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

Ha, I vaguely remember there being a bit of a to-do but can't recall all the details now.

Ah sorry to heat that. Was a good one but a killer headwind on the return.

He reacted badly to being told that a particular road in Romania was being outlawed, after @skinny found it ultra scary.
He was in I think third place and about to go onto that road at the time and was told he had to reroute. He wasn't happy and decided to stop racing and soft pedalled the last few days.

O yeah think I can remember that now.

The change in Romania is a bit weird! If the leader only has a small advantage at that point it could have an impact. Following riders can watch the tracker to see if the route is passable and adjust accordingly.

Route now finalised again. Distance still at 4,160-ish but climbing down slightly, to 44,700m.

In part from the changes in the latest manual (they enabled a little bit of road in Romania that unlocked a flatter route) but more from the act of merging all my files into one, which confirms that climbing figures are always pretty approximate!

Ulrich said less than 4000!

Intriguing!

Just about possible but would need a lot more climbing - which may not be an issue for him - and might not have included CP4, which is off the parcours and only announced in April, and maybe the illegal border crossing.

There are definitely shorter / hillier options than mine for stages 1, 2 and 4, but hard to see 160km worth just from them.

I'm currently at 4097km & 40,930m but I've got a lot to do on it still so expecting that to change quite a bit (go up), especially the metres.

That's low!
What's software?

With Strava. But yeah think it will go up quite a bit once I alter some weird ‘not specified’ bits.

Stick it in Rwgps? It's pretty accurate now, or at least we can compare apples with Frank the.

4101km and 38,000 after uploading into rwgps. Maybe something changed on the files when doing that.

Well done!

Have I missed something...

I could get that distance but the climbing would be way higher, nearer 50k

Have I missed something...

No, I'd be pretty confident it's me who's missed something...

Haven't looked at Romania at all properly so I'm sure I'm on ALL the banned roads at the moment.

Ah!

OK, that makes me feel better.

I've just saved 0.5km from fixing a bit of clumsy course point positioning in the Alps!

I get absolutely no joy from route planning. Find it really difficult to look at the screen for so long.

What are your plans for the start? When you heading out etc?

I actually enjoy it, although it gets a bit much after a while. I get a lot of satisfaction from finding a route that is better than the obvious one, even if it's only a little bit. The stuff in the mountains is the most painful, should I take the main road, the side road or the bike path, and there's no way of knowing really until you've seen them!

I try to break it up. But don't want to spend too long on it until I'm certain I'm going to make it to the start!

I've got a lift out with Scherrit, who is doing bike checks at the start. I think he's planning on going on the Friday. Originally I was going to go on the Saturday and was trying to decide between ferry to Dunkirque then train to Lille, etc, or taking a chance on Flixbus.

I've booked a hotel for the Saturday and Sunday nights, so I can rest, or panic re-pack, on Sunday evening.

How about you - logistics sorted out? Lack of Eurostar makes it a lot harder!

That's good and yeah I saw him recently, think he's hoping to go to the finish as well.

I've managed to convince my dad to give me a lift so getting the eurotunnel over on the Saturday.

Ah that's a good idea re sunday. I really regretted not having a room on the start day of All Points North last year as you just end up hanging around with nowhere to really chill.

I've found an entrants list! It's a link from the race manual for who has their own tracker. May have been up there for a while.

Confirms the ones mentioned already.
Aslo Omar di Felice, and Bjorn is riding again. As is Ben Davies.

Mikko and Doug are down again. Not a lot of others I know from past rides, though - on a quick glance anyway.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14TQMh5qdE92X7V1GHMCdciF8w4BplaI9FlnmT6ua4P0/edit#gid=0

Maybe obvious but Fiona Kolbinger.
Indeed Michael Broadwith. Adrien Liechti, Stephane Ouaja, Max Riese, Pawel Pulawski, Matthew Falconer, Bruno Ferraro... My good friends Sami and Kim. And a few other names I know.

This is going to be really good.

Fiona Kolbinger

That's good news. She was such a great winner previously.

Hard to see her being a contender this time, though. Although the experience of actually having completed the event and won it does count for a good bit vs potential of strong riders who've never actually done it before.

A friend who knows her said she told him this was probably her last time riding it.

Nope. He did just do ALPI4000 though, on fixed. 23,000m of climbing.

Mark Beaumont :)