LEL is a 1500km ride held every four years from London to Edinburgh and back again. Each iteration is overscubscribed and I was fortunate enough to get through the lottery this year to have a chance to partake of this adventure with 2500 other “lucky” souls. The event is very well organized with over 1000 volunteers working together to support getting the riders through the long distance and challenging conditions typically faced. This year was to prove exceptionally challenging for the support as the event was turned on it’s head when Storm Floris and it’s associated 100mph gusts rolled in unexpectedly and resulted in the ride being initially suspended and then truncated to half it’s original planned distance due to safety concerns.
It was still an incredible experience despite the dissapointment of not getting to complete the entire planned route. The chance to meet and ride with people from all around the world on new roads while eating good food and crumble every 50 miles or so is a nice change from gas station hotdogs and riding on roads I’ve navigated what feels like hundreds of times before around Washington.
Anyway on to the event.
Pre-ride
I flew over to arrive Friday morning on BA and navigated to train system out to Writtle were I was staying in the college dorms. My bike wasn’t shifting properly after I assembled it so I tracked down a local bike shop in Chelmsford, 3 miles away, were the owner quickly got the rear derailleur engaging correctly again after it had likely been pushed into crash protection mode during travel. He wasn’t happy with my pedals either and took them apart to grease them as we chatted about my forthcoming ride. An absolute rockstar who saw a lot of business over the next two days. My bike, now fully functional, got halfway back to the college before I somehow sliced the rear tire and flatted. I’d put new 32s on before flying over but couldn’t find either a tire boot or replacement 32 in a tour of 6 local bike shops the next day. I ended up putting a spare 28 on the rear for the ride instead as I’d brought that along and decided I was better off starting with an unsliced tire than needing to change it in driving rain on top of some moor over the course of the ride. I had no further mechanical issues over the 4 days I was riding so thankfully got them out of the way up front.
Registration
Saturday was registration day and a chance to set up drop bags, get my number for the bike and catch up with some people I hadn’t seen since PBP in 2011. It was interesting hearing the different range of experience people had coming into this ride which had no qualifying requirements. I talked with one person who had done there first 200k ever a couple of weeks previously. I felt he might be in for a rough time but kept that to myself. It was particularly nice to see Paul O’Donoghue again (Audax Ireland).
The whole process was very well organized and the 2500 people got funneled through efficiently through the course of the day.
I finalized my 4 drop bags with changes of kit, spare food and charging cables for my bike and had an early night to try to get on top of jet lag.
Day 1 – Writtle to Hessle (189 miles, 16 mph)
My start time was at 11:15 so I got up around 9, scoped out the start, and rolled over about 10:50 for staging before the off. The sun was out and I was in short sleeves and shorts, which ironically considering the event was cancelled due to bad weather was pretty much what I wore for the whole ride. Batches of 45 riders were being set off on the narrow country roads every 15 minutes for safety.
I was tweaking my Garmin as we started to get it working so missed a fast group of 5 that started off quickly but settled into the second group and rode with them until some brief climbing started and I found myself off the front. I waited up for a couple people so I’d have company and then rode with this smaller group to Northshore.
I was aiming for 30 minute stops at each control and managed to keep to that throughout. The typical process was take my shoes off, get my card stamped, fill my water bottles and use the loo and then enjoy a meal, which varied for each control, and apple crumble with a cup of tea before hitting the road again. All very civilized and no real delays.
The controls were roughly every 4 hours or so and I didn’t need to eat very much on the bike.
The next two legs went smoothly and I rode with different small groups to shelter from the wind on the fens. In general I felt I was stronger than the majority of riders on the road. All my years of racing and trying to hold the wheel of people half my age is obviously helping.
On the final leg of the day to Hessle night had fallen and I had on all my reflective gear and rolled out somewhat slowly. However once someone passed me I got motivated to follow pace and settled in a couple bike lengths behind his blinking tail light and started ramping it up. It was rolling terrain and I was feeling strong so passed him back and then started hammering for the next couple hours. Probably passed around 50 people and no one passed me so just felt great night riding with my new headlight illuminating the road ahead in a cone of light to focus on. I enjoy riding at night and this was one of my better expereinces doing it. Very reminiscent of my last time at The 508 chasing down rabbits ahead for an entire leg with Bob.
I got to Hessle at 1am or so and was thankful that I had booked a hotel nearby as I examined to people sprawled out on the floor of the control. By 2am I was showered and settled into a comfortable bed for the night. This isn’t my first rodeo.
Day 2 – Hessle to Malton (43 miles, 13.7 mph)
I woke at 8am and was on the road from the control, after returning my drop bag, by 8:45. I donned my rain gear for this stretch as the weather was starting to turn but still no worse than any typical Seattle winter day. The Barrows were a great scenic stretch and I was looking forward to the climbing ahead from Malton.
I had another efficient stop at Malton but just as I was about to leave they announced they were locking down the control and anyone who departed would be disqualified. Next update to come in 4 hours ….
I grabbed an air mattress and decided to get some more rest anticipating needing to ride through the night to get back on schedule if and when we were released. 3:30pm came and another 4 hour wait for the next update. Back to the air mattress I went.
Finally at 7:30 I relinquished my air matress and got ready to ride. Sadly it was not to be, the announcement was made that the ride was cancelled and that we should remain in place until the next morning so they could get southbound controls ready to receive us as we headed back to the start. The incredible effort by the volunteers was spontaneously recognized with a standing ovation as they rose to the occasion to handle overwhelmed resources and controls to accomodate all the riders.
I walked down to the shops with a couple of English lads and got some food as the control had run out and then found another free air mattress for the night in the gym.
Day 3 – Malton to Boston (114 miles, 15.3 mph)
After 16 hours on an airmattress and not much sleep thanks to the range of snoring around me I finally sunk into a deep sleep at 6 am as people started stirring for departure. I must have gone really deep because next thing I knew I work to a completley empty gym bar one volunteer who was finishing deflating the air mattresses. We shared a laugh and I headed over to the cafeteria for some breakfast before departing back southwards.
Now it was just a casual ride so I chatted with Susan on my phone for quite a while all the time towing a string of people along behind me up hill and down dale.
When I rolled into Boston late afternoon after having changed into fresh kit at Louth I decided to call it a day and booked a hotel room in the city center nearby. It was a gorgeous room in a fully automated hotel, not a live person in sight or on site for that matter. I roamed around the town a little but while pleasant to look at it felt run down. Settled in for a good night’s rest with some chips and Grand Designs on the TV.
Day 4 – Boston to Writtle (122 miles, 16.8 mph)
Just 200k to go and ended up being a great day of riding. I initially met up with a fellow US rider who knew some SIR members from riding PBP together in 2015. We chatted for a while before Hitesh joined us on the fens. Hitesh and I picked up the pace a bit as we rode along chatting and made good time into the side wind. We stopped at the popup cafe for a snack and joined up with two UK riders for the rest of the day.
We rode at a decent clip despite some rough roads through Cambridge and enjoyed a huge fully loaded potato at the penultimate control. It was nice to still feel part of a large multinational event as all the controls and roads were still busy with all the southbound riders. The majority of riders, especially the international ones, hadn’t abandoned and were riding back to Writtle.
We got back to Writtle in the late afternoon and collected our medals and enjoyed a beer in the sun to celebrate the conclusion of our truncated event. Not what we’d planned but everyone seemed to have tried to make the best of an unfortunate act of nature.
