TCR No9

[Frank9755]

Wondering, have the current organisers completed a TCR or similar themselves?

Andrew, who was organising it this year, did last year's tcr as part of his induction, and came 10th.
Anna hasn't done any ultra races that I'm aware of. That was felt to be an issue, that she didn't really have direct personal experience.
To to 2019 Rory was involved, and he did tcr in 2016.

[morbihan]

I think you have pretty much nailed it there Frank. Mike was an evolving being and its discourteous to presume to know want he would have been doing with the race five years on. We have no idea where, how, or even if he would have taken the shape of the race by now. It's fine to speculate, but to invoke his name and announce that he would have done this or that is not on.
I concur that there is a strong brother/sisterhood formed by the emotional rollercoaster of racing the TCR.
Im a little perplexed by the back and forth regarding the road sharing penalties. Namely the suggestions that it will have to be raced in a complete bubble. Im just not getting that from the team feedback. I see nowhere that you can't share a beer at a CP, have a chat on a gas station forecourt etc. Perhaps the "no ride together" rule can be reiterated a little more concisely at the next edition?
I think the sticky issue with the two guys who got pinged and penalised wasn't just the amount of time they rode and stopped together, but that they were already great mates. Having said that I really feel for them, and perhaps an early warning could have headed off the situ.

[quixoticgeek]

A small controversy. This year lost dot introduced a green leaderboard, for those privileged enough to live close enough to the start, or have enough time off work, to be able to do the whole event without flying.

A noble idea. Promote greener travel etc...

One of the people in the leader board will fly home tomorrow from Paris.

The rules for returning from the TCR seem to allow it to be from the Finish, to your next destination. Which doesn't have to be where you started, or your home. Which makes sense. Kinda. But feels open for abuse.

Surely someone could have defined their next destination after the TCR as a holiday with family in Athens. Cycle or get the bus there, then fly home after 3 days...

Thoughts?

J

[morbihan]

A noble concept. Its always going to be imperfect though, what with people dotted all over the map, time crunched etc. I get the impression they are feeling their way in and encouraging a certain ethos, which is good.
GB divide has gone all the way "no fly" and make no bones, with an explainer on their site.
My journey would be a 2,500 mile sail over several weeks to Europe so that's me out, for example.
I get that they want people to stop and think, and hopefully act. Difficult one.
The way airports treat people and bikes these days is one of the greatest incentives of alternative travel.
Related to the topic, Jo and I are roughing in the concept of Summer bike travels from Western France which we love to do together, plus an ultra for me  to have a crack at. The plan that we are homing in on would be trains via Paris to the start of the Danube. A week or so riding the Danube trail to Vienna, at which point she would head on back to Bermuda and I would enter TPBR assuming I snagged an entry.
Its not perfect but does cut some aircraft legs or driving out.
Mind you watching the Orange one and his entourage travel in a three mile long cavalcade from his over sized jet to court last night shortly after I had gathered up our recycling for the week kind of makes you want to throw your hands up.

[mattc]

Its not perfect but does cut some aircraft legs or driving out.

Exactly. It's a move in the right direction, and they haven't excluded anyone 

(Just saw some whiney Yank on Reddit saying he'll only look at more "inclusive" events in future 

[Phil Hears A Who]

Over the last month or two I've turned my experience on the race this year into an interactive map/blog thing. Putting it together was a great sort of post-race therapy, but if anyone is interested, you can check it out here (only works on desktop, mobile is no good):

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1IB6e5KzWGyYrgY7cDdnAmE1bLE7JjhA&ll=45.382508136064764%2C13.605925949999994&z=5

You can click on the icons on the map, or click them in the bar on the left to read a bit of text and maybe see a picture. Clicking the blue/orange tracks will show a summary of each day. The whole thing is a bit of a beast, so you can also use the tick boxes on the left to filter categories of points. Most interesting ones are probably Things that went wrong and Key race decisions.

(It's a shameless rip-off of a cool idea from a previous TCR competitor: https://cyclingtourist.com/2020/03/06/05c-tcr06-visual-race-report-interactive-map/)

[Lightning Phil]

Works fine on an iPad

[Byronius Maximus]

That's very cool, Phil, must have taken a lot of work. I'll spend a bit of time clicking through that as it will be interesting to compare experiences! How are you feeling about it all, now it's 2 months(!) since the start?

I keep meaning to get around to writing a bit of a blog about it all, as much for my own memory of the experience as anything, but also as a way of processing it all. I still have this weird feeling of the race having taken a part of me that is still out there somewhere...I don't know if that makes any sense but it's the only way I can describe it.
Overall, while I don't have regrets as such, I do feel I have slightly unfinished business with it - it feels like I was a bit too chilled out about progress with too much time off the bike, though it's very easy to say that after the fact when I know how damn hard I found it after the time. Compared to TPR last year where I felt I rode quite aggressively, certainly in the second half, and left it all out on the road. Again, it's a hard feeling to describe.

[Phil Hears A Who]

That's very cool, Phil, must have taken a lot of work. I'll spend a bit of time clicking through that as it will be interesting to compare experiences! How are you feeling about it all, now it's 2 months(!) since the start?

I keep meaning to get around to writing a bit of a blog about it all, as much for my own memory of the experience as anything, but also as a way of processing it all. I still have this weird feeling of the race having taken a part of me that is still out there somewhere...I don't know if that makes any sense but it's the only way I can describe it.
Overall, while I don't have regrets as such, I do feel I have slightly unfinished business with it - it feels like I was a bit too chilled out about progress with too much time off the bike, though it's very easy to say that after the fact when I know how damn hard I found it after the time. Compared to TPR last year where I felt I rode quite aggressively, certainly in the second half, and left it all out on the road. Again, it's a hard feeling to describe.

It did take rather a long time to put together! But like you say, I hope it will serve as a good memory aid.

My overall reflection is rather mixed to be honest. It was an absolutely incredible experience and I'm very glad that I did it, but I don't have much of a desire to do it again. I found the racing super exciting, and I'm thrilled with my result, but I do think I was very very lucky in that everything went broadly to plan and I didn't waste much time getting lost or with major mechanicals, so I feel like it was a pretty true reflection of my prep. I think if I was to do it again, I'd want to get a better result, and I think that would mostly require both a healthy dose of luck, and doing things that I don't really want to do in terms of sleep/rest/proper food. I feel like I found my limit, and for me going beyond it is just not worth it for a few extra places up the leaderboard. Things start to become pretty grim pretty quickly. That all said, the places the race took us, and the more social aspects of the whole thing were just incredible, so I think I'm keen to do some more group touring, or maybe some sort of rally event next year.