Its December 2020 and as this is my first blog for well over a year an update of the intervening period is probably a good place to start. The end of year is usually a time when many of us reflect a bit and this year, 2020 probably more so than ever due to global events that have caused such a shock to all of our lives. As a new year approaches its only natural to start thinking about whats in store. So a look back as well as an attempt to project fowards and try to connect them.
My last post was about my 2019 goal to cycle from Dover to Cape Wrath as an alternative way to ride an end to end (e2e). I had decided to ride the route as seven days of 200km DIY audax events to cross the UK diagonally from Kent in south east England to the most north western point of the UK at Cape Wrath in Scotland. I had chosen 7 seperate days with booked accommodation each night as a way to make it less intense than the previous couple of years. It partly worked but was still incedibly challenging but also very fulfilling.
I made a 4 part YouTube series of short films documenting my e2e adventure:
That June adventure really fulfilled me as it turned out to be quite difficult at times and was satisfying to complete. Afterwards I felt a rest was due although there was one slight niggle, a bit like an itch that wouldnt go away.
The previous year I had decided not to qualify, train and take part in Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP), the 1200km randonnee run every four years in northern France. I had ridden it 3 times previously and I just didn’t want to do it for some kind of chalking up recognition. There was also a feeling of wanting to let new entrants have a place as demand has suddenly risen over the last couple of editions and not everyone who qualifies is now guaranteed a slot. But there was a sense of feeling I may regret that decision when the time came and is probably best summed up by a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). I had come up with a little alternative to compensate me if that feeling did arise.
The previous year I had been quite inspired by a friend, Paul Rainbow riding from Bristol to Blackpool and back unannounced. I only became aware of his ride when he posted it on Strava. The route just hit a nerve with me and really appealed to me. Quite a few people commented that he had kept his intentions quiet so I wasnt the only one. The whole idea inspired me and over the winter I concocted a similar route but from Bath. I soon realised Bath-Blackpool-Bath would run out as 755km. I immediatetly tried to extend it into a 800km but the only way I could keep the integrity of the idea was to bolt on another section. So I did and came up with: Bath to Bradford on Avon and back….via Blackpool Tower!
Almost instantly I decided I would coincide this 800km ride to run at the same time as PBP. It just seemed the obvious solution. As I said, Dover to Cape Wrath had taken quite a bit out of me but by July I was back into long distance training and riding several 300’s in preparation. By early August the ‘PBP buzz’ was well underway with lots of online blogs, articles and pre-event films that really fired me up to do my own little ‘BBB’. I made a film about this ride too.
As I had finished 2019 on quite a high I began to formulate a cycling goal for 2020 and decided I would try and build in effective hacks and strategies I had found that worked for me in the past. As importantly, not do the things I knew definitely didnt work. I came up with an idea for a ‘Starbursting’ 1200km.
Starbursting (*) is a logistics method I had learned at Royal Mail and found to be highly effective. Put bluntly, it is based on the principle of chunking! Rather than lug a heavy weight around increasingly long duration geographical distances and reguarly topping up at pre-determined point. Instead, starbursting comprises of taking small amounts of mail out in teams from a van, delivering around much smaller circuits and then then driving the van to the next stop off point and repeating the procedure again and again. The energy economy savings were staggering as you significantly reduced the amount of dead weight being carried which in turn allowed you to go further for longer.
I had transferred this principle several years before to my long distance cycling in an attempt to manage my struggles with sleep deprivation problems. I had found using my house as a ‘control point’ to be a game changer. Just to be clear this strategy is a double edged sword because it is far too easy to wake up in your own bed and choose to stay there rather than get up and carry on riding more days of long distance. But I have found that the benefits outweigh any potential downside as you can drastically cut out time and energy consuming activities, carry around less dead weight and cut out a lot of wasted time spent in queues. For instance, as soon as I get home I replenish my bike for the next morning with pre-prepared food and drink. I can plug in my devices to recharge, I can then shower, eat hot food that is pre-prepared and sleep in my own bed. When I awake I know that I just have to get up and things are already prepared and waiting for me. Fresh clothes feel like a luxury and also give you a massive feeling of being refreshed and ready to start out again. This all helps mitigate the risk of turning over and going back to sleep in a warm bed.
Another major discovery I had made was that when sleep is going to be in short supply ensure I do my best to sleep in 90 minute chunks to at least complete one full sleep cycle. Ideally more than one full cycle if possible but to reduce the risk of waking up from (stage 3) deep sleep which can result in sleep inertia. In practice this means I will sleep for either 90, 180, 270 or even 360 minutes depending on how much of my time allowance I have remaining plus factors such as what the terrain or weather is forecast to be. If I do tire on the ride itself I found napping to be very beneficial. NASA and the Air Traffic Controllers Association have done a ton of research on this which can be found online quite easily.
Both of these techniques may seem minor but if you make then into habits they make a significant difference to your performance. As I like to say, “You often hear people say they have to dig deep but when was the last time you heard someone say you only need to delve shallow?” As I see it, people in other domains have figured out solutions to similar problems and so it makes sense to learn from them. Why make hard work for yourself trying to find a solution to a problem that has already been solved elsewhere?
My 2020 goal started as a 1200km Starburst starting from Bath, going north to Bridgnorth and back, East to Aylesbury and back, south to Portland Bill and back and finally east to Swansea and back. It soon occurred to me that if I could increase the distance from 1200km to 1301km the minimum avergage speed would drop from 13.333 kilometres an hour down to 12 kilometres an hour.
This may not seem much but it extends the total time allowance from 90 hours up to 109.5 hours. Put another way: For an extra 62 miles I get an extra nineteen and a half hours of time allocation, which gives me so much more opportunity to build in sleep and reduce fatigue. As I alluded to, Why dig deep when you can first delve shallow?
My cycling goal was now a 1300km DIY audax which I decided to call ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat’……You’ll work it out!
This made me extend the final leg from Bath to Mumbles pier and back which I felt was a nicer destination anyway. It would mean sleeping on the road somewhere on this last leg but once again the starbursting principle meant I would only have to carry the extra weight of my sleeping system for approximately a quarter of the ride instead of the entire ride. Why dig deep?
You can probably guess what happened next and you are probably right.
I spent the winter of 2019/20 building up a base of fitness and was then floored by a virus in January. I recovered quickly and soon re-established my training but was aware ‘it was a nasty one’ and there is a possibility it was covid-19 but I will never know for sure. By mid March I felt ready to make the transition from 200km up to my first 300km of the year. I always view this as a major building block of endurance cycling preparation. But this period coincided with the realisation that we were experiencing a global pandemic. I quickly realised my 1300km was very unlikely to happen in 2020 as we took each day at a time to begin with as the shock of what was happening began to sink in.
During the lockdown I tried to keep fit with my cross train home gym of turbo trainer, treadmill, rowing machine and floor mat with foam roller. Needless to say I lost endurance and my first post lockdown ride was a bit of a shock to the system. On the positive side I tried to think how I could salvage some of the summer season and tied that into getting my endurance back up to a reasonable level. I decided to complete a mini- series of 100km, 150km and 200km rides based on the audax principle of time allowances. Audax UK had supsended all ride validation so I merely ‘pretended’ I was riding DIY’s and even calculated the time allowances and called the rides DIY Randonnees. It worked and within weeks I was back up to somewhere near my pre lockdown level of fitness. These rides started around midnight so also gave me the thrill of riding through the night that I would normally be experiencing during the summer months.
I began to wonder if I could do a ‘pretend’ Super Randonneur series of 200, 300, 400 and 600km pretend DIY rides. I made the 300 as difficult as possible to gauge what level I was actually at. This was a ride into mid Wales over the Sennybridge Training Area and although I finished tired I didn’t finish completely wrecked. My 400km was a starburst with a well tested 300km section from Bath to Buckingham and back followed by 90 minutes sleep at my house and then a 100km night ride around the Berkeley Vale to complete the distance. By this time it was being rumoured that Audax UK may re-start validating DIY rides soon but by this stage I was happy for my rides to remain unvalidated.
My 600km DIY randonnee was yet another starburst. A 300km ride from Bath to Llandovery in Wales and back followed by 3 hours sleep at my house and then a second 300km ride through Somerset to Templecombe and back. The 2 days coincided with heat wave and I fried a bit on that ride but was happy to complete with over an hour to spare. Although I finished tired I would say that I was no more tired than any other 600km ride. I was certainly ready for bed though but within a few hours I was in agony from toothache and taking painkillers seemed to be having no effect. In the end my wife Linda rang the 111 emergency number in the middle of the night to ask if I could increase the dosage which they confirmed I was able to do. She did stay up all night though to ensure I had not overdosed though. So that particular 600km ride exhausted us both. Weeks later I eventually had 2 teeth extracted, a failed root canal and a wisdom tooth.
So here we are back to the present. I will be 61 years old in a matter of weeks and trying to decide if I am still able to have a go at my 1300km Never Eat Shredded Wheat DIY audax in about 6 months time. There are two main questions that I really don’t know the answer to:
At 61 years old do I still have the physical ability to ride this sort of distance within the time allocation?
Will global events even make an attempt possible?
The conclusion I have reached is to train and prepare for an attempt but to learn from my experience of 2020 and stay adaptable and have a contingency option in place. The main idea is to prepare for a June 2020 attempt but if events beyond my control conspire against me then to ride the seperate sections in a different format. Namely either three 300km rides and a 400km. Or a 300km, a 600km and a 400km combination of the routes. That way I at least get to ride the routes I designed….even if they are not as one single 1300km event as originally planned all those months ago.
Watch this space…….
(*) It was only recently I learned (while listening to an interview) that back in the 1970’s rock band Led Zeppelin first used the principle of starbursting (it wasn’t called that of course!) for concert tours of North America. Their manager realised that by being based at a central point in the US they could fly out each day to concert venues and fly back the same night. This way they covered vast swathes of a very luctrative country for their concert tours. This allowed them to remain relatively fresh and therefore play more venues and ultimately proved very financially astute. Although groundbreaking at the time, today its become common practice.
srrty 