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

are you also finding yourself being drawn into the idea of one day doing this, or are you watching and thinking 'fuck that'?

I'm no athlete, I know a race like TCR is never going to happen. But it definitely does inspire me to go out on longer day rides, and look into some light touring maybe next year.

So glad to hear this!

There's a great burger joint next to the train station in Ptuj, hope he indulged

No. 254 scratching with shermers, apparently didn't fancy taping it

Fucking pack fodder. Should be improving not suffering same issues.

Only just realised Skinny lived in Budapest as a kid. Maybe informing his route choice of Slovenia/Hungary over Austria?

Also, chin up hippy. I'm sitting in front of a computer watching dots and working up the motivation to pedal 12 miles home. You're out there wrecking your arse in pursuit of greatness.

You're doing well
Standard much higher this year.
13 th and 14th less than 20 km in front of you.
Top 10 not out of the question

Only just realised Skinny lived in Budapest as a kid.

1. That is what I call good preparation
   
2. He still is a kid!
   

Plus that base layer must be minging by now !

Everyone gets those feelings mid-ride. Just it's usually after 50km not 1k+.

Just think of the chips and beer and pizza.

Bjorn now past Bratislava.
Once travelled from there to Nitra, by coach, pretty much dead flat until the outskirts of the city.

I was reading a TCR blog post about the 'ferry wankers' who it said visited check points out of sequence a year or two ago. Is this possible / officially acceptable? Also who were the 'ferry wankers'?

Afaik the rule that year was visit first and last cp's as first & last respectively, but there was nowt about the others in any order.

No one really mentioned hippy in the TCR previews and there he is, knocking on top ten after TABR. He's doing so well in my opinion. As is Mr Wacker.

Right. Sounds smart if it worked.

I think that whoever wrote that was either harsh or tongue in cheek. I think it was on tcr2? Basically there was a checkpoint that could be reached by either down through Eastern Europe or via a route that took in Italy and then a ferry across the Adriatic. It didn't win it for them iirc (also iirc Gareth Baines one of the ones who did it. He seems like a decent chap)

And yes, it also took them out of order. To be honest I thought it was still allowed, hence my comments about mr cannon before.

^Ta.

Assuming skinny is heading for a border crossing at komorom, be interesting to see if he converges with bjorn somewhere around zvolen or if they make different routes to cp3.

Hope they converge and we get them on the same road playing cat and mouse

Some interesting insights from skinny: http://jamesmarkhayden.uk/transcontinental-race-2017/recordings-from-the-road/

Put Skinnys and Björns respective positions into Komoot roadbike mode to CP 3 Velická dolina, District of Poprad.

For Skinny it says 321km (vs 305 km Frrt prediction) 4,300 m climbing and 13:40 hours at 23.5 km/h (for athletic setting, whatever that means in terms of algorithm.
Link: https://www.komoot.com/plan/tour/cCAkQBBoKCODLkhEQsK6kLRoKCKCLiAIQstbNAQ/@47.4791023,17.9782248,14z
For Björn it says 261 km (vs 243 km Frrt prediction) 3 910 m climbing and 11:45 hours at 22,2 km/h.
Link: https://www.komoot.de/plan/tour/cCAkQBBoKCMS8jBEQ0pP2LRoJCLyajgIQkPF7/@48.1259970,17.9679680,12z

Edit: 261km divided by Björns estimated speed of 23,8km/h is 10,96 hours to cp3
321km divided by Skinnys estimated speed of 25.8 is 12,43 hours to cp3

No idea how good komoot is somewhere else than in Germany though.
And its all futile. because I know who I want to win!

Clever to do komoot interpretation I think.

Fantasy TCR! Can you please update until the next two controls?

Every way we look at it, it's still very close!

Will be interesting to see the sleeping strategies tonight. I expect neither of them will sleep long.

They both did massive days today, 446 km for Bjorn and 473 for skinny (24 hrs to 10pm).
By comparison on a flat day in IPWR with a tailwind I managed 340-odd. Anyone can ride all day but it takes something special to do it at the speeds these two can!