Ultracycling

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frank9755

So what is everybody entering for next year?

I've had a good look through the calendar and there are a few good options but I can't decide what to do.

If I could get a place in TCR I would do that, but I won't know until Jan and that might be too late for other stuff.

My backup was going to be NorthCape - Tarifa, but most likely only as far as Nice as I couldn't justify the time it would take to ride 7,400km. But it is so early in the year - 20 June.

There are a few other options in July / August, but all a bit shorter:
Three Peaks Bike Race - 2150km, loads of Alps + Ventoux
Trans Alpes - basically all-you-can-eat of the Alps, 2850km with 64km of climbing
Transiberica - 3,330km, Spain and Portugal.
Carpathian Arch - 2,500km - Romania, Ukraine, Slovenia
GB Duro - 2,000km (mostly off road) best thing to do in the UK if travel is going to be a problem again this year.

Anybody doing any of these, or have strong views on any of them?

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skinny in reply to @frank9755

Doug loved transiberica.
Here is about the only place I'd ride on the road now. Also likely to run and be able to get here without hassle.

No idea how tcr will work!? It should have become a schengen zone event.

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frank9755 in reply to @skinny

I guess after four TCRs you have had your fill of riding full-on on the A-roads of Europe!

I saw that Spain just brought a new law in saying that cars have to move completely into the other lane to overtake bikes. Their government seems to get what is required much more than elsewhere.

I'm sure Transiberica would be really fun (and hard, even people who do loads of ultras and are so hard they never DNF have had to DNF this one!) and more likely to go ahead. That's a pretty strong argument in its favour.

My reservation is that it's not quite as epic as the Alps. I've never ridden in the Alps apart from TCR 2016 and would like to do a few more of the famous climbs, ideally in daylight.

I think it is hard for TCR to stay in Schengen without either turning it into NorthCape-Tarifa, or a compromised route like last year. And, even with Schengen, they couldn't run it last year.

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