Ultracycling

Great stuff. So much for lacking experience in the dirt! Crushed it.

Congratulations, well done.

Great effort @skinny and a very noble gesture from both of you to finish together.

Absolutely awesome @skinny

Made even more awesome by virtue of the fact that this was your first off road race and the conditions was atrocious.

Top ride @skinny and Sofiane! An excellent end to the race.

Great effort and great class.

Chapeaux!

That was probably the most exciting analogue sporting event I've watched since the Headingley test match against Australia on Ceefax in 1981.

The final twist took me completely by surprise. I thought back to Steffen suggesting to Lael that they finish together in TABR 2016, which I remember a bunch of us discussing on the thread.

Context was very different: the offer this time coming from the one who had just taken the lead rather than the one who had lost it, and with clear danger in racing down a mountain track in the dark being a big factor - but I still had to chuckle when I checked back to Skinny's response on the old TABR thread:
'It's a fucking race. Not a tea party.' !
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/273281/?offset=1250

i wonder if winning the TCR twice has lessened his ultra sharp competitive edge...

or maybe he just has other goals this summer and didn't want to break his leg racing gravel descents in the dark, haha.

Perhaps not winning by a whole day or more simply doesn't give him the sense of achievement.

I was just glad to finish. It was that hard, just finishing was enough.

And after smashing it for 1200km, if there nothing in it at the top of the final climb then its equal. It would be silly to race a gravel descent partly covered in snow with sheer drops in the dark.

Finishing alone was the achievement.

I have to say, I find dotwatching on-road races a lot more comfortable.

In other news, the leading woman now is Valentina Rocca at 1148km. Philippa Battye is 1089km--will she catch up and will there still be a good race there?

What do you mean?

The prospect of people skidding down a hillside on gravel fills me with dismay. :)

VR is essentially done. Just the final 18km 1200m tarmac climb and a shitty descent. So 4h left.

Getting hit by a car gives me anxiety attacks. I'd much rather be off road so much safer and nicer.

Not me, I find off-road considerably more worrying. I'm obviously aware of some of the problematic Balkan roads you've encountered, but I expect that TCR organisers will tackle that problem proactively in this upcoming edition and future ones.

Disagree comeptly. Off road you are in control and responsible. On road its just a gamble, with no control.

Agree with skinny on that one. Nowadays I feel this real sense of relief and lowering of stress when I go into a car free route. There's absolutely nothing that the tcr organisers can ever do to protect riders from a Mike-style incident, being hit from behind by a driver who wasn't paying attention.

Ha, well, we're not going to be able to resolve that here. And now we need to get busy watching hippy's 'dot' flatten the Netherlands.

It's ok to disagree :)

Is anyone doing Transwales? I've just bought my train ticket. Going to a bit of rush straight from work to catch a train that gets me to Bangor 30 mins before the start.

Treating it as a learning experience for the TAW so I'm carrying a full bivi setup. If it goes well I may carry on for a bit and sleep out on Sat night.

Any promo codes floating around for the Spot Basic service plan?