LEL 2017 / London - Edinburgh - London Audax

In my limited experience of non-commercial audax controls, both options have been available so far. Probably best to ask the organisers though!

I think they said there would be some jersey pocket food, but, I think individual controllers have some discretion on what they supply. (One does whiskey and cake!)

FWIW the BCM controls were extremely fast turnaround, with 3 course sit-down meals taking about 5 minutes to arrive.

You might get a better answer over at yacf: https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=82.0 (as the main organiser and various control organisers hang out there) or on the LEL FB group.

Beware of people telling you what it was like in previous years, as that won't really be relevant (I'll keep what I knew from 2009/2013 to myself!) As others have said here each control is run by different volunteers with some different ideas (although with the same overarching guidance), some even have commercial caterers.

The people in charge of the controls, and many of the volunteers, will be LEL/PBP/etc anciens so they'll know that some people will want to grab food and go quickly and some will want to take their time so they should be able to cater (no pun intended) for all riding styles.

I'm hoping to volunteer at the end of LEL. I'm on holiday for the start so I can't help on registration day but I should be able to get myself up to Loughton for ~8.30pm on Thursday and do stuff through the night.

So a friend of mine got an entry, coming from India, he has lots of questions that I can't answer. He can't access the forum as @Velocio has banned India due to spam attacks. Is there anywhere else where he can ask his questions? Or will someone who's done it ok with answering his queries say on whatsapp? Slack?

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=82.0

I've set India to CAPTCHA instead.

They should be fine accessing now.

If the spam resumes, I'll consider something else.

thank you boss

There's some indian bloke who keeps spamming all over the forum about Sora groupsets and Paul retro-grouch brakes. Could we have him banned please?

Trying to decide whether to Isen or Talbot LEL....

Has he escaped from his thread again?

Isen, give your new venture some nice exposure?

It doesn't exist yet and @ad441 is likely to moan about me using something untested when I have a perfectly working audax bike already.
I do like annoying Adrian....

Our personalised LEL prints have just gone up on the website with a 20% discount before ride start..

https://themassifcentral.co.uk/products/london-edinburgh-london-2017

When this thread pops up in my 'following' I am filled with more and more dread.

I'm looking forward to it now, helps if you think of it as a five day holiday riding your bike I find!

.....and not thinking of spending 5 days being kicked in the gooch by a donkey.

Its my hands i'm worried about, I finished the weekend just gone barely wanting to hold the bars. Need some different gloves asap

No gloves ftw

My little finger is still numb after Bryan Chapman. Have purchased some of that fizik under-bar gel in the hope of not making it any worse.

At this point I'm just hoping any damage I do myself on LEL isn't permanent.

I haven't had a problem with numb hands since adopting:

Gel under bar tape
Gel padded mitts
25c tyres (30c on the rear)

I have aerobars fitted for LEL so hopefully that'll help, too.

30c tubeless tyres didn't stop the issue on bcm, but have tweaked handlebar position since then, which hopefully means less weight on hands. I should probably buy some new mitts though.

I used to be able to ride gloveless with no issues, so a bit annoying that it's become a problem.

Don't stress ie pub ride spirit is what evaporated all my formerly experienced contact point issues on the 1000km last year. Or maybe it was Belgium.

honestly it sound almosty like the saddle is too far forward, but then, #internetbikefit

I've had a proper real life bikefit since bcm, which has resulted in various minor position adjustments. So hopefully that's solved it. I've just not had time to do a ride more than 80km since the bikefit so hard to know if issues are fully sorted out or not. Most of the problems were ones that didn't occur until 150k-200k into rides which makes it hard to sort out.
But I notice my numb finger is made worse by using a keyboard, etc, so can't imagine any handlebar holding is great for it.