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He seems like a nice guy, I was chatting to him with Jim at the garage in Alston, was mind blowing that at that point with only a 7.5 hour head start he was almost 400k ahead of us, and we were going pretty well at that point too!
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I like the fact that you didn't mention the finish time.
And a lot of us slower riders believe that the fast people dodged worst of the wind.
On a more serious note, it appears that you didn't eat an awful lot while the power output must be at least double? I weigh 55kg and despite 2 maincourses every control i still needed bananas on the go..
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I started writing this down before I forgot any more of it, then decided I might as well post it somewhere. So here it is:
A cautionary tale on how to DNF LEL
(TL;DR I was too slow, stopped too much and didn't get enough sleep).Started 11am, under the impression that all I had to do was an easy first day of 240km, followed by 300km every day for the next four days. Which having done quite a few 300s before meant it had to be fairly easy.... after all I'd rarely finished 300s much later than 11. On top of that I even had the whole of the last night if I was slow.
Things didn't quite work out that way.The initial few hours were spent feeling a bit anxious - mostly because I've had quite a bit of saddle, hand and neck pain on rides over 200k and due to having two small kids I've not really been able to fit in the numerous rides required to gently tweak bike position into something more comfortable. But the distance went quickly and by the time I got to the fens there was a tailwind and I was shooting along at 30kph+ in a cheerful train of mostly Thai riders. About an hour outside of Louth I got hit by a massive heavy rain shower - rivers of water running down the roads, etc. After a brief attempt to shelter under a tree with some mudguardless Italian riders I decided it was better just to carry on and get wet. Which I did. I was suprised to find that many riders at the next control had totally missed this and stayed dry. I made it to Louth around 10, had a fairly leisurely shower and was pleased to find that there was no time restriction on beds and I could have a decent night's sleep.
This is when things started to go wrong and I totally failed to sleep. I lay there for about 4 hours with my earplugs failing to block out snoring, door banging, etc. As with this year's BCM (where much the same thing happened), the more I failed to sleep, the more irritated I got, but also convinced myself that if I lay there for just a bit longer I might sleep. I finally gave up and after a small (they were low on food) breakfast, I was off by 5.
Checking back on my strava I'm not quite sure how it took me nearly 21 hours to cover the next 300ish km. I'd averaged around 20kph moving so I must have spent a lot of time stopped at controls eating, stopping to take photos, etc. It was still pretty enjoyable though. I've not been to the Howardian Hills before, but the scenery was great. I was starting to feel pretty tired though. I had a large meal at Barnards Castle (the Penang curry was one of the best meals of the ride) and set off in fairly good spirits. Heading off the climbing began and I found a co-op where I purchased ibuprofen gel and a cheap caffeine drink. Benefiting from both I set off over Yad Moss as it grew dark. This went on a long time, but was great seeing lights dotted all the way up the hill. I remember thinking I was really looking forwards to the ride back over there , which I for some reason assumed would be at dawn and with beautiful weather... I enjoyed the very long descent though I was aware I was so tired it wasn't entirely safe to go as fast as I was going. Made it to the Alston control with the vague idea of sleeping, but they had no space so I pressed on to Brampton. I remember struggling to keep my head up here as I was so tired, though the rain made it too miserable to stop for long.
I definitely slept a little at Brampton, though it wasn't good sleep - the door kept banging and despite being really really tired I just seemed to drift off for 10 minutes or so and then wake up again. I finally got up feeling exhausted, ate a large breakfast and then delayed starting for another 20 minutes after noticing the torrential rain outside. I'd cleverly parked my bike under a shelter in the corner to keep it dry. Unfortunately this turned out to be at the bottom of a slope and so my bike was now in a calf deep puddle that required some careful climbing to retrieve without making my feet any wetter than they already were. I was on the road again just before 8.
The next section was awful - I opted for the flatter section that supposedly had less potholes. This was probably a mistake. Busy A roads but with a terrible rough surface. I was tired, struggling to hold my head up and saddle pain and neck pain were getting to me. I had to resort to emergency biscuits at one point as this was about the only time on the ride I forgot to eat. I was briefly jolted out of my daze somewhere around Gretna Green by a small terrier charging across a busy road to attack me. I emergency stopped and put the bike intbetween myself and the dog. Having cycled in India, Greece and South London I'm at least reasonably good at this now.The owner was moderately apologetic though I think more concerned with his dog having nearly got flattened than my near crash. Things cheered up briefly as a crowd of riders gathered around the 'welcome to Scotland' sign and I discussed the stupidity of the ride with a friendly local tractor driver.
After some more rain and further ulnar nerve damage (I've not really been able to feel my little finger since Bryan Chapman in May) I reached Moffat. Here I was greeted by @coldharbour who was volunteering there. It was nice to see him and his broken Volvo, though also led to probably my most shambolic control performance of all time - it's amazing how just the act of talking to someone was enough to totally disrupt my routine of placing bottles and chamois cream in musette and other minor time saving organisational things. It was the one time I totally lost where I'd put my bike and was unable to find my way out when leaving as I'd not paid any attention on arriving. At least it was one of the two controls that had a machine producing a substance not entirely unlike espresso. I find instant coffee increasingly undrinkable on long rides so made the most of this. After forgetting various things and making 2 or 3 journeys between control and bike I was off again.
The next section felt pretty good - long steady climb, great views, intermittent sun and rain. I stopped outside a small village store and had some cake and another approximation of an espresso. Traffic got pretty annoying at points and there was another burst of torrential rain just outside Edinburgh. I also encountered an Italian rider who'd crashed into a bollard at the start of the bike path section and looked in a pretty bad way, however he was being looked after so I carried on more carefully. As I reached the Edinburgh control I had discovered my Igaro USB charger had been failing to charge anything for a while - The plug had seemed a bit lose earlier and I'd done it up with electrical tape, but at this point I realised it was worse than I thought and batteries on phone, Wahoo and cache battery were all dangerously low. I bound everything together more tightly with cable ties and for the rest of the ride it worked intermittently, but gave me extra stress as I was keen to avoid using a routesheet if at all possible. I noticed by this point I was falling badly behind on schedule and attempted to get going again as quickly as possible. The next section had more great views. I love riding in Scotland but hadn't realised the scenery could be so good this far South. The Granites were a particular highlight though by this point I was pushing into quite a headwind and it was going dark and I still had quite a way to go to make it back to Brampton (where I was intending to sleep again). Innerleithen control was great - It's sad that the controls where you'd most like to spend time occur at the point when you've got the least free time. Great Thai soup here. It started to get properly dark as I left here and I also started to get really tired. The rest of that night was one of my less good riding experiences. Somewhere between here and Eskdalemuir things got pretty surreal. At one point I was on pitch dark roads, with occasional patches of fog. It was totally silent with no other riders around and I was getting very very tired. I could no longer even tell if I was riding up or downhill. I remember half seriously thinking I had died and was now in some sort of cycling purgatory where I'd spend eternity riding through the darkness. Arriving at Esdalemuir reassured me that I was still alive, but that I was very low on time in hand and this was another nice control where I didn't have time to hang around. I ate some food as quickly as possible and set off into a world of rain and upper back pain. I've had many bad times riding bikes, but this was definitely a new low (my return trip over Yad Moss was soon to upstage this). I intermittently bumped into other riders, but was in no mood to talk and the roads were so wet I didn't feel like drafting anyone too closely. Towards the end of this section I found myself riding no handed in the rain for long periods, which in retrospect was stupidly dangerous, but between back pain and the desire to fall asleep riding this seemed the best option at the time.
I eventually staggered into Brampton somewhere around 3 or 4am. I was in a pretty bad state by this point - my brain was ticking over with half remembered details of Shermers neck and stress that all electronic devices were barely charged as the D1 plug was still playing up. I attempted to get some sleep but despite barely having been able to stay wake on the last stretch of riding, I found it hard to drift off for long. I remember halfway through my 2 or 3 hours I ran out in a panic to try and find somewhere to charge a usb cache battery - the kind volunteers manning the desk told me to go and lie down again and found me a spare socket. I must have slept for an hour or so at least, but calculating distance/time remaining I decided that I needed to get going again. I decided that the solution to my neck pain was to invert my stem. Which proved to be more complicated due to neither me or the mechanics having a T30 torx key. Stupid custom topcaps... I recalled @coldharbour saying this was possible using an allen key, but in my sleep deprived state I became convinced I'd ruin it in some way and took the mechanic's advice to go to the bike shop in Barnards castle. Along with their lecture on over aggressive bar positioning. I briefly cheered up when I got to Alston and had a second breakfast at the co-op and took photos of people riding up the cobbled section. The sun was out and based on my rough calculations I only had under 600km in the next day and 3/4 which I felt was possible if nothing else went wrong.
What went wrong was Yad Moss... the pleasant views and gentle climb of my imagination turned into a battle into a massive headwind and increasingly heavy rain. I was so tired I thought about trying to doze behind the few small wall that provided the only shelter, but I realised this was stupid. I pressed on in the vague hope of a bus shelter or something , but I presume it's not a major bus destination. The descent was even worse than the climb - headwind and driving rain. Halfway down I started to get seriously cold and pulled over beneath a small clump of trees. I got my insulated jacket on under my waterproof, then discovered I'd accidentally picked up someone else's warm gloves as these were far too small for me and I could barely get them on. I took another 30 minutes or so to realise that this was due to my hands having swollen and they were really my gloves.
I finally staggered into Barnards Castle 6.5 hours after leaving the last control. I had only covered 83km. I was so cold and wet and tired that I think I just stood in the entrance way staring blankly into space until one of the volunteers suggested I got myself some food and sat down. At this point it became pretty clear I was not likely to finish in time, certainly not without extreme sleep deprivation. Checking back on my card I had 20 minutes in hand at this point. I talked things over with the volunteers and concluded that it was probably a bad idea to continue. Having never failed to complete an audax before this was a pretty tough decision. I decided the best thing I could do to make it slightly more positive was to volunteer at the control. I went for a lie down and actually slept properly for the first time in ages. Though after an hour or so I glanced at lfgss where someone had helpfully pointed out that the control actually closed at 10, so volunteering for the night was not likely to be particularly useful... but freed of the need to cycle further it was not a huge effort to get out of bed, have a large helping of Penang curry and set about volunteering. Which by this stage just meant helping out the lovely French couple who'd been doing mechanics. Thankfully nothing too complicated turned up - mostly it was just exhausted riders convinced their gears weren't functioning - the reality being they just needed oiling and some very minor adjustment. In the end I spent most of the time chatting to other volunteers and observing other riders staggering around in a similarly zombie-like state to what I'd been in a few hours back. It wasn't that surprising to find most of them still there the next day. Around 10.30 the control closed and I helped tidy up a bit while a steady stream of out of time riders arrived and occasionally went on to leave. The French couple weren't sleeping at the control that night as they had their own holiday cottage nearby, so very kindly gave me their room complete with comfortable clean bed with proper bedding. A luxury I felt I didn't deserve but I was sensible enough not to stress this point too much. In the morning I ate a huge breakfast, assisted with packing away airbeds, then set off for the train from Bishops Auckland back to London that @coldharbour had very helpfully booked for me. At this point I realised I'd been a little casual with my timing and had to cycle the 25km rather faster than I would have liked it, but I made it and was back in London by the evening.
Lessons learned - if doing it again I would have ridden straight through as far as possible on the first day - to Pocklington at least and built up a lot more time in hand early on. The 100km gap between Louth and Pocklington made the shorter distance look sensible, but I set myself up for problems right from the start by doing this and then not sleeping. My issues with sleeping are going to make any multi-day audaxes pretty hard in future. I suppose if I do another one (am already thinking about PBP) I'll just try and get by on sleeping an hour or so here and there and not get fixated on getting a proper night's sleep. I'd love to be fast enough to not feel rushed at controls, but I think this is unlikely to happen. At least while I've got small children which has really reduced my cycling time.
I still half think I should have slept for a while and then just carried on and finished out of time. I spent the weekend immediately after in a miserable, angry mood about this. Since then I've calmed down a bit and accepted that even if I'd made it further, the headwinds on the fens would probably have finished me off. But I'm still not totally sure. As far as bike and equipment I had no issues whatsoever aside from the USB charging. Tubeless tyres, dynamo lighting, big PDW mudguards, disc brakes and Wahoo Elemnt are all great, reliable things. Bike fit I'm going to have to work at further. I got a quick last minute appointment with Scheritt a few weeks before LEL, but in retrospect I think I put myself in what I know to be a correct riding position, rather than the position I end up in when tired. I suspect in the long run I'm going to have to accept that I need the front end of my bike much higher than I thought I did.
Weirdly despite this account making it sound awful, it wasn't actually that bad for the most part. It's just more interesting to write about the awful bits. The scenery and variety of enthusiastic foreign riders really stood out. The controls and volunteers were amazing, though this was also a problem in that it made it harder to leave them. I'm still pretty disappointed at not finishing, but at least it hasn't put me off riding for ever.I took a load of photos that I can't work out how to embed - they're in a public facebook album here.
Edit - sorry, I should edit this down loads. But no time to now.
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Don't edit, it's perfect! Thanks for taking the time to write and for the pictures too.
In comparison I didn't have much trouble sleeping, but I certainly could have been more efficient at controls. Too often I was just eating too much and/or staring into the void wondering if I should sleep or get going next.
In the end sleep broke down like this roughly.
2h Louth (meh sleep, not tired enough yet, but Pocklington felt a bit far away)
1h Brampton (no beds, so caught 1h on the ground in some hallway)
2h Moffat (first nice sleep)
1h Edinburgh (wow, I'm there... now turn around and ride back?)
1.5h Brampton (got a bed this time, but the sleep hall was a freaking fridge so woke up earlier than I'd have liked)
2h Barnard Castle (nicest sleep, first one where I actually had to be woken up)
And I dnf'd at Thirsk.Lessons for next time: mini-sleeps work but the rhythm was getting harder to maintain (the ride to Barnard Castle got really hard dozies-wise). If I was to do this again I'd try to sleep more, either at the same sort of frequency but with longer naps (cutting on control faffing) or with less frequent but bigger sleeps. Either way having a loose plan made up beforehand would help.
The Santini bibs were awesome, thanks @tonylast for the suggestion. The dhb waterproof was nice but clearly not Yad Moss- or Scotland-rated. Not sure what would have been though! Aerobars yes, but would have to invest in a better pair because this one was quite bad in retrospect.
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Really enjoyed that, sounds all pretty normal. I stressed massive and unnessecarily on PBP which I rectified on Borders of Belgium. Good to hear the volunteering went so well. You probably DNF mostly entirely because thinking 240 and 300 x 4 would work.
'Beyond Loudeac' didn't know what it meant before I arrived there (witness the mother of travel agent organised faffing) taught me a lot. Just under 500k 5-8pm 3h sleep PBP and 540k 2-10 3h sleep BOB worked for me. -
My LEL:
I told them about doing LeJogLe in 8 days, and they put me in the 5am group. I read the terms and conditions, saw that we were free to take any route we like between controls, and thought, "ooh, it's like TCR, find the fastest route" thinking that everyone else who was after a fast time would do the same. This misunderstanding of the spirit of the ride was my biggest rookie LEL mistake I think. It's certainly my biggest regret now, as I'll never now how long it would have taken me on the official route.
As Lesley was volunteering at the start and sleeping there over Saturday night, I got to ride to registration on Saturday as my final equipment shakedown and then sleep in our campervan at the start, to be right there on the spot for 5am.
And, we're off. I set off with 2 pints of whole milk, 500g of marzipan, a chorizo and a few other odds and ends in the shopping basket on the front of my bike. After about 6km my route diverged from the official one, which was a bit of a relief as it was quite high traffic and some road racer types were coming much closer than I was comfortable with. I went up via Bishop's Stortford and Cambridge and took the busway into St Ives. There were no buses on Sunday, it was very quiet.
I went through the first couple of controls a few minutes before they officially opened, but others were ahead of me and nobody seemed to care too much. On I went. When I got to Thirsk though, I was gleefully told that I was one of the first riders in (hardly surprising after taking a fast route though York instead of grimping up and down the Howardian Hills) and I felt like I was cheating. It was now clear that some fast riders were holding an unofficial mandatory route race within LEL over the official route, and were assuming that I was in it. I was, in effect, cheating in a race that I never intended to enter. Chatted to Darren Franks and @Jasmijn a bit here.
North of Thirsk my routes were pretty similar to the official route anyway, so I decided not to worry too much about that for now and carried on as planned, plodding on to Barnard Castle where Lesley was now working, and slept in our camper van.
Day two: over Yad Moss in the morning, I left before first light having decided that climbing in the dark would be fine and I'd prefer to descend the other side in daylight. This worked well. It would have worked slightly better had I not loaded the wrong route on my Garmin and spent the whole leg thinking it wasn't working properly until I eventually got to the start of the route at Brampton, but I made it.
I rolled on. At Edinburgh I was straight in and out of the control, preferring to stock up on food in the 24 hour Asda in Straiton and eat on the move. At that point I was quite focused on getting along quickly, hoping to make it back over Yad Moss to the campervan at Barnard Castle before it got too late. My route from Edinburgh to Innerleithen was the most off-piste of the northern segments (via Peebles, another chance to stock up at Sainsburys) and was quicker on paper but added more east-west travel which may have actually slowed me down vs the official route with the winds at the time, but of course I'll never know for sure. Regret regret regret.
By the time I got to Brampton it was clear that I'd be descending the in the dark while very tired if I pushed on to Barnard Castle that day, and I had a drop bag at Brampton, so I stopped there to sleep. I can still remember that I was in bed x24 and that their whiteboard and tupperware box bed booking system was working smoothly. Also, they actually dropped the drop bags: guy shouts your number out, other guy lobs your drop bag over the balcony, first guy catches it.
I asked for 3 hours, woke naturally a bit before and pressed on. I remember chatting to somebody on the way up Yad Moss who'd got back to Brampton after me and failed to get a bed or enough sugar, and giving him a couple of mini mars bars from the magic shopping basket. That was the point, I think, that I resolved to stay on the official route from here to the end. I didn't actually have to make a final decision until Thirsk, because my routes between Brampton and Thirsk were identical to the official route anyway, but in hindsight I think that moment rolling up Yad Moss was where it crystallised.
Back at Thirsk, Tesco stop and route set swap. I had a whole load of alternative route and map sets in different versions of the Garmin directory on my sd cards, and I used the file manager on my phone to rename the one I wanted to /Garmin before moving the sd card into the edge 1000. This worked flawlessly, the only downside being the length of time it took the garmin to turn on as it parsed all the routes for the first time.
Off I go over the Howardian Hills and on, stopping for a meal at each control but managing to keep the stopped time down fairly well I think. Hill, hills, knees and ankles hurt, voltaren gel, hills, fens at night (not too much wind), Spalding: sleep.
5am and I'm rolling again, more fens, quite windy but nothing like what would hit the riders behind me later. Knees getting painful but ankles mostly ok, don't want to use any more painkillers, press on.
Great Easton stands out as a control I enjoyed my time at (not that they weren't all awesome), chatted to Phil Whitehurst here, and obtained seconds of rice pudding by asking nicely. Knees very painful. Consider switching to my flatter originally planned route for the final leg, give myself a mental slap and continue on the official route slowly and wincing a lot. Wish I had a triple. Walk up a hill. Gradually either my knees improve or I become inured to the pain, and things settle a bit.
Finish, picture taken. Within half an hour I'm rolling again on the ride home (because I Want My Own Shower And My Own Bed) with the knees twinging a bit but broadly surprisingly ok. The number of hours in which I actually finished is a bit meaningless having made the mistake of taking some easier routes, so I won't mention it here.
Aftermath: I feel like death for a day or two, particularly when trying to walk down stairs. Back to riding to work on Monday, on the road bike and making extensive use of the small chainring and even then wincing with knee pain especially at the start of each ride. Thursday's ride home was a milestone: all the way on the big chainring and no wince-out-loud knee pain :)
Index of equipment failures:
During the first day going over a bump, my heavily loaded front shopping basket bounced down onto the front mudguard, causing the wheel to catch it and rip it forward. Spent the rest of the ride with a mudguard cabletied to the front of the shopping basket and wet feet.
Also during the first day, the metal bracket holding my dynamo front light fatigued and snapped, so I stopped and effected a pvc tape and cable tie repair. The light wouldn't stay at the right angle though, so it was turned off for the rest of the ride.
Northbound while eating at Brampton (I think) my plastic fork exploded.
On the northbound descent of Yad Moss one of my bottle holders came loose in the wet; it had been mounted lower than the frame allows using one screw and (non-waterproof it turns out) double sided tape to make room for a framebag that I wasn't using at the time. Remounted it with both screws.
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Same as @Greenbank, choosing an alternative route is totally okay. Grand chapeau!
On PBP the route is mandatory? How can they enforce that?
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Secret controls on PBP
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I wouldn't worry about not riding the official route the entire time. Unlike PBP the LEL route is not mandatory. Plenty of faster riders take some of the faster alternatives.
Thanks, I still feel like I have unfinished business for a future LEL though :)
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Secret controls on PBP
Although, if you're not at the front of the race then you generally find out where the secret controls are if you just look at twitter.
I went off route on PBP twice and didn't retrace to fix it; once near St Nicholas-du-Pelem and again right near the finish (I followed the route out from StQeY). Tired brains do tired things.
They can award a time penalty but it's rare to actually get caught.
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Fully understand @Nick.Earthloop love of the mandatory route. Remember the roadsign to Villaines la Juhel shouting at me less miles. But I still get pleasure now that I replied no and followed the PBP arrows.
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Write up of my LEL experience is on my blog. I completed within time limit but the southbound leg was very very tough, done with hardly any sleep and involved cycling through the night on Thursday. My hands are still weak and partially numb...
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Part one of my blog entry on racing LEL from the 5am group is now up. https://theadventurecapitalist.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/lel-2017-part-1/
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I finished the route today, about 415 hours out of time.
After 2 weeks for my ankles to heal up I set off this morning on the first train that got reasonably close to where I packed it in.
That gave me 250k to ride back to Loughton - 50 to pick up the route, then the 200 I didn't ride. I took a different bike in the hope that the slight change would aggravate different bits of my body.
The first turn into a headwind bought back all the thoughts that had made me pack in the first place - but generally it was a crosswind so things picked up by St Ives.
The sun came out just as I pulled up outside the school in Loughton to take a photo. Then all that was left was following fucking Google fucking maps fucking useless directions back to the station via every unecessary hill and bit of muddy single track in a 5 mile radius.
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Nice! You coming to ACH drinks?
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I moved the cleats back as far as they'd go and it helped. Still not great though.
Nice pics!
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Thanks!
@fussballclub I want to, depends on how I'll be doing on the cleaning/packing/moving front.
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LEL 2017 / London - Edinburgh - London Audax
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'Second place' writeup - contains shocking doping confession.