Gravel stretches are to be expected with the TCR, but the length and scope of them on this edition looks like quite a bit higher level than maybe the last couple of years (based on dotwatching, rather than riding, I may be wrong). It's making me reconsider tyre choices. Might have to see what I can find in .nl by way of rough stuff to train on...
With the traditional Belgium -> Greece route I had in my head that, it's the last 1000km that scared me most. It's all unknown territory. With the East -> West route, the biggest unknowns are all in the first couple of thousand km, when I hope to be freshest. Also meaning that the worn out bike parts stuff is going to happen in France, rather than the Balkans.
Carrying extra tyres, to swap depending on terrain, if you can swap the tyres in 20 mins, and you do it twice, that's 80 minutes total, plus the extra ~600g or so of weight to lug up the hills. I wonder how much slower you'd have to be on road tyres on the gravel, to make it worth swapping to gravel tyres for the gravel bits. And conversely how much slower you'd have to be over 3700km with gravel tyres, to make it worth the swap the other way. I'm trying to decide between Schwalbe G-One TLE all round, and Conti GP5000-TL.
Main down side of East -> West is the last ~1000km through France where you can't wear headphones to listen to music/podcasts/audiobooks etc...
I need to finish my application.
J