Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

https://srmr2023.maprogress.com/
https://dotwatcher.cc/race/srmr-2023

has begun.

More to the fact it's a Trek fork on a Specialized!

Seriously though, how does that work? The fork must have been seriously bent to open up that much

Looks like they used two sets of forks maybe?

A steel fork should be OK with being stretched, but would require a bit of force to cold set it.

Carbon not so much...

Tell me about it! I got repetitive strain injury from scrolling past everything else for another shot of Allan's bike, only to find it wasn't in there!😥

It does look a bit odd. Is it from a zoom lens distorting it?

Is it not a fork cut in half and then welded to that top piece?

Makes sense.

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Ha! Neat

I'm sure having two different brands of bike though is upsetting someone's OCD.

What a legend!

Skinny at (or near) CP1 in 26th place. Any other fourmers riding?

Justinas and Sofianes pace were ridiculous, and reckon they have the experience to keep it up
Interesting to see Skinny drop behind at CP1 but already catching up places
With such a strong lineup yearning for more Josh Ibbett like coverage or podcasts of the tussles

Sofiane popped ahead of Justinas. Skinny in 13th maybe 100k off the leaders.

I think Sofiane usually goes pretty all out from the beginning and while he is incredibly fast he does get tired and the pace drops towards the end. So it's not like Strasser who might keep more reserves for speeding up at the end.

Some of that section seems to be the same as it was in 2021, it's relatively fast until Naryn as they get to a lower elevation, but there are some punchy short climbs here and there. And there's a huge climb from the coast to where James is.

impressive by Justinas after his effort in TD.
Some good pictures already.

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I think there's something up with how the trackers are reporting stopped time – seen many riders talking about sleeping for a few hours on Instagram, but on MapProgress it says 'no time stopped' 'no break time recorded'. Only seems to be like that for some riders though, any idea how it works?

The graph is showing sections of rest for the top 30. If the tracker is turned off during rest it might be affecting it?

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oh cool, hadn't found that feature yet – thanks!

Yes sooo much quality. skinny or sofiane I hope to win.

Skinny was like 28th at one point, and at 13th he's 100km off leaders. Any ideas why was he so behind? Strategy to conserve energy or other issues early on?

Don't know if he has any issues, just the pace is strong at the front? Sofiane looks around 100km up vs 2022 race at this point in time comparing the replay...

It’s a long race and skinny was several hours down after the first couple of days last year because of a tummy bug. I’d be surprised if he imagined himself being this far down before the race but he’s got depths of grit and determination I could never imagine. I wouldn’t count him out. He also seems very self motivated and driven by his own performance rather than his overall ranking. He’s a racer for sure but that race is with the best possible version of himself. I mainly just hope he manages to have fun and get all that he’s hoping for out of the race.

Also, with a wean at home, I hope he uses this race as an opportunity to catch up on some sleep 🤣.

Justinas back in the lead. Skinny 160k back, holding 13th 30k back from Josh