Nice pictures. It's been interesting watching the fear build.
To quote JFK. "We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard". This event was never going to be easy, you'll have earned that jersey.
Fast riders always have an advantage, thats' the nature of the beast. I have however tried to design the event I'd want to ride. I'm not a fast rider (my baseline time for a hilly 300 is 16-17hrs). If you can ride that sort of pace you'll still have a good 5 hours each night for sleep.
I've now calculated the climbing for the new route, and yes there is an increase - about 900m bringing the total to 14,400m. The difficulty profile has also changed somewhat - here's the breakdown of the stages:
Day 1: 350km, 4800m (13.7m/km). 50k extra and climbing up from 3,600m. So previously this was by far the easiest leg. The revisions still place it on a par with the BCM though on average, although there are a couple of major climbs in there to spice things up.
Day 2: 310km, 4100m (13.2m/km). This is the big win, down by nearly 800m for much the same distance, so now with a couple of good flat bits to make up time on.
Day 3: 230km, 3700m (16.3m/km). This is going to be a tough third day no doubt about it. There's no difference to the amount of climbing but previously you were doing it over 280k.
So far up to this point everything's more or less cancelled out. The final run back to Shrewsbury though is 1700m in 117k or 16m/km which is 500m more than the run back from Aber was. So it's not the first day you want to worry about - it's the last.
