The Transatlantic Way (TAW)

2019 Edition:

Tracking

Website

Shorter and longer routes this time round. Andd its not a race. But it sort of still is...

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I have also entered this as my first race.

Every streetview Ive done so far has chucked up these kind of views

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Great, see you there. Hopefully the jersey's will be ready by then.

Where you gonna slap the hi-vis on then?

What does everyone think about this?

I'm not a fan of the 3 hour idea (as I've posted elsewhere). If I believed it would make things safer, I'd be all for it but I don't as I think the problem is not riders nodding off, but motorists not paying attention.

While I'm certain Adrian means well, I feel it is implicitly blaming victims by saying that riding long hours with inadequate lighting led to them being hit. I don't believe that and don't want it to become the dominant narrative.

I think what is behind it is that people generally want to believe that they are in control of things: wear a helmet / hi-viz, loads of lights, etc and you will be ok. But, when it comes to being hit from behind by a car in the night, I dont' think we are in control. It comes out of the blue and you wouldn't have time to react or probably even know about it. That makes people very uncomfortable, so they try to come up with strategies to avoid it. But, unfortunately, they don't work, because the problem lies elsewhere, with the 1 motorist in 1,000,000 who is not paying attention.

Normally we all sleep more than 3 hours each night so mostly it would not make any difference. But occasionally there is a good reason to ride through. It might be an opportunity to grab extra kms. But (in my experience) it has also been a need to avoid bad weather, or need to reach shelter / food / water, etc. Then it would be a pain to have to break the rules to do what was actually the safest and most sensible thing.

I think it is less inappopriate for TAW where there are no big mountains, but it would be more harmful on TCR / IPWR / TABR, where you genuinely might have to get off the mountain to shelter before the storm comes, or get to the roadhouse before it closes at midnight so you can have food and water for the next day.

Also I can't see the justification in allowing riders to ride through on their last night. I can't see why being knackered is going to be safer on your last day than it was the day before. And also, you don't always know it is going to be your last night - you need to make the call a few hundred km out and the going might be slower, mechanicals, etc, and have to stretch into another day.

I'm not that bothered about the new rules as I can't see that they're going to affect me unduly. While I think they are a bit misguided, I class them as organisers prerogative and leave it at that. It's entirely possible that, as an organiser, he is being compelled to include these requirements in order to meet some kind of liability needs.

Frank's right about it potentially being safer to keep moving in order to reach supplies or good shelter and, to be fair to the environment, the lack of high mountains on an Atlantic facing coast doesn't really reduce the risk a lot. Chances are its going to compel riders to look to take breaks ahead of sections and periods that might make them travel more slowly. Whether that ends up being safer is a long discussion.

Bump.

So who's doing this?

@Thrasher
@Nick.Earthloop
@The_Seldom_Killer
Frank? Or just commenting?

streetview

That's obviously a roadview. :)

And where will the dot-watching site be?

I'm still doing this. Training has been suffering from rash life decisions but hoping to get around in 10 days.

Will post a tracker site as soon as I know what it is.

Sisters getting married on start date and that comes before racing - I’ve given up my place and got my partial refund. Good luck all those racing.

Anyone got a link to a site for more information? Any chance of last minute entry?

Google is amazing. I had a sudden rush but don’t think June is realistic for me. Looks amazing though.

I'm still in

I wonder how you can police a three hour mandatory stop.

Presumably with the tracker data

Exactly

We’ve seen that being unreliable though. Set update every 15 minutes... half hour to play with.

http://trackleaders.com/transatlantic18f.php

For the dot watchers.

So whose dots should we be following?

Laura Scott ( @Laura_Scott on Twitter )is riding as is @cyclingtiger off of Twitter and his other half @TrepidExplorer also off of Twitter.

Not sure of Cycling Tiger's name (on here or in real life) nor Trepid Explorer's. Will try and discover their dot numbers!

Up front will be interesting. Battle between Bjorn / Josh I wanna see.

I think Pawel is going to ride fixed again? Gonna watch his dot.

I'm Cycling Tiger. My other half has not, as far as I know, frequented this forum. We're Andrea and Andrew Rodgers. Not sure what the numbers are yet, probably going to be released the day before as trackers get assigned at the briefing.

I'm Cycling Tiger.

To think, where yesterday I had two virtual friends; today I have but one.

By the way; was it you that did the Tour of Ireland Cycling Challenge nine years ago?