World Cycle Race - Start [PHOTOS]

It is a chain tensioner, it is required because he is using a frame which has vertical drop outs.

Cheers. One puzzle solved. Time to move on to the others........

http://laidbackaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/p/race.html

^^^ an account of Richard Evans who is planning to give it a go on a recumbent in 2014.

There are two markers on the live tracking now. One still just west of London. The other one is in Scoresbysund (on the east coast of Greenland). That is GW and his name is not on the start list. Apart from that the tracking seems to be fine.

ah - what you need is the "live" live tracking - one geezer has made it to south of spain - seems to me the best plan is to fly to two points 180° apart and then do the remaining 28999km on the road outside where they live

I have not worked out when the "lanterne rouge" comes into play - or do you just have to finish before the next race starts

yes, as long as those 28999k are in the same direction

so all the km they have done that are not in the nominated direction don't count?

not all, as per rule 7:

http://worldcycleracing.com/about/rules-guidelines/

some of the bike choices look odd. Wonder how those 700c road wheels will deal with 18,000km on dodgy roads!

I think the 'live tracking' has given up, only 'JW' is listed as being in Plymouth docks at the moment, he seems to have got there in a straight line from Heathrow airport, so presumably he has a mate with a float plane who took him direct.

The rest seem have have disappeared off the map, they can't still be in the Cafe at the start as it closes after dark.

As for the bikes, some of them don't really look set up for a world tour, even Beaumont had 4 panniers and as the fastest man around the world when he did it.

try this for tracking

link

edit: also, the tensioner mentioned above broke in london, the guy is still in blighty

Thanks - tracking now seems to be working.

Kyle Hewett still in Blighty - at least the tensioner broke here where he can do someting about it, in the Ozzie Outback it would have been a different issue.
Still as the 'race' is measured from start time, I guess if he leaves a week late it will not matter too much, as he could still 'win' by being a week late

He has now been scratched from the race. Never got beyond East Grindsted

i saw one of them has seemingly deleted his twitter account , must be him

Looks like he pulled out because of his family.

Any idea how the tracking technoligy works ?

One of the guys (in Morocco) seems to have a location given every 10 mins, others (the one in Spain) are about once and hour and others (one in Brittany) seem to be once per 24 hrs.

The GPS needs to see the sky, they are also very power hungry and sometimes / often unreliable as we are seeing here. The more they report the more battery they use. The tracking company can communicate with the devices to measure battery power and adjust reporting times but need a GSM signal to do this. So lots of variables.

I am watching Mike Hall with interest. He is flying.

cheating surely

he is making amazing progress though, but for how long? I wonder if he does audax...
unless his route is nicely paved the whole way the bike looks too fragile