I'm on the plane now, with a big TCR contingent heading back home.
I really enjoyed it. It's a wonderful adventure with great company.
My ride went well. Legs were good right through and my racing strategy was mostly solid. My equipment was good, but I could have done with a better back-up front light after I broke my main one. I lost focus twice: on the 23 road in the Czech Republic and on the crazy CP4 parcours, which cost me time and hence my place at the finishers' party.
Seeing all the things I saw was like 20 holidays one after the other. For example I've always wanted to tour East Germany, and now I have: thirty years after reunification it still feels more like CZ or Croatia than w Germany. The next day it was a tour of the Sudetenland. Seeing how the hills on the border form a massive barrier between Germany and Bohemia and tower over the Bohemian countryside made me think of Munich and the run up to WW2. If the Czechs had been able to get Chamberlain up there to see that with his own eyes, maybe history would have been different? And so on - experiences it would take years to compile otherwise.
Everyone agreed the route was a step up in difficulty. In part this is because the standard of riders and riding also gets higher, but this was a higher step than usual. I do wonder if they decided to beef it up when Christoph Strasser entered to avoid a really quick finish.
The off road parcours was shite, all riders I've spoken to hated it and felt it detracted from the event. The main problem was not that it was too technical, although lots of us were wandering around at the finish comparing arm, leg and hip grazes. But that it was too long. It took me 8.5 hours to do it, after climbing the Transalpina from each side. I started the climb at 3:30 am with good food supplies, but I ran out of food by mid afternoon and didn't pass an open shop until 9:30pm, 18 hours later, when I was able to restock. By then I'd then not eaten for six hours. If I'd been half an hour later I may not have found food until the next morning. I'd previously run out of water, having to go for 3-4 hours in the middle of the day with none before finding a spring. I really needed to have better mountain biking skills to get through quicker - others were doing it in close to six hours - but I'm far from the slowest rider.
On the more negative side, I now have doubts over the viability of this format with free route between controls. Others have been saying for a while that it is dangerous as it forces riders to use the busiest roads to be competitive, and I now agree.
Compared to 2016 and 2019 there was much more use of the main roads of Eastern Europe, which is where the main issues lie.
Four riders knocked off out of 270ish starters is a lot. I got spooked by the 23 in the Czech Republic. I didn't have any near misses there but felt my presence was causing danger for others by leading to dangerous overtakes. The last straw was a quarry truck which overtook me on a blind bend, using a single continuous blast on its horn, in the absence of line of sight, to ensure the road was clear of oncoming traffic. So I got off the road. However, by the end of the ride, I was much more accustomed to drivers relying on their horn to facilitate overtaking
The main road I followed in Serbia was crazy in places and one of the tunnels - unlit, curved and too big/black for my lights to reflect off the sides - was very scary. In Romania the roads were worst. In my first hour in the country I had my closest ever pass, maybe five inches from my bars. The road north of Targu Jiu was particularly awful. This is three lanes with the side going uphill having two and one for down. And it has concrete blocks between the two sides, so when going downhill you either have to take primary or allow cars to squeeze past. It was on this bit of road that one of the riders was knocked off.
For me it's the width of the road that matters. Po Valley and Bulgaria seem to be wider, Cz and Ro narrowest, but it varies by road. I got run off the road by articulated lorries in Bosnia and Bulgaria.
Although I loved the event, I don't think I'd ride it again in its current format as I just don't think it's safe.
