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Just looking out the side there seems to be a good one. Oh, hang on, maybe it's a river

Cheers!

Yes, somewhere over Romania now, did a bit of work, had a decent and early lunch, then gave in to the tepmtation of buying a WiFi pass.
Following a bit of a TCR-like route across Europe...
Got an aisle seat for plenty of walking and have calf compression sleeves on!

I meant to ask you what junk food aussie servos sold. I guess i'll find out soon. I hope they have cream filled croissants...

For the IPWR I'm using a Hope V1 as main light. I get two full nights off 4 AAs so it got me round PBP without needing spare batteries.
It's not as bright as a dynamo but I'm not going that fast and it's good enough as I'm not used to anything brighter. I have a higher power light for descending, bad visibility but it eats power so use sparingly.
You could use a dynamo, but you certainly don't need one.

Yes, but you're not doing 100% of threshold at audax speeds. I'm generally doing 50-60%.
And it's back up to 5-6 w if you use it for charging in the daytime.
So, to get the same power my Threshold would have to be 10w higher.

Made it to the airport after major packing panic last night. Was all going well until a work thing cropped up at 2pm which took 3 hours to deal with. Then I rode round to the bike shop having forgotten to tighten up my left crank, so shredded my Stages power meter. Think it's still usable. Will find out as ignored professional advice and decided to just use it.
In the checkin queue I was right behind another rider, Leo, who went to school with @bananaskid.
Security wanted an extra look at my stash of AA batteries from poundland, but weren't interested in my lithium power banks.
Bike now checked in so fewer things can go wrong. Looking forward to riding as will have less to think about!

Why not is because they take a not insignificant part of your power: for an endurance ride it knocks the equivalent of 10W off your threshold power, which takes a lot of training to get back. And many people don't do need to do too much night riding on LEL so don't have massive power requirements, plus you have drop bags.
Depends on your objectives, though: if you are neither in a hurry nor in any risk of being out of time, it's not an issue.

Let me know if you want rid of it. I'd like to try it for size if possible

Sure, I'll give you a shout when I get back.
Re waterproof, they do cases for some phones which I think have some level of waterproofing. But what I have has nothing - the phone is in the fresh air. The position also makes it vulnerable to drink spillage / dribbling. But apart from that, it's pretty good!

Interesting. I expect you've looked into it more than me. I researched it a bit after doing my first 24 and realised I had no clue how much I should eat, nor did my helper. I found the 300 cal number and have latched onto that since. Gs of CHO is better but I find it easier to guestimate how many cals in x. I've used that on all my long TTS and audaxes since and never bonked. Obvs 300 (or 480) is only an average so different people can metabolise more. Ideally I shd experiment to see how I go with more, but never have got round to it.

I don't really know but I think they email to suggest alternative routes avoiding busy A-roads, or with helpful details like 'signpost missing', 'distance is 13km not 3km', or 'this road doesn't exist'

Am thinking about getting a [edit] Velogical rim dynamo for my main light. Anyone used one before?

No but I had a good think about using one for the IPRW. I would have got one if they had been able to work with the Igaro. But they are just testing it now. Probably it will work with either the touring or standard models (not sport).
All the other charging options seemed inferior to the Igaro. They push you towards this Forumslader thing, but it is homemade and it is hard to work out what it is and how to go about buying it. You get the opposite of a hard sell - the guy just chats and brings out more options all the time, so you go round in circles! If it will work with the Igaro, it would be a good option.
But you shouldn't need a dynamo for LEL at all really.

My curiosity is: when you knowledgeable folk say 'eat', what kind of quantity are we talking about? Let's say I eat every hour, how much are we talking about? A couple handfuls of trail mix? More?

What Hippy said, but I just aim for 300 cal per hour, mostly from carbohydrate. That is the most your stomach can absorb, so no point eating more.

Why change if your winning most races you enter..

Yes, it was the TCR that found Kristof rather than the other way round. He's never raced or done much organised cycling, just ridden his bike a lot for fun. Then a competition came along, passing close to where he lives, he entered, won by miles / days, and became a global superstar in the very small world of ultra-racing.

There's nothing in his background to support that he would be good in a close race under pressure. That doesn't mean he wouldn't be, but I'd be fancying Mike if it got tight!

Does your rokform include the case or is it mounted to a 3rd-party case?

No, its this which sticks on the back with the 3M tape:

There might be a nearly-new one going cheap in your local area!

Good luck to him trying to book a hotel in Oz :)

Really - what do you mean?
I need to find one about every 8 days. Or else find shops with lots of AA batteries...

No. If it rains, phone goes in a plastic bag in my pocket!

Durability concerns? Spoked wheels can be trued/kicked back into life whereas if, say, he drops his bike the disc is possibly out of action.

Covers? I guess the sponsors wouldn't like that

Kristoffs setup is usually rather minimalist, it's also kind of conservative

Yes, Kristof is in the 'use tried and tested stuff' camp. Steel frame and strong wheels. His set-up is more audax than racing. He relies on his legs to get him there, rather than a lot of small marginal gains.

If my spokes break in the Nullarbor, I expect I will realise the wisdom of his approach!

Have you got a pic of your Rokform setup?

Bike is in bits at the moment, but it basically looks like this:

I can't use the Quadlock as there isn't room on my stem with my pads floating around, and my aerobars are too short to put it out there. The advantage of the Rokform is that it goes on the stem cap, which is about the only free bit of space I have!

I'm off on Wednesday. Thanks!

Do you mean a Velogical?

it looks like Allegaert is riding pretty much the same bike as in TCR last year, same wheels

Kristof just does the 'pedalling hard' bit. And the 'minimsing stops' bit. If you can do both of those as well as he can, then any set of round wheels will do!

It's the chasing pack looking for all the marginal gains.

It's not clear cut. Tubeless is good, very rarely fails but if it does, it fails badly.

I had a bad puncture last year which screwed up one of my tubeless tyres before I left Belgium. Had to buy a non-tubeless tyre and then got a couple of punctures in it. Some others had issues, some others didn't. Some people with tubes had issues, some got there with no punctures.

If I did TCR again I would most likely use them but I wouldn't feel too strongly about it.

The % gains are bigger at higher speeds but at slower speeds you spend longer in the wind so they say you save more absolute time. Given the route involves 2,000km across a flat desert mostly in crosswinds, followed by 1,000km riding along a mostly flat coast, I reckon they will make a bit of a difference - more than, say, on the TCR last year.

There will be enough stretches where the effective wind speed might be 25-30mph with a 10-20 degrees of yaw (say, wind 25mph cross headwind + rider, eg me, 10-12mph). In those conditions, aero wheels should be working well.

How much? I don't know, and haven't tried to work it out properly, but I'd guesstimate a couple of hours over the course of the 2-3 weeks. Nowhere near as much difference as optimising body position, pedalling slightly harder, taking fewer / shorter breaks or even getting rid of a dynamo, but worth having.