LEL 2017 / London - Edinburgh - London Audax

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.