LEL 2021 / London - Edinburgh - London Audax

trying

Already have the first finisher a little after mid night.

Site working fine for me.

apparently was riding with a support vehicle

How very audacious.

I dont know about that, he was alone, cold and completely fucked when we saw him.

who is 'he'?

Matthew Page

1 Attachment

We've had three riders through so far Matthew, Anco De Jong and Ian McBride.

https://road.cc/content/feature/what-do-you-need-ride-london-edinburgh-london-295025

"2,000 riders"

Seriously? I always assumed it was about 500.

Rode a good chunk of Greenwich Mean Climb with Ian, he's a machine.

lots of indians

I have never ridden LEL but I'm pretty confident you don't need that fucking bike. Why make an amazing long distance event perfect for slow rolling frankenbikes int0 £9000 aero broleur shit. I'm sure that Matthew is a great guy and strong rider and all but c'mon. One of the great things about audax is that you don't need an aspirational bike.

Strong riders like him exist in a space between Audax and Ultra racing I think, maybe he is just training for something longer and faster

LEL is a pretty good place to trial a setup for something much bigger / longer / racier without so much of a 'controls every 100km for food' safety net, I would have thought.

Fiona K rode it before her TCR year, didn't she?

exactly. As @hippy once said - every bike is an audax bike. Or something like that.

Different strokes for different folks.

We did ALPI4000 quite comfortably, stopping for photos and the lovely scenery etc. while other people raced it to be first back. UK audax, I've been guilty of doing that, but it's because I was using audaxes as training rides for races and I've seen quite enough of the UK, presumably, as has this guy.

About 1500 this year, think we are down to about 1000 on road.

Yep. I used to ride my time trial bike in a lot of audaxes.

Still bigger than I imagined.

hows your experience been volunteering?

I have actually seen Hippy riding an audax on a TT bike

The bike was awfully ugly

I get that I probably have a chip on my shoulder about it but most of the stuff on that bike is not necessary for audax, so the title of the article is fundamentally wrong

plus you want to buy that bike (and its your size)