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I saw 39.5 on that fucking CP1 climb. So salty, I was.
CP2 harder than last year's cp4 but only because I did it at night with a storm. Vis was like 5m. So hard to find some of those tracks.
hippy-
I guess you were on cp1 first climb a bit earlier than me! It was dark when I got to the top.
Was wondering how cp2 compared to Sarajevo last year. When up there I was thinking 'this isn't so bad, but I'm glad I'm not doing it at night'
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I couldn't imagine even functioning in that sort of heat.
It sounds as if those extreme weather events took their toll on many. The route is hard enough (I could never do so much climbing), but the conditions evidently make it ridiculous.
frank9755
Oliver Schick
I'm on the train to frankfurt. A friend got in touch and invited me to stay the night with them there, which will be great. He knows fiona and has been telling me about her for the last couple of years since he ride with her a bit on Lel. Then train home to London tomorrow. Lots of sitting around, which I can handle. Am going through my email backlog.
When I got on the train I immediately bumped into Julia freeman who had scratched a couple of days ago, and chatted to her for an hour until she got off.
The apparent high scratch rate is interesting but I think the reason is simply that the parcours sections, which are the hardest bits, came much earlier than in other years with no prologue of gentle riding on flat or rolling roads. The scratch rate might be comparable to what is usually seen at the first two parcours.
People are blaming heat but it wasn't that hot. I believe it was 35 degrees. That's a hot day but typical for summer in Bulgaria. Last year they had 40 degrees right from the start in Belgium and Germany. The year before they had lucifer. In 2016 we had 40 degrees in the Po valley and in Greece and Turkey which felt much hotter. This has been a cool tcr! It was a bit airless on the main road on day 1 with little shade but the first two climbs had lots of trees.
People who scratched due to heat weren't drinking enough, early enough. Once you get dehydrated it can be very hard to turn things around. I include myself in that as I under drunk and felt a bit sick and struggled to eat, but I experimented with different foods and drinks - apple juice, dried apricots, familiar energy bars from home and fizzy water got me back on top of things.
The initial parcours weren't that hard. Cp1 was a couple of big climbs but they were gently graded with shade. Cp2 had a long gravel climb but again it wasn't steep or very rough. I did some in my aerobars. The last 5km up at Cp2 was hard. It was rocky and often very steep, basically a mountain bike trail. But it was only 5km, so walking the bits that weren't rideable, it took me about 2 hours. Others, with better mtb skillz than me were doing it a bit quicker. And it was so high that it was cool.
I think CP3 will be much harder with some vicious climbs and lots of them. It is taking people 36 hours. I expect cp4 to be hard too.