Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

^ this. Mustn't let it dominate life tho!

Video from before the start... @skinny looking confident and being coy about his sleep strategy from about 3min. I think @bananaskid (?) at 6min.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CySSD7ZAQ

Mustn't let it dominate life tho!

Failed on that already!

Ditto!

Thank you Ivan!

Looks like Josh Ibbett has scratched already. Recurring back problems, real pity.

Finally first McDonalds in Auxere.

I think I'm gonna nap here for an hour then cycle a bit more then get to CP1 in the morning.

It's been a fairly boring day, lots of rolling corn fields with a head/sidewind for most of it. The night was fantastic though

1 Attachment

BTW Do u peel bananas from the end or the top?

.

1 Attachment

Worrying tweet from hippy. Tendon in front of left ankle playing up.

Less worryingly his shorts have, apparently, turned his penis into mince

At least this may save us from mini hippy's though I am not sure how mini his offspring would be.

Why is hippy's tracker the same size as everyone else's? Makes no sense.

He seems to be going along the Loire now, as is James Stannard, who for the sake of everyone else's chances one hopes is not related to Ian. :)

Bernd Paul using a backpack, the poor bastard.

Without doing anyone a disservice. Packing after 114 k and only 9 hours in the saddle seems a little dissapointing. Surely their must be reasons for so many early retirements.

We've no real idea why anyone has had to pack. They could be ill or injured, or could've crashed.

But I think anyone who starts this race is worthy of a huge amount of respect and can hardly begin to conceive of how disappointed they must feel at having to pack.

With the amount of time and money invested, you'd imagine it'd be something genuinely terminal to their race.

Very impressed with LFGSS efforts so far.

It's one of those things where people may have started really banged up, just to see if they can continue as like Ptown says it's a lot of time and energy has gone into it.

Also, skinny is on a tear through France at the moment. Depending on route selection he's either 4th or 6th by my reckoning.

Hippy sounds a bit happier now - but he's hungry

...anyone who starts this race is worthy of a huge amount of respect and can hardly begin to conceive of how disappointed they must feel at having to pack.

This is so very true.

@skinny is nicely positioned.

Leaders should hit CP1 before too long.

Do any of the various tracker websites report stopped time? As the race evolves will be useful to know who has managed to grab a few hours sleep and which people are putting themselves deep into sleep deficit.

The speed vs. time plot on riders individual pages on trackleaders shows this. Bit imprecise and it doesn't show total stopped time if that's what you're after but it's good at showing how often people stop and the rough stopped time.

Skinny and Alexandre are so close at the moment, slightly different route they are a few roads apart either side of Dornes. Kristof is smashing it out, but has not stopped much so far in comparison t0 the others.