Transcontinental Race No. 8 - TCR8 - #TCRN08 - 2022

Who’s paying? I’m there.

No need to worry about payment, it's volunteers!

That might be better, looks good on my cv right?!

Well done Ors. Although it does look like he’s more set up for touring than racing.

He still managed over 170 km per day, day in day out for over three weeks. That is pretty impressive.

In a live video Q&A, James Houston described the CP4 Parcours. He rode about 400 metres of it but decided that it was simply unsafe to ride any more and so walked the equivalent of a marathon pushing his heavily laden bike. He said he was concerned about damaging his bike and about coming off, breaking a bone and being left lying there until someone passed. There was no phone signal on the parcours. The latter (and possibly the former) problem would not have been an issue for those at the pointy end of the race as other riders were on their heels and they would have been found soon. James's issue was compounded by the aftermath of heavy rain that fell just before he got there and turned much of the parcours into a deep muddy quagmire.

He also said that he would never ride the TCR again as the danger from trucks and traffic was too great. He will be riding the Pan Celtic again.

I mean, that's why you have trackers with working SOS functions.

Hopefully TCR can get back to its best.

My fear is that safety is so low a priority in the current setup that nothing will change until there is an incident to make people realise how unsafe the race is. Riding it this year was a massive eye-opener for me.

Do the SOS functions rely on mobile signal? The ones I've used (running) all rely on the mobile network. On the Spine Race there is a known signal black spot and the rules ban stopping in this area for more than an hour for safety reasons.

SPOT uses satellite not GPRS

Garmin InReach too. #fuckspot

Out of curiosity, it would seem that James isn’t planning on riding again due to trucks and traffic (not CP4…). Does it get that much worse in Eastern Europe?

They used GSM trackers this year, so yes. And then it's not real SOS, just sends a text to pre determined number.

@hippy they don't use spot tracker now.

I own a spot and inreach both with GEOS SOS. Essentially if I hit SOS the GEOS control room will move heaven and earth to come rescue me and won't stop still they get to me. I really would t race without it. A small cost for peace of mind.

It's not that it gets worse in Eastern Europe as such, it's the types of roads that you have to ride on to get round in time: narrow A roads with little or no hard shoulder, lanes not wide enough for a truck to overtake if there is something coming, heavy traffic - not necessarily all the time but at certain times of the day.

I avoid this type of road in the UK. They are no better in Romania or Serbia.

When you get into Eastern Europe there are far fewer alternative roads so it is much harder to avoid going on these ones than in France or Germany, where there are loads of roads. The driving culture is probably a bit worse as well, but that is not the main issue IMHO, the roads are just not safe. A lot of these roads seem to be toll roads for motor vehicles and you get the sense that drivers who have paid a toll particularly resent being held up by a bike.

Some of the roads are wider which makes a big difference. For example the main road across Bulgaria that was a feature of the 2019 TCR is wide and has mostly good sight lines. It felt safe. The main roads in northern Italy are generally a bit wider too.

I agree that traffic danger is a far bigger problem than the crazy parcours. However I see them as being related in that they both show a disregard for rider safety.

Wow, I never thought of that. I had my own spot, working on satellite.
GSM trackers in a mountain area with no signal is a massive risk assessment fail.

Ah right I see! So would one solution be banning more of these roads in the rule book? But then does that force the route down to being nearly prescribed?

they don't use spot tracker now.

Yeah but I used to bring my own SPOT anyway.
I fucked that off, as you know, they were shitty.
If I was to buy another one, I'd get an InReach Mini I reckon.

Ah right I see! So would one solution be banning more of these roads in the rule book? But then does that force the route down to being nearly prescribed?

They tried that this year in Romania by banning all the E-roads. But that still left roads like this little beauty, a three-lane road where you have two lanes uphill and one downhill, with concrete blocks in the middle. It was very scary as, when you only had one lane, there was no way for anything to get past. Some drivers were patient but some just forced their way through anyway.

One guy was knocked off on this bit of road. He was able to finish, but had a few injuries. I remember being on this stretch with a truck behind leaning on his horn, clearly not wanting to slow down, and trying to balance on the white line, not daring to look back. It's scary!

I think it is a lot harder to find all the potentially dangerous roads across Europe than it is to identify some reasonably safe roads.

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What's shitty about them? I've never had any issues, used to use it a lot so people knew where I was when out training.

Alternative point of view is the roads in Austria and Northern Italy were the worst I experienced. I do think unridable parcours are pointless, I just saw them as a literal walk in the park.

In my opinion the fee is quite expensive.

If there is no point to safely get out of the way/side of the road because of barriers thats even worse.
Makes me feel bad just looking at it.

I broke all of mine, their plans are expensive, they're hard to change and whatever other reasons I've mentioned for ditching them on here.

Yikes, that looks awful.

It looks like those national roads are the equivalent, infrastructure-wise, of A class trunk roads. There are a lot of those in the UK that I definitely would not ride on.

I remember this bit! It was pretty bad although I did it at night so the traffic was quite light.

Mikko's video about route planning was interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elkXyGEdo_A

Yes, I watched the first bit, need to go back to it.