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Totally agree @Emyr. I discovered the news when I came downstairs this morning. Knew I'd not be able to tell Mrs Ludd without breaking down. She has kindly put up with my updates on the race over the last two weeks. Went off to work and, on spotting a pheasant by the tube tracks near Ickenham, decided to text Mrs Ludd to say that the pheasant had cheered me up after the awful news about Mike. But even trying to type the text was hard and I gave up.
Ludd
(Cross-posting from RIP thread)
RIP Mike Hall, Hero
I didn't understand why this made me so sad this morning until I tried to tell my GF what happened.
Me: "There's this race called the TransContinental which starts in Belgium or over here and ends in Turkey..."
GF: "Oh, do you want to do it?"
I've never bivvied. My longest road ride was about 110mi proving a point for a Strava Gran Fondo challenge. My longest offroad ride was last year's Dorset Gravel Dash 100.
The way Mike went about winning these epic challenges turned us all into dot-watchers for the whole field, hungry for the next tantalising Instagram post from any rider or spectator. He and his fellow riders made us dream of adventures, of freedom, of landscapes far away, of that sense of achievement we get from conquering a hill but amplified by that hill being the end of weeks of hills.
We need heroes like Mike. Mike is one of those people we wish we could be.