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I'm struggling to remember any gravel sections to be honest. Maybe he means roadworks. In the US they tend to rip up the whole road and then it's loose gravel but that's like 0.000001% of the route. But the fact he crashed on it means he wasn't riding to the conditions. You don't 'race' through a section of gravel on a 6700km long road race. I didn't even pick up on the carbon rim brakes but the fact he'd not considered their operation while loaded shows a lack of preparation. As I said earlier, being able to do one massive ride, once does not make a TABR finisher.
Definitely thought about using my Shiv, actually. The main issue for me wasn't TT position it was lack of storage space on it and (relatively) terrible brakes. Crosswinds are also mega so there'd definitely be a LOT of fighting the bike over the race. I did one year with 65mm front and then went back with a 32mm rim and it was much nicer.
The PX had DA rim brakes and actually stopped so would've been a fine TABR bike...
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hippy
Sounds like a failure of planning if he didn't know about gravel sections given the route is out there, and he didn't test his brakes before the race...
@hippy, did you ever consider using your PX for this? If anyone could TT this distance...
Or ruled it out as too much faff fitting bags on, no-one's back / neck could stand 15+ days in TT position, did research and found gravel, etc.