4 Day LeJoG?

Specific board for this popular undertaking.
Cyril Haearn
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Spinners wrote:Mega tough. I managed PBP (approx' 765 miles) in 84 hours (3 1/2 days) but LEJOG is further and far hillier especially in the early parts - but you already know that!

If you do go for it, good luck! It will make a fascinating post-ride thread on here!


Is LeJoG harder in Cornwall, or harder in Scotland?

I have never cycled in Cornwall but I like long gentle hills, Bwlch Llyn Bach or the road from Middlton-in Teesdale to Alston ..
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Spinners
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by Spinners »

Cyril Haearn wrote:Is LeJoG harder in Cornwall, or harder in Scotland?



Cornwall is brutal. The Berriedale Braes make a good sting in the tail though :wink:
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by PH »

Mick F wrote:To be able to do an End2End in four days, you have to ride 225miles a day.
Very difficult to do unless you minimise the ascent, so trunk roads and A roads are the best option IMHO.

My route planning generally shows my preferred type of route averages 10 - 15% longer than the most direct. but adding 10% distance doesn't generally add 10% to the time. I can understand someone going for a record would have to use the shortest possible route, but anyone else needs to use the most suitable for their requirements.
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Mick F
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by Mick F »

Yes, utterly agree.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Cornwall is brutal there's no question of it. Normal ride for me is 100ft per mile - sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more.
The easiest route out of Cornwall is the A30 dual carriageway, but it's not to everyone's taste. It's boring and noisy.

Best way, is A30 to Penzance and to Hayle, then go through the town and then Connor Downs and Camborne.
Then Redruth and to Three Burrows to join the A30 for a while and turn off for St Newlyn East and up to St Columb Major, then A39 through Wadebridge to Camelford.
Turn off the A39 onto the A395 at Davidstowe and go through Hallworthy, then turn off for Egloskerry to the back of Launceston at St Stephens.
Go down the hill and turn left onto the A388 for a short while the turn off right and this will bring you out onto the Old A30 near Launceston Rugby Club. Turn east and cross the River Tamar into England.

There are other ways and more scenic ways, but they are very brutal.
Mick F. Cornwall
thirdcrank
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by thirdcrank »

I big thing here for me is that the OP already has a lot of relevant experience so, apart from the odd tip, there's not much that anybody is going to be able to offer. The RRA record is well under two days so four must be doable, but the self-reliant rider is in a different situation to well-organised record attempts.

So much of this is self-knowledge: how far can you definitely ride in a day and for day after day and how much rest do you need in between? With that knowledge, it's just arithmetic (and a heck of a lot of hard riding hoping for good luck and good weather once you have done the sums.)

The comment above about flexible accommodation - apart from needing an understanding host - is a reminder that you don't want to be stuck with an unreachable bed, but in the unlikely event that you have a gale force tailwind, it might be useful to be able to ride further than planned on a particular day. That had me thinking about some sort of motorised caravan, but if I knew that I could climb off at any time and into bed, the little voice in my lug would be urging me to do that a couple of hundred yards after setting off. :oops:

I think the comments about group riding are very wise. In theory, a quartet or better still half-a-dozen experienced riders of similar capabilities should reel off the miles in a way a solo rider could not, but in practice, assembling the group would be harder than the ride itself. That had me thinking - day dreaming - about paced riding. Once upon a time Bordeaux - Paris was an event on the pro-calendar and on Tom Simpson's palmarès. Riders rode as individuals and for much of the way they were each paced by a Derny - a sort of moped although not quite the same as the version used these days for the kierin. The principle was that the pedalling kept the pacer riding like a cyclist, but the motor enabled them to go fast enough over 350 miles to pace a top rider. As I said - day dreaming.
Cyril Haearn
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Mick F wrote:Yes, utterly agree.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Cornwall is brutal there's no question of it. Normal ride for me is 100ft per mile - sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more.
The easiest route out of Cornwall is the A30 dual carriageway, but it's not to everyone's taste. It's boring and noisy.

Best way, is A30 to Penzance and to Hayle, then go through the town and then Connor Downs and Camborne.
Then Redruth and to Three Burrows to join the A30 for a while and turn off for St Newlyn East and up to St Columb Major, then A39 through Wadebridge to Camelford.
Turn off the A39 onto the A395 at Davidstowe and go through Hallworthy, then turn off for Egloskerry to the back of Launceston at St Stephens.
Go down the hill and turn left onto the A388 for a short while the turn off right and this will bring you out onto the Old A30 near Launceston Rugby Club. Turn east and cross the River Tamar into England.

There are other ways and more scenic ways, but they are very brutal.


C'est brutal, mais ca marche
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Mick F
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by Mick F »

:lol:
Yes, it works!
Mick F. Cornwall
mnichols
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by mnichols »

Thanks. The germ is there, much to my wife's horror and I've started thinking about how, although it's not 100% I wouldn't take much pursuading

I know a couple of riders that I'm compatible with but whether they would do it is another matter

There are a few caveats for me. It would have to be the shortest, flattest route. A30 out of Cornwall is easiest and traffic is ok at 4am! I would wait for a weather window - I live in Bath, so getting to Lands End quickly isn't a problem. It would have to be supported - a friend in a van would be ideal. I'd either have to book multiple accommodation options or go for the camper van option - maybe a couple of short naps may be better than banking on a full nights sleep. It would be July. IME June and August are wetter and the days are short in September, it doesn't seem to get dark in Scotland in July

I've got the winter to think it through and try to persuade some cohorts some of whom I'm touring with next week
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by rareposter »

Far and away the best option for support and accommodation in one go there is a camper van - basically you need someone who's willing to drive a van the length of the UK and the money to pay for a lot of diesel! That way you've got food and drink accessible more or less on demand, you can mark out stop zones in advance where the van can park up, get a brew on, restock all your food for you and so on.

If you've got that though it becomes more a mental thing than anything. 4 days is short enough that you can see the end in sight and see the distance travelled on a map. The organised Manchester to London ride: https://pages.rapha.cc/m2l proves that you can pick a nice route not all on A-roads (in fact that M2L route is amazingly quiet other than the getting into north London bit).

The riding isn't really the issue, it's always the logistics that gets people.
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by mnichols »

rareposter wrote:The riding isn't really the issue, it's always the logistics that gets people.


I enjoy the logistics, it helps fill the long winter nights. Just had a 'no' from the person that I thought would be most likely to join me. Would be nice to do it with someone. It would be advantageous on the ride, but more so for the training. Without a partner there would be a lot of long, lonely training rides

I think camper van would be the best way to go. One concern would be sleep deprivation, and the ability to have 'naps' would help.
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NATURAL ANKLING
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
How long not how far as its time and effort, are your training rides ?, I am just curios, my training rides are normally 2.5 hrs.
Sometimes 4 hrs and occasionally 5 hrs, any thing up to 4 hrs I don't consume food on the ride.
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thirdcrank
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by thirdcrank »

PH wrote: ... I know of several who've done the E2E as an Audax which has a 116 hour time limit and not used the most direct route. ...


Looking back over the thread, this bit tells me that I'm not really clear what you mean by "4 Day LeJoG?" because 116 hours implies 4 nights separating 5 days ie 96 hours + 20 hours. Are you aiming for something like this or what would be expressed in these terms as perhaps 92 hours ie 72 hours + 20 hours? I'd not thought this through before: but somebody else calculated a 24 hour daily mileage by dividing the whole route mileage by 4.

By coincidence, I've just applied for the umpteenth renewal of my bus pass so I won't be doing this ride, except in my dreams but I like to have an idea of others' achievements.
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by rareposter »

thirdcrank wrote:Looking back over the thread, this bit tells me that I'm not really clear what you mean by "4 Day LeJoG?" because 116 hours implies 4 nights separating 5 days ie 96 hours + 20 hours. Are you aiming for something like this or what would be expressed in these terms as perhaps 92 hours ie 72 hours + 20 hours? I'd not thought this through before: but somebody else calculated a 24 hour daily mileage by dividing the whole route mileage by 4.


I thought with Audax the 116 hours was total time? 116hrs is 4.8 days. I'm assuming the 0.8 of a day is 19hrs...
AFAIK the clock starts when you start and you have to cross the finish line before that 116hrs is up, it doesn't matter how the time is divided up between riding, eating, sleeping etc.

A timeframe expressed as "4 days", I'd calculate as starting at 00:00:01 on (say) Monday and finishing at 23:59:59 on Thursday. 96hrs. On the LEJOG route I've done several times of 979 miles that'd be an overall average of 10.2mph. Tough going to factor in sleep and eating but doable with the right support.
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
I think you have hit the nail on the head..........support.
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Re: 4 Day LeJoG?

Post by thirdcrank »

While the true average speed is the only one which measures success or failure, I don't think it means much on its own at the planning stage.

IMO you need to know your cruising speed. I've posted about this before on similar threads but what I mean is the speed at which you can comfortably ride for extended periods. This will be affected by wind direction, terrain, etc and will tend to fall as the day wears on but without this self-knowledge, everything else is theory. The next big factor is how much resting you need. This is, of course, mainly sleep and then any meal breaks. Some need a definite stop for lunch. The fewer stops for me the better. Sleep deprivation has been mentioned and it's always been something that worries me. I know no state secrets, but just the threat of sleep deprivation would have me blurting out all I know. The strange thing is I had a career where broken sleep was the norm, either being woken at 0430 by the alarm or the phone going even earlier for some sort of emergency call-out. And being woken by ice-cream vans, unsolicited callers etc when trying to sleep during the day on nights. Anyway, you need to know fairly accurately how much non-riding time you routinely need as a minimum. Emergencies may need more, of course, but you can't regain much lost time by riding harder, without paying for it later in the ride. Skipping planned breaks may be the only realistic choice.

With the self-knowledge of what distance you can cover in a given riding time and how much time you need between riding, you can begin to plan your stops and above all, whether you can hope to achieve the required true average.
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