It would be possible to envisage, in a flight of fancy, an event to coincide with the Olympics. Extend the course a bit, double the entrants, start it from the new velodrome, send it to a new Scottish velodrome, call it 'The Thousand' after the distance and the number of participants, involve celebrities and politicians, sell it as a celebration of the human spirit as it enters its Autumn years. A rage against the dying of the light. I could do you a video treatment from what I've got, pointing in that direction if you wanted.
But it would be a construct, smeared on top of a magnificent story of a lot of people muddling through, with the occasional good joke on the way.
I was talking recently to a friend about the way in which clubs get killed by funding and ambition. His poetry club in Lancaster has been forced out of its pub home to the new lottery-funded 'performance space', which has zero ambience and no bar, so the numbers are falling off. A similar thing happened to my old cycle club, we used to meet in a pub, then we got funding, we had to move to a brightly lit village hall, where we all bickered and the secretary resigned and the club was wound up.
I think that if LEL is run like clockwork it will either spin off entirely and be taken over by Bike Events, or some such, or if it is retained 'in house' it will distort AUK by attracting attention which requires funding to cope with, which will bring monitoring in its train, which will deter organisers with loads of form filling and AUK will dwindle. The only thing that will save us is our innate amateurism.
Another thing to consider is the actual experience of the riders. Those who have ridden PBP know the three strands, The heavily supported Vedettes, the fast and experienced Randonneurs and the dogged Touristes. These strands were all represented at LEL, but joined by Sportive riders attempting their first long ride and a Fundraising/Challenge group. We could have limited the latter two groups by pre-qualification, but I think they added a lot to the event. If we examine what happened it is clear that many found ad-hoc accomodation along the way. This built bridges to the local communities in Langholm. Longtown, Brampton and Alston. This could be built on, all these communities value hardiness and character, the people of Alston were very impressed. larger places just resented the traffic disruption.
So my favoured model for a future LEL would be a fairly loosely organised event to retain the family atmosphere, but making more use of community links in the pivotal North Pennine/ Borders area. How that might work in terms of a tarrif I don't know. One possible model might be the Mersey Roads 24 Hour, which is a subscription event. It has an entry fee, but it also takes donations to ensure it is not a drain on the Mersey Road Club. The 24 has an entirely separate accounting structure. Another way that the Mersey Roads might serve as a model is the validation. BlackburnRod, of this parish, resides in splendid isolation in the Raven Cafe, sitting in judgement on the distances ridden. One joy of the 24 is weighing up the chances of newcomers, if you're a subscriber or helper, seeing how they get on is fun to watch, LEL is much the same, if we can create a way of following it online without compromising the event, it might increase any potential subscription element.
Damon.