Lael Wilcox: around the World faster ..

[matticus]

Every road in Alaska?
Where there aren't very many roads?
Tough challenge 😂

There are about 4,500 miles of "highway" (on the mainland). I checked for you x

I don't know if that's 4 roads or 4,500 roads, sorry.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

There are about 4,500 miles of "highway" (on the mainland). I checked for you x

I don't know if that's 4 roads or 4,500 roads, sorry.

Mostly it is long roads with few junctions based on my travels in Alaska. A lot of graded gravel highways such as the Dalton highway, which I presume would be included.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Already past 1,000km and not even 3 days in.

Like that map also shows current overall and women’s record.

 

[Sea of vapours]

Like that map also shows current overall and women’s record.

It's good that they've added the 'current record' dot. (For anyone who's not looked, the 'current record' dot is moving at the pure average of Mark Beaumont's total distance divided by his total elapsed time, which gives 9.60mph.) It provides for lots of ways to look at how the attempt is going.

One of those ways is to calculate out how far ahead of the dot Lael needs to be at the point when she reaches a flight. For the first one, Halifax to Lisbon, she'll take six hours flying,; add airport time at each end and contingency for arriving in time; so that's probably at least twelve hours total time for the flight. Conversely, the Beaumont dot on the tracker will reach Halifax and appear immediately in Lisbon, and carry on moving at 9.6mph. So in order to stay level after the flight she needs to be twelve hours at 9.6mph ahead, or 115 miles, approaching the airport in Halifax. Right now, she's 109 miles ahead, and that's been steady for quite a while now, give or take a mile or two. The longer flights obviously require a greater margin.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The longer flights obviously require a greater margin.

Getting the transfers spot on will be key I think. It is too tight to have problems with that.

 

[T4tomo]

Getting the transfers spot on will be key I think. It is too tight to have problems with that.

I assume she / they (support team) will have booked flights already to the planned schedule. I guess the jeopardy is, if running ahead or behind schedule you and need to change them*. Plus arriving early, with a lot of routes that means arriving 24 hours early to actually gain anything if there is one flight per day (e.g Halifax to Lisbon).

The last relatively long leg from Alaska at least provides time to catch up and/or consolidate on the road gains all the way to the finish.

*plus its not just Lael's flight, its support crew, rental bookings for support vehicles etc

 

[Ming the Merciless]

From her trial run, looks like cassette is 12 cogs. Did not notice if single chain ring up front.

 

[chriswoody]

She's using a standard SRAM Red axs groupset which is a 2 x 12 setup. Chainrings are 48/35 and the cassette is 10/36 so a decent spread of gears.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

That overall record dot is brutal, just 50 miles behind her now.

 

[Sea of vapours]

The overall record dot - the Virtual Beaumont, or VB - came within 40 miles yesterday. Travelling inexorably at nearly 10mph, it'll gain 70-80 miles every time she stops for 7-8 hours sleep: brutal indeed. Late yesterday she'd pushed it out to over 110 miles again (around UK 2300, so a few hours before she stopped). The weather was bad on Wednesday, but she now appears to be back to an overall average speed which is pulling away from the VB; just !

EDIT to add: the first flight is in 74 hours from now (take-off time that is), and she has 770 miles to go to reach it. Definitely possible, but tight. Everything about this is so marginal, which just goes to show how remarkable Mark Beaumont's second circumnavigation was.