Transcontinental No4 2016

Let me start by saying that Nick is not riding this race! But ... he may in the future, if a lot of different things all fall into place. Never say never and all that.

Because it is unsupported, there is a lot of prep work. Because you choose your own route, with stop offs at mandatory control points, there is a lot of routing to be done. Isn't it convenient that I love staring at maps and routing? So we thought, the only way to get a good idea of how my route would compare to others, is to route the living daylights out of it, and then see if any riders follow my route, or any portion of it, and compare my route to theirs.

It took me 10 days ... 14-18 hour days, but I then had a route that will take a lot beating. However, because of the recent coup attempt in Turkey, there is now going to be an emergency alternative finish announced, so I will have to do a route to that place too, just in case. I expect that the finish will still be as planned in Çanakkale, well at least I hope it will be. 

 
The TCR competitors are all quite closed lipped about their routes, but what I can see from the various routes where people have given the total distance and total elevation of their routes, mine is about 100km shorter, and about 7000m less elevation than the best route I've seen mentioned. Can't wait for the race to take place so that I can see how I do.
We are going to have a little holiday in Belgium, and go to the start, and do a little volunteer helping out at the start.

Frustratingly, I can't make it work if I embed these videos, but please please click on the links and watch them. Brilliant!! There are subtitles, so a little reading

What is TCR

TCR Routing

We are also going to be popping off to Belgium for a few days for the start of this year's TCR.  There is no better way to see what something is about than to go and immerse yourself in it for a few days.  I shall be helping at registration and the start, while Nick does a bit of cycling on the Belgian roads in the area, and then we shall have a couple days of just mooching about.

I am stressing just a little about the ridiculously long delays for the Port of Dover today though, I do hope they have the backlog cleared before we need to hop aboard our ferry!!  7-12 hours of queuing in a vehicle is so way over the top it isn't worth thinking about!

For the 'real' info on TCR, have a look at their website ...

Dunwich Dynamo 2016 photos

A great ride as usual, and because I'd slept on the beach, I was in the perfect place for some early morning photos of the finishers. If you were at the beach by 5am, there may be a photo or two of you in here.

The tradition is to have a dip in the sea when you reach Dunwich beach, and there seemed to be a lot more takers than usual this year, probably on account of the glorious weather.  Until this morning, I've always considered Dunwich beach to be one of the most inhospitable places.  Every finish we've been to has been horribly windy, and often quite rainy too.  This morning however, it was very still, not even a bit of breeze, and quite pleasantly warm.

I didn't get a lot of sleep ... cyclists starting arriving about 1.30, and I hadn't managed to sleep before then.  After riders started arriving, it wasn't possible to sleep well, because walking over the pebbles is very noisy, and well, when they get off their bikes, they walk.  I'd parked as far away from the Flora cafe as I could, to minimise any noise from arriving cyclists, but all the cyclists wanting to have a bit of a kip on the beach walked past me.

I got up and started taking photos when Nick arrived, around 3.40am, and we eventually left Dunwich at about 6am, stopping for breakfast with Nick's mom on the way home, and getting home a bit after 10.

DunRun 2016 is today

The new tracking page is giving me grey hairs ... OK ... more grey hairs.

As far as we can see, we've set it up correctly, and the location dots are appearing on my phone, within the Spot app, but for some reason they just don't seem to be transferring to the public SpotWalla page :( This could be because the secure zone around our house has 'grown' and it will all be OK once Nick sets off to the DunRun start, or it could be something else that will make it impossible to see him during the ride. We just don't have the time for him to do a ride many km's from home to test it out.

The van is ready to go, the bike is ready to go, the camera still needs to be checked and batteries recharged, and, I've bought an WiFi SD card recently that I need to put in and check/figure out how to use, and I also need to figure out what lenses I'm going to take. I'm hoping for some lovely bikes/people on the beach shots with a gorgeous sunrise in the background. May not happen because there is going to be a lot of cloud cover, which will rather detract from the almost full moon-ness of the night.

We've also been trying to find an SMS notification that may wake me up, so that if the Spot Tracker sends me an SOS message, I'll hear it. Its been a laugh, and have eventually settled on a bugle call ... the fire engine was a close second!

Dunwich Dynamo Preparations

Nick spent last night making sure his bike, lights etc were all ready for the Dunwich Dynamo this weekend, while I went out to dinner with a friend.  We did invite him, but his dedication to the bike is such that dinner with two lovely ladies wasn't nearly as interesting!  A little diversion from DunRun though ... if you live in North East Surrey, Ray's Kitchen, in Walton-on-the-Hill, serves the most delicious curry, and the staff there are lovely.  Give them a try.  They've only been open about 6 weeks, and I hope they are there for a long, long time.

If you don't know what DunRun is all about, it's a night ride from London Fields in Hackney, to the beach in Dunwich, on the Suffolk coast.
People mill about at London Fields for a bit, and then, between 8pm and 10pm set off for the coast.  The route is available to purchase at the start, for the princely sum of £1, with the proceeds going to a cycling charity.  There is no entrance fee or anything like that .. it's semi organised.  You really, just turn up and ride.  Although it is possible to just follow other riders, I urge you all to splash out a pound for the route sheet ... its for a good cause, and you will get far more than a pound's worth of enjoyment from the ride.

DunRun Bike Preparation

I spent the evening doing final bike preparation and checking for the Dunwich Dynamo this weekend. It meant missing a curry out, but needed to be done.

I will be riding my Canyon Roadlite AL with a 46/34 compact double and a 12-30 10-speed cassette, SwissStop Blue brake pads, because my head is too important to skimp on the safety equipment ;) It is fitted with a Selle SMP Dynamic, which is hands down the best saddle I have ever owned.


This will be the longest ride I've attempted to date, while wearing a bluetooth phone earpiece. It's been fine on 4 hour rides, so hopefully it will be comfortable on something this long. The reason I cycle with it, is so that when I get lost, I can hear my phone ringing etc when Lesley phones me to tell me where to turn to correct my course.


I'm using the iGadgetz top tube bag, which I'm not entirely happy with because it's not waterproof, but DunRun this year should be dry. I don't think this bag will be part of my final configuration for the LeJogLe attempt in September, or a future Transcontinental, but it will do for now. It will be full of battery packs, batteries and my phone. It does have handy clear window at the top for my phone screen to still be visible. There is no room for the Spot Tracker in my top tube bag with all the other stuff in there for DunRun, so will be trying that out in my back shirt pocket.

Location tracking takes a leap forward

We have invested in a Spot Gen3 tracker, and boy oh boy, it's lovely.  The annual subscription is a little on the steep side, but, seeing as it includes private Search & Rescue if he's in trouble, that's OK.  We will be testing it out on DunRun later this month.

It is not in anyway dependent on cell phone towers or signal, and runs directly off the satellites to send position and a selection of messages to a phone via SMS.   We have experimented with all the buttons (except the SOS button), and it works beautifully.