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@Alkali
I wrote this for someone else, so excuse the 'You had to be there, Man' feel, as you were there, Man...
Like a dick I decided to do this on my old Holdsworth and not the more sensible road bike. There's only one gear on this steely badboy and the saddle's made of leather. I stuffed as many tools as possible into a saddlebag, keeping my backpack for water and cheese sandwiches. I also took two powergels or whatever they're called, which came in handy in the dead of night.
Lighting was taken care of with a cheap rear flashing thing for a few quid and a Hope Vision One up front. This was perfectly adequate, I never had to use the full power function and generally kept it on 'low'. I'd also invested £8 in an ebay LED spoke light from China. Clipping into the spokes means that as it rotates it can create some quite nice effects, supposedly kinda space invader shapes, arrows, stars etc. I couldn't spin the wheel fast enough when stationary to see the images but assumed it was working as I got a few cheerful comments as I passed people, one big dude actually saying 'Aah, how sweet' which was a little strange. I'd fitted this glowing nightmare onto my front wheel, and I was finding it a bit off putting as it was constantly in my vision. At a feed stop I decided to change it to the rear wheel. Finally I could see what it looked like by lifting the wheel off the ground and giving it a hefty crank of the pedal. A mad glowing 'I ♥ YOU' came bellowing out of my wheel. Well, that explained the 'How Sweet' comment...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wate.....t-Type-/310707229055
For the first 40 miles or so I was on a roll, my gear ratio seemed about right and I was happily overtaking loads of people. Soon though I began to feel the pressure and found myself drafting faster riders to keep my speed up. I hitched a ride behind a couple of lads for quite some time, the leader was a big dude and we whipped along with a healthy pace. I was still tiring though and got dropped eventually. A hit of cheese sandwich saw me ready to go again.
The final 40 miles were hard. Really hard. I wasn't fast enough to hitch onto anyone, was being overtaken by hordes of people and I actually had a silly little hallucination whereby I thought I could smell the sea. I knew I still had hours to go. This called for a gel. So I had one, it was rank and made little difference. I wasn't empty of energy, it was more that I was knackered. The dislocated shoulder from a few weeks back had meant I've been off the bike for quite some time and I'd lost a lot of fitness. And I was aching too, my hands, wrists and shoulders were taking a bit of a pounding on the old bike and I had to raise the stem by about 2" to relieve a bit of the pressure. Weirdly the saddle was just fine, no discomfort at all. Maybe all of the Brooks Saddles hype was actually true after all.
It started to rain, misty droplets rather than hammering downpour, but it was enough to make my glasses useless, as when following a little blinking red light the drops of water on the specs caused a red Disco Fever effect, this hellish glitterball was fun to begin with but soon became tiresome. So I wanged the glasses into my pocket and stoically trundled on. With 20 miles to go I came upon a tea stop, and it was free! Awesome! There were bikers hanging around looking like zombies (me), some sitting gassing with a beer and a fag, others manically stuffing tea and egg sandwiches down as fast as possible before leaping back onto their race machines. I spotted a bloke I'd chatted to at the start line, how was he doing? 'I think I'm dying, mate' was about all he could manage. Ditto.
Refuelled by sugary tea I trundled onwards. I overtook the dude from the start line. He was indeed dying, but I was back on a roll, he hitched a ride behind me for a few miles but couldn't keep up with my blistering pace (oh LOL, this is so untrue, he was just more wasted than me). Finally I rolled onto the beach at round 6:30am. It was cold and raining. I took a pic of the bike on the beach and hid inside a boat to get out of the wind. There were three Northern lads already hiding in the boat. We had a forlorn little party based on my remaining battered cheese sandwiches, a couple of chewy bars and some water. Some mentals were going for a dip in the sea, I settled for a hot chocolate.
Maybe I'm painting this in a gloomy light, the Dun Run was an excellent adventure, hurling yourself deep into darkest Suffolk with nothing but your bike is a real experience. Being alone with thousands of strangers may not be to everyone's taste but for me it all added to the fun. Whilst I did have a couple of dark moments it turns out my legs don't listen when my head says stop, and my head doesn't listen when my legs say stop, and that's how you get to the beach.
Pic - At Dunwich Beach - Note stem height and forlorn party boat on left
