That is immense. Congratulations sir 
When you have had a bath and a lie down, Iâd love to know how you fuelled a journey like that. Did you manage to eat proper meals , or was it more snatch and grab from convenience stores etc?
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I think I could write a lot on this topic. Here is the very short answer. I have a food pouch that was never empty, it contained haribos, salted nuts and dry fruit. I was grazing from this continuously. At gas stations a pack of Jaffa cakes was a favorite. I could keep myself going during the day snacking (very time efficient) however, around 7pm I would get a proper dinner: I nornally asked for âwhat can you give me quicklyâ + mixed salad. I tried to choose things with beans and/or chicken. Often I would order more than one main. About 30 mins after dinner i would get a massive boost in energy levels, that would get me through until 11pm-12pm
Breakfast was coffee and ideally a stuffed bread roll.
Hummus or roast veg sandwich was always a favorite. I still feel sick at the thought of another frankfurter sandwich (Balkans love their unidentifiable processes meat sandwiches)
Burgers and pizza didnât give as much as boost as beans, rice and chicken. However Mcdonnaldâs breakfast was great (donât ask me about the science)
I think that TCR is almost as much an eating race as a bike race. According to Garmin, I was using about 11000 cals per day, even optimistically I doubt I was eating 6000 per day. Over 12 days I lost 6.5kg
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Spotted you hit up the Golden Arches
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More than once
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@Matthew_Spooner ⊠saw your recommendation about a suspension stem, just wondered how much bedding in it needs and whether itâs something that takes getting used to?
Hope your recovery is going well 
Honestly one of the best investments I made for comfort. It does soften a little over the first 100k. You get a set of different polymer inserts with different damping. I change to one level stiffer after trying it, mainly because I was using aerobars and had more leverage on the stem.
When you first ride it, it feels great, no adaptation needed, you donât feel that it is reducing performance or climbing speed. Sometime just after starting it feels like the front tyre has gone soft⊠it hasnât, itâs just the suspension.
The biggest benefit for me was vibration reduction. Last year after TCR I couldnât grip with my left hand for a month. This year my hands are both 100%. I had lunch with Thomas Downs, who I saw often during the race. As we compared notes, he complained about the dressed surface on the road form Biga to Gonen; it was 40km long and Tom had horrible experience with vibration, i wouldnât say that that it was pleasant, but I wouldnât say that the vibration was particularly excessive either
The other benefit is potholes. You know that feeling when you hit a pothole at speed and you brace yourself for the shock, and the front wheel bounces into the air and you struggle for control? The stem really takes the edge of this and gives you more confidence to push on dodgy surfaces
The downside is that it is not cheap. If you are trying to address a specific issue or are looking for more comfort on long rides, then I would recommend it
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How different is it to the original Flexstem - my brother had one of these on his MTB in the early 90s!
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The idea is the same. I think that the polymer technology and pivot design are much better now
I never got round to upgraded my bars from alloy to carbon which, whilst not as expensive, is something Iâve been meaning to do for a while as I do get numb fingers from road buzz on some rides. The thing is that, having had carbon bars on a previous bike, Iâm not sure they would make enough difference to be worth it.
As I do more multi-day bikepacking, I do find my fingers / hands suffering more as a trip goes on so should really do something about it! I think the stem sounds like a better solution so will probably go with that.
Thanks
Also Gel pads under bar tape helps
Thatâs what I do when WFH
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Just been looking through the numbers. My moving speed, 22.31kph was the 12th fastest, within 0.5kph of the leading 3, the difference was that they stopped for half the amount of time that I stopped (to be fair if I tried to halve my stopped time, I would have been slower)
I think that I may have been the fastest over 50 year old
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I saw that the race was finishing tonight so had a quick look at the results.
I remember people telling me about âThe Bulgeâ at PBP, looks like @Matthew_Spooner, you were in the equivalent for TCR.
10 hours faster and youâd have been top 30.
But would need to be nearly 1.5 days faster to be top 20.
Would be interested to hear your thinking on next year ⊠feels like everything went pretty well for you this time re mechanicals and other problems so is there more time to be saved??
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Our group was labelled the lead group of âNormiesâ. It seemed that âpacksâ formed from CP2 with around 18 hours gap to next pack. The only reason I was 10 hours behind 30th was that I decided to stop in Sakariya on teh last night. Tom Downs and Jaimi Wilson rode through the night to finish 30 & 31, a group bivied aroud 3am at the start of finIsh parcours and set off at dawn, while I stopped in a hotel at 2230 and left at 0530, 2 others stopped in Ismit and finished shortly after me. Basically position 30 - 42 was decided on how much sleep riders chose to get on the final night.
I have no regrets in my decision. I was still feeling really strong when I arrived in Istanbul, and I really enjoyed my ride into the city.
The other part to your question is whether I could have bridged the gap to the next group. My speed was already one of the fastest, so riding faster wasnât and option. I would need to drop my resting time from 36% to 28%: that is 2 hours per day. To do this, realistically I would need to Bivy several nights, and to be faster at every rest stop. Most days I was riding a 0630 - 2300, I would probably need to ride 0545 - 2330 and find another 30 - 45 mins during the day.
I think that finishing in the 20âs is possible, however, it gets progressively more difficult. Going from 90th place to 40th was a big jump. This year was definately a race, in hinesight, last year was more of a social ride. I enjoyed the race this year, but didnât really get any sense of the countries I was riding through. Getting into the next group requires counting every minute for 11 days and being 100% focused on riding a bike
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thatâs why Iâve done bike touring in countries rather than doing bike races in those countries. bikes are a great way to explore countries
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If you can understand German, this is a great documentary about TCR
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Just watched this, very enjoyable. Havenât seen this channel before.
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This seems a bit too epic for the regular âwatchinâ thread but it was a lovely film of what looks like an incredibly hard event!
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Just watched the whole of that. Epic
The company that we did the Ice Ultra in Sweden and the Desert Race in Namibia also do a 200km stage race in the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan
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