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

A big 'Fuck that' from me.

I'm mostly thinking that I'd love to do it, but don't see how on earth I ever could. If I was going to do it, I'd want to be reasonably sure that I could do it in the 14 days, which seems impossible for the foreseeable future.

I'm mostly thinking that I'd love to do it, but don't see how on earth I ever could. If I was going to do it, I'd want to be reasonably sure that I could do it in the 14 days, which seems impossible for the foreseeable future.

Yep, this. Family/mortgage/work mean anything like this is just a dream for me for a good few years still. By then I'll be too old and broken to cycle across continents!

One day.

Having done 4/5 days of ~200 miles a day (PBP/LEL) and not hated it I've wondered how much further I could go on. The adventure of multiple countries/languages/cultures/etc is an added bonus.

Can't justify the time away from my family though (for both the ride itself but mostly the training miles required). 10-15 years' time maybe (retirement? daughter flown nest? etc.)

Both. It's one of those mad schemes that just appeals and I think yeah, a bit of practice and some commitment and let's just see how far I could go...and then I remember that it would be more than doing a Dynamo every day for 2 weeks (or more) with a lot of climbing thrown in...

I don't think I physically could at the moment, but I've not really tried anything similar.

24hr TTs don't appeal at all, but the adventure and travel aspects of TCR really do.

Also, it fits in well with the school holidays...

Getting in the practice and building up the fitness might be difficult, I imagine the feeling when you get to Greece/Turkey/wherever makes up for it all.

Imagine them duking it out on the last climb to Meteora. Does it ever really come to that?

Would be fun. It's not been like that in the past mainly because Kristof has been a 1-man team sky and squeezed the life out of anyone trying to catch him.
The year he didn't race, skinny made it interesting for a while.
If they stay this close they will start to ratchet back on sleep to get an edge; an extra hour gives you 20+ km.
If they are close at CP 4 they will probably try to close it out without stopping again. You can afford to run into sleep debt when you approach the end. It's painful though!

Seems like @skinny has been a bit of a trailblazer for the Slovenia route. A lot of people on his tail now!

24hr TTs don't appeal at all

Give it time

Ian To just veered off the route. Interesting.

After loving dot watching last year, my plan was LEL this year and TCR next year if all went to plan but have lost most of this year to knackering my knees. So don't see next year being an option, like the look of the Nice torino rally and a 1000km ish audax for next year as a stepping stone.

Also not sure if TCR has a future or not in its current format but hope it does. Seems to of really captured people's imagination and gained a following.

Tried to find some race information on the north cape 4000 and its non existent in comparison. Accept it's a new race and am sure the first edition of TCR was the same.

I feel like TCR might have benefited a lot from the Specialized video series a couple of years back, which seemed like a genuine film/adventure and not just a way to capture eyeballs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m_X31xnG2A

He needs to sleep doesn't he? Maribor is a good place if so or if he needs a bike shop

No-one has yet followed Bjorn's route through Austria

Skinny now faster than Bjorn today - 24.5 vs 24.0 km/h. Not decisive but small differences magnify with distance and tend to increase.

Quick maths: Bjorn has 2106km to go, @ 24km/h = 88 hours.
Skinny is about 60km behind so needs to be about 0.7km/h faster than Bjorn to catch him.

It's very close!

Is skinny more powerful or on flatter terrain? Stuck on phone today so hard to check.

Will the speed difference evaporate once they are on the same route?

My worthless guess is that skinny will reach CP3 before Bjorn. Jonas Goy looks like he is correcting a wrong turn.

Is skinny more powerful or on flatter terrain? Stuck on phone today so hard to check.

Will the speed difference evaporate once they are on the same route?

Hard to know. I think Skinny has picked a better route as he has only ridden slightly more km than Bjorn but done a lot less climbing. He's slightly faster, but Bjorn has ridden for slightly longer.
If anyone could solve the relationships between climbing and speed and rest and speed, they would know the answer! I'll have to settle for saying they are pretty closely matched.

Edit - they've both done almst the same amount of climbing today so suggests Skinny more powerful. But lenght of food / toilet stops, etc also a factor

I wonder if the mentality of skinny chasing in a motivated manner vs bjorn being chased, having led for ages, might enter into this too?

Beware the "Distance to Control Point 3" metric as that is as the crow flies. According to their positions a few minutes ago:-

Bjorn is 368.2km away, but realistically it's 437km by shortest walking route (on google) and 2874m climbing.

Skinny is 404.7km away but is 485km by shortest walking route and 3754m climbing.

Good question. Depends on how they respond to it.
Bjorn responded very well to being chased on his PBP ride, holding off a peloton of French ex-pros on a 700km break!
Skinny chased extremely well on TCR last year to almost get on the podium from something like 127th place.

The temptation might be for them both to sleep short tonight to stretch the gap. Or even ride through with the promise of a hotel at or near the control tomorrow night.

Freeroute works out a route and calcs that. eg It says Bjorn 449km now, while Trackleaders is giving only the as the crow flies (368km).
Obvs it doesn't know what route the rider is going to take but should be a reasonable approximation.

holding off a peloton of French ex-pros on a 700km break!

Yeah, maybe, but now he's up against skinny.

The temptation might be for them both to sleep short tonight to stretch the gap.

After skinny's observations on sleep from TABR I would think that he'll try and remain consistent until close to the end. Then again I'm strictly an #armchair dotwatcher and you have far more experience at these things than me!

The two leading women are still Melissa Pritchard and Karen Tostee. Emily doesn't seem to be going as well as last year, or Melissa and Karen are just much faster than her rivals last year. It's probably a bit of both.

modan and co. still haven't reached CP1.

hippy's gooch is acting up. He implies he's only done bivvies so far on this ride but now considers a comfort stop at a hostelry. He also requests that we call him Moses, could be paracetamol side effects.

Samuli's climbing Monte Grappa near, judging by the name, another Finn, Janne Villika. Slightly further ahead is Finn Markku Leppala. (I don't actually know if they're all Finnish, they just have Finnish-sounding names.)