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!
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.
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.
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!