HC: How did you prepare for the event? In hindsight, was this sufficient?
JC: My training was comprehensive and I don’t feel I could have done more within the constraints of a full time job. I did 2 x 600K weekends and 1 x 500K weekend as a test run with the bike fully kitted out which included an overnight stay. I rode 409K on a single day and 3 x 330K days. I rode all of these at an average speed greater than 28 kph, in what were sometimes pretty hard winds and on mixed terrain. But I guess I didn’t factor in how tired I would be in the last 500K of the event itself nor how the winds would decimate my target speeds. The first 250K of LEL I averaged 29.5 kph, but into the cross winds and hiller terrain of the next 620K this dropped to 24.5 kph and the brutal head winds of the last day and a half reduced my progress to a paltry 22.3 to 23 kph. This hurt my body as I pushed hard to achieve my time target.
HC: On that note what was your time target?
JC: The cut-off time is 116h 40 mins. There is an elite wave of riders who start at 5 am though and they are given a 100 hour limit. My personal target was therefore to complete in 100 hours.
I finished in 100h 57 minutes. Did I fail by 57 minutes? Well I was still well within my official time frame (in fact over 14 hours inside), but it was not quite what I had wanted. In all honesty with 264K to do on the final day and 25 mph head winds and gusts of up to 40 mph forecast, I had waved goodbye to the target before I even set off on the final morning. Anyone that has done a multi-stage event of this nature knows the feeling when they just want to get the finish regardless, but I did blast the last 10K when I realised I could dip under 101 hours, so I still had the thirst for competition even when I felt totally broken.
HC: How many riders started? And how many finished?
JC: By all accounts, this was one of the hardest editions of LEL. 1500 entries were accepted, and only 811 riders are listed on the finish sheet! Quite an attrition rate.
HC: What would you have done differently?
JC: I think my preparation was spot on, and planning ahead to book B&B’s was a total godsend. I suffered with poor quality sleep and this would have been so much worse in a dorm. The sanctuary of my nightly lodgings was a massive motivational factor as I grew increasingly wearier each day.
Perhaps starting earlier (I started at 1pm) would have given me a chance to ride further on the first day, but this was only a slight tweak, I was pretty happy with the factors that I could control.
Although I am by nature a solitary rider, on an event like this, and with the conditions I experienced perhaps I should have made more of an effort to ride in a group. When I did find people of a comparable ability in the latter stages of the southbound journey it certainly made a big difference.