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Yes, sure. Ultimately how hard you pedal and how hard the event is are the big factors which dictate what kind of shape you end up in, however long it is. And not that many people plan other goals in the season after the TCR (although I am hoping to test this this year by doing two events).
I was thinking that, if you look at drop out rates from the TCR, most are early on. If you can get through day 3, adapt to the achilles pain or whatever issues get thrown up, you're pretty likely to finish. There's more of an element of just adding extra days, and getting into the right head space to keep repeating it.
frank9755-
Yeah, agree the first few days are where the biggest stoppers are likely to crop up.
I think when you're moving you're probably golden. Your head wants to get this thing done and so you will chug along until you finish. But the recovery needed once you stop is pretty huge. Mentally and physically if you're pushing hard due to time limits or whatever.I started doing these events with a lot of experience so probably had less impact on my body and probably explains why I could do so many. But I'm beginning to think that mentally I might've introduced some kind of PTSD from pushing through all those nights and basically treating myself like shit for weeks at a time. There's definitely an anxiety these days when the prospect of a failed hotel booking is on the cards and a forced overnighter might be required. Maybe it's because I ride a lot with my missus now and I'm concerned for her as well as me. Not sure but I definitely go into events with a better plan than winging it like I used to. So yeah, I wonder if I've caused some issues or if it's just a case of getting older, wiser and not really feeling the need to push so hard? Hard to say.
hippy
It's all about the time limits and/or desire to push it for racing.
If you're getting decent sleep each night it has much less of a mental/physical drain. The 1000k I did here vs. Mille du Sud were wildly different due to the speed killing climbs of the latter which meant much less sleep.
I still think the longer term effects of TCR are more than you'd get in shorter stuff even with more sleep dep in the shorter events - you just don't notice it coz you're too fucked to ride for a month afterwards :D (unless you're me and just keep stacking races on so your body doesn't realise it's getting perma destroyed)