Transcontinental Race No. 6 - TCR6 - #TCRN06 - 2018

Of course they are. My reaction is due to having to check all my routes and bare in mind the banned tunnels while tweaking my routes. I have enough shit to do already.

You plan routes? I thought you just winded it!

There's lots of wind too.

Can you imagine if I left it up to the Garmin to do the routing? 50,000km later...

Have a few hours rest after the start and then follow the leader

No wind is strong enough to help hippy.

Ha! If only mobile internet was good enough.

Rider List has popped up on the website: https://www.transcontinental.cc/riderstcrn06

#147 for me

I'm 62, will need to start practicing the corresponding hashtag

They've memorialized Mike and Frank's numbers. Tough seeing them on the list but it feels right.

#TCRNo6cap177

hippy's still 142, which corresponds roughly to the number of metric tonnes he weighs.

7ven is 177. Neat.

#TCRNo6cap90

Amy Lippe and Anton... oooh ;)

1 4 the size of 2

Twas born in 77 as well. Meant to be :)

Lets see if I can explain.
Basically Germany has cycle lanes that are mandatory to use, then using the road is illegal. Not using them will not show on the tracker, but using them will be safer and if something happens while you ride on the main road when there is one of the mandatory lanes you will more liable.

When not in Towns/villages this means you have a 2 Meter strip running either left or right next to the road. Those are often great because you wont get run over and sometimes have better surface, but sometimes more windy and up/downhill than the road or have tight bends, barriers keeping cars out etc. The problem is to actually see where they start when the village ends. Thats where you have to pay attention if you see the blue sign with the bike. The blue signs with bike and pedestrians basically mean shared sidewalk that is mandatory to use often used in villages.

I took a random maps screenshot, as an example where you would have to cross the road when coming from the right to join the cycle way where the white cars are parked.

Also outside villages speed limit is 100km/h which means you get close passes from cars doing 120. So even if I miss the entry to the separate lane I will often backtrack or go over the grass for my own safety. Drivers get quite annoyed when you don't use them.
The Bike in red circle means no bicycles. Mostly used when theres works going on or the road is to fast.

Cool. I'll try to remember that. But annoyed drivers mean they know where I am which is better than distracted drivers. I'm mostly worried about accidentally taking illegal roads and getting time penalties. I want a clean race like last year.

No pictures though. Pff. But I guess blue sign with white bike and red circle with black bike on white are easy.
Loads of fast group rides don't use those parallel lanes because they really are slowing you down.
To get onto them often means slowing down for a very sharp bend, and sometimes it feels like you do twice the climbing than you would on the road. They often have faster tarmac because they are newer than the road, but they tend to have more crap on them also.
I use them, but not sure if I'd bother in a race, guess when you share the roads for 5000kms with idiots in cars you don't care about some additional german idiots.

One picture works. So you go through the village at speed, village end means slow down, check over shoulder, go left across road, two sharp turns, pick up speed again.
Also I ride mostly Brandenburg, so while the rules and general layout are the same, what you find might be diferent.

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Michael Wacker racing again.

Be cool if they highlighted who was noob and who was a vet like TABR does.

Pretty much. I've been dealing with shithouse car traffic for 30 years.

It’d take you via Siberia as obs that’s the best cycling route. Useless Garmin.

Some familiar names in the list, new and old. Good to see Alexandre back.

Who are your main rivals this year out of those you know? I mean, apart from me obviously.

If you don’t get hungry and eat me before we get to Belgium then I’ll be okay.

Too busy training to look and care. I’ll just go as fast as I can, what will be will be.