Trans Am Bike Race / TransAm / TABR

"56/42t carbon fiber chainrings"

Yowza. Keep the cassette but put sub-compact rings on there. Though he's familiar with the mountains in Colorado so must be confident.

Familiar with Colarado mountains doesn't mean "rode mountains for 2 weeks straight"

Fatigue and overuse makes the strongest climbers wish for lower gears

Indeed. And I was wrong before, pretty sure it is his first time. We'll see!

I bought a 32T cassette in Yellowstone because the tendon issues I'd developed by then meant it was a real struggle pushing the 28T. I now race with a sub-compact and 40T/42T cassette!

Each bike I build has incrementally lower gearing, though maybe it's just age. 30/46 chainset with 11-36t feels good to me now but maybe in a few years it'll be some 15 speed 1x config haha.

I moved the 42T to the gravel bike and then still got sub-compact cranks for it eventually. Now I've got the MTB though so that'll go back to doing more flat gravel and road rather than actual mountain biking. The road bike got the 40T and for TIBR I decided to move the gravel bike's sub-compact to the Mason so I'll have 30x40T on the Mason which is lower than 34x42T I used previously.

My missus has my old 36T cassette and my old Rotor P2M cranks on her road bike now.

I still use straight blocks on the TT bike though :)

Think this is Evan, he travels so light. Plus Simone Bailey looks happy :) think I remember her riding near to you hippy? Feels like ages since the last one of these.

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Yeah we crossed paths a few times. She's cool. I honest can't actually tell if that's her though - maybe just the expression or maybe I should get that eye test done.

Plus Simone Bailey looks happy

Don't all ultra riders look happy when it rains really hard? I know hippy does.

Hm ... we have one Dizzy Hippie in the line-up. Identity theft?

Edit: He doesn't seem to have started.

The excellently-named Louis Trumpbour has taken an early lead.

And definitely no Tanja Hacker. :(

Oh yeah, I love the rain.

I think it's more a hysterical grin in a "are you fucking kidding me" kinda way.

I wonder why?

Could it be my squad of killer flying monkies found him first?

he's getting some good time in the breakaway before an honourable DNS on day2

I didn't want to say it but I definitely thought it. :)

Happy to be proved wrong though since I know absolutely zero about the dude.

Seems like he has decent form https://www.strava.com/activities/5347432087

Yeah, very solid ride. But one day done fast does not maketh the TransAm finisher. :)

First missed turn, courtesy of Alan Thomason:

https://trackleaders.com/transam21i.php?name=Alan_Thomason

First 20hrs, our man Mateo has been a little stop start compared to the smooth progress of leaders Evan and Kraig. He has just rested for 4 hours. The 2 female rides (Simone and De'anna) have been changing places so that might be an interesting race. Mateo and Kraig below:

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Hey @hippy, what year did you do the race? Did you ever write anything about it?

2017 and 2018 and I did compile all my twitter comments with plans to blog about it but I never did. It's just so long and there's so much random shit going on and I was doing TCR a month after both TransAms so I was too busy planning routes and shit. So I basically gave up blogging about races.

Dotwatching this has made me realise how boring my bike 'career' is, haha.

Mateo has gone way off route for some reason.

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Hope he recovers. I think that as long as he's still on metalled roads, he'll probably be OK.

In other news, Dizzy Hippie has started, so it looks as if the Flying Killer Monkeys were unsuccessful.