How I plan a race

First I draw the fastest line from A to B that goes through every checkpoint and stays off the banned roads. At the TCR the organisers publish a map of forbidden roads, and Poland had a lot of them. Whole sections you just can't ride legally, so it's either a detour or a creative shortcut.

I spend entire evenings on this, zooming into forest tracks. A lot of what I imagine turns out wrong once I'm there, but that's part of the game. Poland ended up being the part of my route I'm proudest of: very direct, all the banned roads avoided, at the price of some forest paths, cobbles and gravel.

Then I look at what's actually on that line: water, shops, fuel stations, toilets. Only what's right on it, 50 metres off at most. I don't move the route to go past a shop. The route comes first and the stops fit around it.

Hotels are the exception. They're rarely right on the road, so they get a wider search.

Planning eleven days of racing in one go doesn't work. Planning the next 70 km does: I know when I leave, how far it is, how much I climb and descend. So I cut the route into chunks of 50 to 100 km, big climbs on their own, and I guess my speed for each chunk from the terrain, the moment in the race and how tired I'll probably be. It's subjective. Mostly you need to know yourself.

Then the stops. I add one minute per hour of riding for all the small stuff: red lights, pee breaks, whatever. Sounds random, but it's surprisingly accurate. On top of that I add the stops I actually plan: food every 10 to 12 hours, water every few hours, checkpoints, sleep.

Each chunk ends at a time, and that's when the next one starts. I never look at the whole race, only the next chunk. Wherever I land around midnight, that's where I sleep. Then I check what resupply there is in each chunk, and that's my plan.