled out in the last 200k? if you go too hard too soon you'll burn out. This is Skinny's year!

It's still pretty competitive at the top.
Bjorn is opening up a bit of a lead. Seems to be going very well, looked good in the photo he posted on Facebook. He has stretched out his lead a little today so is riding faster than the chasers. He could get to the next control tonight.
Skinny and Geoffroy Dussault are very close to each other in second - good day for them too.
Matthias Dalgas in 5th has moved up. Don't know much about him.

A couple of yesterday's leaders have dropped away:
Jonas Goy is down to 10th and Ian To, who was one of my tips to make the top 10, is now back in 26th. My other two tips for top 10 (alongside Bjorn and Skinny) have also slipped back: Rimas back in 32nd and Matthijs Ligt down to 91st - he must have had time off with something going wrong to have fallen back from top 20 yesterday.

Good day for Hippy, plodding away despite moans about stomach problems, up to 22nd. Also a good day for another rider I am following, Ian Walker, who is up to 15th. He is the guy from Bath university who did the work showing that cyclists with blonde wigs got given more space, and (more recently) that there was nothing that a cyclist could wear to prevent close passes.

Tomorrow will be interesting: the third day is often when reality bites in these events, things start to hurt, people need to switch to sustainable levels of sleep and some people find they are just not enjoying it and lose focus.

Hippy, plodding away despite moans about stomach problems

Also Hippy an hour ago:

Gooch woes well on track. Ow!

Thanks for the informative updates!

Yeah been watching all morning. The hell is going on there, his routing is confusing the crap out of me. What's falconer up to as well? Sipping coffee, doing no work and dot watching.

@skinny pace is on point from the charts. He's a relentless machine, but very structured it seems.

@frank9755 any early predictions you can see with the pace setters by the time they reach CP2?

A few of the pace setters might blow up in the next few days and the more conservative, experienced ones eventually take over. At least that's what happened in the TABR this year.

To an extent that has already happened, a few have fallen away today and the first four now are all TCR veterans so should know what they are doing (as are most of the top 10). I'd expect much fewer changes at the top from now on.

I read most of skinny's analysis of last year's TCR and it's clear the man has a very structured plan with plenty of stats and analysis going on (more than I could really understand) If he stays well I can't see him blowing up. He's got a plan and will be pushing for the lead in the next few days.

One of the key messages of @skinny 'a YouTube commentariesnon the TABR and the Irish race came from his analysis of the sleep patterns of the racers.

It seems that he is practising what he recommended. Sleep is vital. He has clearly learnt that lesson over the past two years. In his first race he was doing 20 mins at a time. No longer.

Bam. That's one of the aspects of the race I always pondered about. There's no avoiding sleep. I watched the wild coast race carefully, and it seems like whomever had a structured sleeping plan, performed more predictably and thus preformed better on the long run, which ponders the question of how things progress from CP2 rest time.

I haven't read @skinny analysis, but what do you mean by 20 minutes? As in sleep time?
He's rocking some serious pace and has overtaken, so must be feeling pretty damned good

Whoop whoop! @skinny has taken second place! You machine!!!

Two years ago, before his neck gave out, he was napping for 20 minutes at a time. He led because he was riding all the time. Sadly this also meant that his neck was getting no rest and gave out.

I haven't read @skinny analysis, but what do you mean by 20 minutes? As in sleep time?

He's rocking some serious pace and has overtaken, so must be feeling pretty damned good

It wasn't part of what I've read skinny write, but iirc 2 years ago in his first tcr skinny got into a ding dong battle with Josh Ibbett. Skinny took the lead going into cp4(?) but Ibbett was sleeping more and sleeping consistently, skinny was just grabbing naps here and there. Skinny ended up getting shermers neck and tried to continue with his head gaffer taped in position.

I don't think that sleep deprivation caused the shermers but his sleep routine in that race was brutal and appeared inconsistent and driven by his battle with Ibbett... I don't think skinny is the kind of guy to make the same mistake twice.

His twitter line says stopping in cos its raining and airing on the safety side .

just catching up with this after a weekend off the grid. very sad to hear the news about frank. thoughts go out to his.

very exciting to see the rest of the action unfurl. Ride well and ride safe all

Is Paul Galea (#223) backtracking or just my computer making it look like he is?

One of the key messages of @skinny 'a YouTube commentariesnon the TABR and the Irish race came from his analysis of the sleep patterns of the racers.

It seems that he is practising what he recommended. Sleep is vital. He has clearly learnt that lesson over the past two years. In his first race he was doing 20 mins at a time. No longer.

I had a quick look at the top three earlier. They'd all for a similar pattern with 4-6 his last night but, of the three, skinny had the longest rest and the fastest average riding speed. Bjorn was marginally slower but had ridden an extra couple of hours while Geoffroy was the slowest of the three.

Tonight it looks like skinny and Geoffroy might have stopped in the same place, early, to miss a storm

while Geoffroy was the slowest of the three.

This is interesting... when I checked last night Geoffroy had the highest average speed with Skinny 2nd and Bjorn 3rd (but with the least sleep).

@skinny and Geoffrey Dussault appear to be sharing a bed. Now I'm feeling a bit of a perve watching their dots...

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What number is skinny? I don't know his IRL name.

75

Dots likely to be alot bigger in the morning then 👇