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

i'm pretty sure that's been disallowed this year... so I hope not.

Yep. I'm pretty sure he rode last year so should be clued up. We'll find out soon...

he could be taking a scenic route I guess but its not exactly a shortcut as far as I can see

GoatandTricycle
Any idea how accurate Freeroute is?
Quite a few seem to have not taken the correct road immediately after CP1
Blue is a tracked route for example

It's generally very accurate regarding where the points are (not between them) but it is possible for the odd point to be in the wrong place in a steep-sided valley.
He might get the benefit of the doubt if his other points are ok.

Yes, if he goes to CP3 that would be fine, but when he came back to CP2 he would find it had closed so, while he could get on the finishers' list, he wouldn't be eligible for a GC placing.

Most likely he's avoiding the Brenner. Definitely not a quick route though - when I mapped it out I found that there were hardly any obvious alternatives for this stage. I'd expect most riders to follow the same route to CP3.

Same for the last stage from Sarajevo to Meteora.

In many ways it is looking like a repeat of last year, with @skinny taking longer rests but covering the distance in less riding time to overhaul Bjorn between CP2 and CP3.

But what is different is that Bjorn actually has a faster riding speed this year: 21.1km/h vs 20.3 for Skinny. That is because Skinny took the same (hilly) route through the Ardennes that he took last year while Bjorn took a longer but flatter route.

So, without doing detailed digging on how quickly they have each covered the same bits of ground, it's probably too early to say that Skinny can definitely overhaul Bjorn - although I won't be betting against it!

With Berndt only 7km behind Skinny it's not yet a two-horse race. A couple of key questions on whether he can be a contender:

• Bjorn has beaten him in the last couple of TAWs - but Bjorn is all time PBP record holder so very good at shorter distances, but he faded after Skinny passed him last year.
  
• Berndt has always struggled in the heat before so can he stay the distance? If so, might he be relatively better at longer distances than Bjorn?
  

Yeah thought as much, bit tricky when the roads are so close together as in the screen grab.
Most of the compulsory sections are single roads to eliminate this i guess, but that also then makes it harder to judge. Ultimately not much/ any gain.

That's why you need to have your tracker set to update ideally every 5 min. @hippy had his only updating every half an hour which isn't enough to give your dot-watcher a reliable record of where you have been in the mountains. He's now changed it to 10 mins which should be better, but still not ideal. Most riders have it on 5 min updates.

Looks like skinny has reached CP2, Bjorn passed it and is already on his way

as much as I don't understand the rationale, i'm really glad (as a spectator) that he's doing it.

Strong twitter game from hippy

Quite. So are such deviations on compulsory bits considered insignificant/minor/ moderate/ severe? or what's the usual penalty might be a better question?

Hi @DiscoPotato! Nice to ride with you earlier

Is that a TCR spotted?

Not doing the designated parcours is considered serious. He'd definitely get a penalty if they believed he hadn't done it. Generally the penalties are pretty light - maybe a couple of hours if it wasn't a major short cut.

Off topic rant on penalties:
When I did it I felt that the penalties were generally too light to offset the benefit that people got from using illegal roads. eg I rode down a rough road in Macedonia while some people went on the parallel road which was a motorway. They got penalised by 2 hours. In truth they probably saved more time than that, maybe 3-4 hours. But because they saved the time it meant that they could finish a day earlier, so saved a night's sleep as well - so the benefit was more like 8-10 hours for a 2 hour penalty!

Bjorn will fade. Skinny knows this. He's racing smart and he knows Bjorn/Bernd well. Skinny's to lose now IMO.

Well if you look at CP1, I'd say about 50% go wrong. A brief Strava search seems to confirm this (I'd guess most peoples GPS is more accurate than the freeroute/trackers in terms of updates).

Yeah I can imagine that being quite frustrating. Same with closing times of places etc I guess.

Looks like #195 is aware of his route being different

https://twitter.com/ben_davies66/status/1024529090823565312

I wonder if he's heading over GrossGluckner - that is a pretty massive climb iirc.

Hello! Hope the route holds no more surprises and you get to keep your feet dry

It is indeed. He is a lurker so there's another number to add to the list if you can find him. He was sans cap so I can't help ya

Gregory is #62 (see first post in this thread).

@ewanmac back on track now

I'd missed completely that ewanmac is riding. He needs to be added to the first post. :)

Agree, Skinny to win (hopefully, and based on absolutely nothing other than what we saw last year. Someone needs to put considerable distance on him to begin with even to have a chance).

@Yemble, I don't think it was there in 2017 come to think of it, but it gave a good understanding of how the race was going in TABR.

Heath Ryan doing the 'triple crown' then? He didn't do the full IPWR route although.

Is anyone riding fixed this TCR?

Well if you look at CP1, I'd say about 50% go wrong. A brief Strava search seems to confirm this (I'd guess most peoples GPS is more accurate than the freeroute/trackers in terms of updates).

Yes, GPS/Strava data is far more accurate.
Amazing that so many would be getting it wrong.