Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Freewheeling => Racing => Topic started by: Ray 6701 on 03 April, 2013, 12:47:52 pm
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Chris "Hoppo" Hopkinson set off at 10am yesterday to attempt to break the current record of 5 days 21 hours and 8 mins.
http://www.teamhoppo.co.uk
You can tweet him @Hoppo347 & if you can get out to see him on the road & give him some vocal encouragement I'm sure it would give him a bit of a boost :thumbsup:
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Making some good progress but to hit Stafford at 8.50am this morning was a mistake! 50 mins to do less than 7 miles according to his tracker due no doubt to the volume of traffic on the A34 coming into town. He then did the next 7 miles up to Stone in 20 mins which is more like it!
It would be quite upsetting if one towns over reliance on the motor car ruined such an excellent challenge.
Wishing him luck for the rest of the trip. :thumbsup:
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As noted in A less leisurely LEJOG (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=37315.0) :P
To be fair, I also duplicated a thread yesterday: the one about women cycling in Saudi Arabia.
He's now in Holmes Chapel, which I make as 341 miles in 27 hours: 12.63mph. He'll do the two way trip in 5 days 13 hours, if he keeps up the pace ...
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I bet he's not enjoying this northeasterly!
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I bet he's not enjoying this northeasterly!
Apparently not. I just saw his team, they were parked up in a pull-in at the entrance to the tree-planting site I'm working at just off the A49. Hoppo is asleep until 6pm. That's about 12 miles South of Preston. He's behind his own schedule, but still on schedule for the record.
I was told that he hasn't been training on the road, and the most he's done is three hour sessions on the turbo. It was -5 C last night. He should be at Shap between 11 and 12. This is something of a try-out for RAAM.
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I'm sure he knows what he's doing, which seems to be killing two birds with one stone (A WR attempt and some serious training mileage) but I think I've read that most RAAM competitors rarely felt the need to do more than 100 mile 'intervals' when they train.
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Apparently not. I just saw his team, they were parked up in a pull-in at the entrance to the tree-planting site I'm working at just off the A49. Hoppo is asleep until 6pm. That's about 12 miles South of Preston. He's behind his own schedule, but still on schedule for the record.
I was told that he hasn't been training on the road, and the most he's done is three hour sessions on the turbo. It was -5 C last night. He should be at Shap between 11 and 12. This is something of a try-out for RAAM.
That might turn out to be a very good tactic if he can stay awake all through the night with no more than an hour or two of sleep. The wind will drop after about 6pm and by the time he gets to Preston the rush hour traffic will have probably eased off. I hit Preston in rush hour on my 1998 Grand Triangle and the traffic cost me a fair bit of time.
I wonder if they are thinking the same as me, to concentrate on the night riding going north for the weaker headwind, then concentrate more on the daytime going south for the stronger tailwind. It'd work well with sleeping patterns too.
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The bad news is that the support vehicle has broken down it seems - on the A49 in Chorley.
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They said they were having trouble with the support car and I did wonder why the rider tracking on their website wasn't updated.
Just a setback I would think. Surely they can hire something if it comes to that?
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It's starting to look very doubtfull to me.
Hoppo is just south of Carlisle, I thought he'd be past Edinburgh by now.
He stopped for a 3 hour sleep, which after his hour earlier might be sign that the next night will be very tough. If someone told me that he slpet for 3 hours and knowing that he crested Shap at around 1am, I thought he'd be north of Carlisle by now. It's a blast from the top of Shap all the way to Carlisle.
Split the 5d 21h in half and he should reach John O Groats at 8am tomorrow (Friday 5th) That would give him about 26 hours to do roughly 500km/300 miles over some pretty tough terrain with sleep debt and into a wiind. It can get especially exposed on the coast north of Inverness. I know I've had some battles with wind (of the weather variety for once ;D) on my Triangle rides.
Even if he can manage that, I doubt the wind will be helpfull enough to give him the extra sleep time I think he'll need on the way back.
Of course, it'd be good if he proved me wrong and goes on to succeed. :)
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I was surprised at the amount of sleep. I thought he'd make do on less.
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I was surprised at the amount of sleep. I thought he'd make do on less.
Me too. I thought he'd snatch an hour or two for the first one or two nights then take more on the way back. He's either trying to preserve his ride back or having a hard time and I think it's the latter. Partly because I think that taking it easy in the daytime when the headwind is strong and then attacking the night when the headwind is weaker would make good sense. Partly because he seems to spend quite a bit more time stopped than he is asleep for, which to me indicates indecision. He's behind schedule and I expect they are trying to work out what to do, which can take time, especially when tired or there are several people with different ideas, or both.
It's not unlikely that he never got a great deal of sleep before the ride started, which wouldn't help.
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Is the support vehicle sorted?
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Yes.
I think the RAC came out in the end.
He was aiming for a 11-12pm summit of Shap, but made it at around 1 am.
I think he may have had to have stopped when the car broke down because it's a Guinness World Record attempt and I would think that he has to be observed at all times.
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Two days (and 45 minutes) in and he's past Langholm, at what I calculate as just over 500 miles. That leaves him over 1100 miles to go, in 3 days and 20 hours. Those numbers don't look good to me.
I think it's possible that he'll have needed more sleep due to riding into a cold headwind all day; an additional hazard (on top of having less good training weather) of an early attempt.
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Magic Spanner back to LE?
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Magic Spanner? ???
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The magic spanner is where a mechanic leans out of a team car in a pro race, makes an unnecessary adjustment to a rider's bike and gives them a push along at the same time.
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The other option is the Sticky Bidon. The director sportif accelerates the car while slowly handing a bidon to a rider.
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while headwinds are annoying, they shouldn't affect the speed massively. (on tuesday) i rode directly into northeasterly, then back, pushing it both ways. i was counting on a free ride back, but it wasn't as easy as i hoped it would be.
same stretch:
26.8kph (2h20) into the headwind
30.2kph (2h04) with a tailwind
i'm pretty doubtful about hoppo's record now when the legs are getting tired, but it will be a great ride nonetheless.
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On the other hand, I was comfortable at 25mph in the fens on one of my winter 700km rides with the wind behind. I was down to 8mph going into that wind...
2mph for 48 hours is almost 100 miles. Even at near evens that's 5 hours to make up.
I've been slower with the tailwind back than I was with the headwind out, because the headwind out had taken so much out of me.
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I wonder if they are thinking the same as me, to concentrate on the night riding going north for the weaker headwind, then concentrate more on the daytime going south for the stronger tailwind. It'd work well with sleeping patterns too.
I have a theory that counters your theory! I think winds only pick up in daytime in summer - perhaps because the sun's heat drives more convection.
(No figures to back this up, but a quick look at yr.no for this week shows no calm nights.)
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He's picked a horrible week for it.
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I think he's a teacher - so lots of holiday, but not much option to move them around!
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That was to give himself a readymade excuse for failing.
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I have a theory that counters your theory! I think winds only pick up in daytime in summer - perhaps because the sun's heat drives more convection.
(No figures to back this up, but a quick look at yr.no for this week shows no calm nights.)
The weather forecasts are saying that the wind will drop at night and IME, it mostly does.
Sometimes the wind can get much worse at night, but IME, that's not the norm.
There are no calm nights forecast, but the wind speed goes from double figures in daytime to single figures at night time.
I think that BBC weather might be a bit more reliable than crackpot theories. :P ;)
(but not by very much)
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MetOffice crackpots say:
The diurnal variation is much more pronounced in summer than in winter. This is a result of surface heating, which increases mixing of the faster-moving air at higher levels with the air near the surface. As the effect of surface heating diminishes, the wind speed decreases and during the night there is little variation from hour to hour. The diurnal variation is greatest on sunny days and least on dull days.
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So, it's more pronounced in summer. Not exactly the same as,
"winds only pick up in daytime in summer"
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while headwinds are annoying, they shouldn't affect the speed massively. (on tuesday) i rode directly into northeasterly, then back, pushing it both ways. i was counting on a free ride back, but it wasn't as easy as i hoped it would be.
same stretch:
26.8kph (2h20) into the headwind
30.2kph (2h04) with a tailwind
i'm pretty doubtful about hoppo's record now when the legs are getting tired, but it will be a great ride nonetheless.
I was thinking more in terms of tiredness due to the cold of the headwind, meaning he needs to sleep more.
FWIW on the 12 hour last year, my 20mph moving average was made up of ~16mph into the wind and ~24mph away from it.
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So, it's more pronounced in summer. Not exactly the same as, "winds only pick up in daytime in summer"
It was just a theory :P
Like a proper scientist, I threw it out there; I'm happy to adapt it with new information.
But I was right about the heating effect ... :smug:
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But I was right about the heating effect ... :smug:
Fair do's.
I've learned something today. :thumbsup:
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It's looking ever more doubtfull to me.
Just coming into Perth and has almost 400km to get to JOG. All at night and over mountains.
Half of 5d 21h will be at 8am and he's hoping for midday, which I seriously doubt he'll manage in 14 hours, especially considering the big climbs and that it'll be at night and he'll probably sleep for at least 2 hours I would guess.
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I agree! It's highly unlikely he'll do it now. Headwind all the way north & its due to change direction. It's hard enough on the commute from work never mind 800 miles of it :demon:
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Even if the wind picks right up and blows him all the way back, I doubt he'll make the record.
I'll wager that he doesn't reach JOG until after 3pm the earliest and I wouldn't be surprised if it's after 6pm.
After all that riding into a headwind, he'd need to get back in around 2 days, which only a few people have ever done, often with a tailwind and starting fresh.
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2 days and 22 hours are up now, so half the record time has elapsed and he's still heading north. Just climbed over Drumochter now, so still about 170 miles to JOG.
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I've been following progress. A fantastic effort, but the conditions have not been great. They also lost a lot of time getting through Edinburgh as they had planned going on the bypass that is prohibited to cycles. The wind is also set to drop over the weekend which means they won't get the tailwind. I love the fact that this is just a warm up for the RAAM.:)
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They went a bit wrong in Edinbugh too. Looks like they missed a left turn following the B701 but it does look like they got back on route very quickly after an extra mile or so. Additional to that they were told that bikes are banned from the A90. They may be near the Forth Bridge, but I don't think they are and it would have made sense to have the route through Queensferry as a back up plan if the A90 was gridlocked, as it can be.
Looks like they went a bit wrong in Perth too, probably following signposts for the A9.
I think someone on Team Hoppo hasn't done their homework.
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I saw a tweet from them asking if they were able to ride on the A90 near the Forth Road Bridge... that's the khe kind of thing they should have established two weeks ago, not when they were leaving Edinburgh. :facepalm:
I thought these squaddie types were big on preparation, attention to detail and not making costly mistakes?
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I reckon he'll call it a day at JOG.
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Anyone know why, between Carlisle and Edinburgh, he decided to go via Hawick/Selkirk rather than his planned Lockerbie/Moffat route? Quite a big deviation.
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Anyone know why, between Carlisle and Edinburgh, he decided to go via Hawick/Selkirk rather than his planned Lockerbie/Moffat route? Quite a big deviation.
That really puzzled me too. I can only guess that it was to avoid the Devil's Beeftub climb, which I didn't find to anything worth worrying about.
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I reckon he'll call it a day at JOG.
I don't. It's still training for the RAAM, even if he doesn't break the record. He's not one for giving up even when it's not going to plan or as well as he hopes.
Time will tell...
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I wonder if the cold has some impact as well as the headwinds. Cold affects people's physiology differently but I struggle more on 600km+ rides in the cold. I doubt most of the RAAM will have Artic April conditions.
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I wonder if the cold has some impact as well as the headwinds. Cold affects people's physiology differently but I struggle more on 600km+ rides in the cold. I doubt most of the RAAM will have Artic April conditions.
The bigger problems are with the opposite! (although I think they do get chilly in the mountain passes).
This weather has made it a very tough ask. Doesn't seem like great training for RAAM in that sense, ALTHOUGH if Hoppy suffers in the cold but loves the heat, it could work well for him. (IYSWIM)
Maybe he wanted to do a long ride as prep, Easter was the best time for him, and LeJog was the best thing for his sponsors? He couldn't have predicted this weather back in the planning stage - with the weather gods onside, he might have done a great time.
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He seems to agree with me about nutrition on long rides. He just stopped for a KFC. :thumbsup:
I'll never forget how my KFC in Perth helped me fly up the A9 to Inverness on my 2006 Grand Triangle. Red Bull Chicken wings give you, er, wings....
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Maybe he wanted to do a long ride as prep, Easter was the best time for him, and LeJog was the best thing for his sponsors?
The longer nights at Easter allowed him to spend more time using his MEGA DEATHSTAR LIGHTS!
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They probably help keep him warm.
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It's been pointed out that he'd have done rather better to start at JOG! If this were an RRA record, he'd have been allowed to start at any point on the route. I don't know what Guinness say about doing that.
Thinking about it, I think Ben Rockett just turned up, rode and then claimed to have the record, rather than getting it validated by Guinness. Does this mean that Hoppo could claim to be the Guinness record holder even if he finishes in over 5 days 21 hours?
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Possibly.
I have heard that Guinness now charge £1000 per record claim.
I did check the LE-JOG record in a Guinness Book of Records after Gethin Butler's record ride in 2001. It was talking about that ride with people who were involved when I heard of the £1000 fee. When I checked the book, it still had Wilko's ride as the record.
Hoppo seems to be very good at gaining sponsorship.
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Just reached JOG.
That leaves 57 hours (2 days, 9 hours) to get back to LE for the record.
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He's just announced that he is finishing his record attempt. Shame, but conditions have been shocking
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It must have been pretty brutal riding 800+ miles into that wind :o
Chapeau to him & hopefully he's learned a few things from it like knowing where you're going for starters :)
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Hoppo has always made a specific effort not to learn from his mistakes. I don't think that is going to change now.
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;D at LWaB
+1 ;D
I did get the impression that they'd done their sums wrong regarding time as well. I know myself from being close to time on Audax while on extra long permanents, where you don't have a brevet card with closing times of controls, how confusing it can be working out timings.
I remember riding a series of 1000km permanents in 2000, counting with my fingers, trying to work out how much time I had in hand. This sometimes took me about 10 miles to confirm my maths. Sleep deprivation didn't help much, which they would have also had.
Even when I tried to work out how much time he had to get the record it took me 2 goes.
Some of their tweets said that they were "only on day 2" but over 48 hours had elapsed IIRC. All the way up to Inverness they gave the impression that they thought the record was still possible and were tweeting that they're still in with a chance, which I was curious about.
I wonder if they got to JOG, sat down and did their sums, which would make a lot of sense to me for psychological reasons, and realised it was over. They stopped for at least 20 minutes before they announced they were calling it a day.
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Hoppo has always made a specific effort not to learn from his mistakes. I don't think that is going to change now.
His twitter says he's starting another attempt on October 27th. Let's see if he gets any further this time.
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He is doing a great job of avoiding good weather.
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I think that this one should go better.
I don't think the weather could be more aginst him than it was last time. Headwind all the way up plus freezing conditions, then the wind turned. Plus he had trouble with his support car.
Oh, and he never knew that bikes weren't allowed on the A720 Edinburgh bypass so had to ad-hoc his route. :facepalm:
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I think that this one should go better.
I don't think the weather could be more aginst him than it was last time. Headwind all the way up plus freezing conditions, then the wind turned. Plus he had trouble with his support car.
Oh, and he never knew that bikes weren't allowed on the A720 Edinburgh bypass so had to ad-hoc his route. :facepalm:
He could have had a roaring tailwind all the way down before it turned ...
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Maybe.
These things take a lot of planning. I think he's after a Guinness World Record, which means he has to be observed at all times. I also think that you have to state your ride in advance even for an RRA attempt.
Wilko had a fair bit of headwind on his E2E record ride.
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Hoppo needs an extra pair of hands in his suport crew for the record attempt. Starting on Sunday 27th from Land's End for about 5 days.
Anyone want to crew for a record attempt?
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I feel my destiny calling ...
No doubt team selection is very demanding - TG, will you vouch for me?
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I feel my destiny calling ...
No doubt team selection is very demanding - TG, will you vouch for me?
;D ;D ;D
Is there any specific part of Hoppo's setup you would like to take responsibility for?
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TG, will you vouch for me?
If the price is right, then yes. :thumbsup:
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Chris tweeted ambiguously that the road surface hurt.
"Was it near Moffat?"
"Yep!"
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Twitter says he reached JOG 3 hours ago.
It also says this:
"Sorry everyone he has to stop doctors orders as he has server bronchitis :( he's been getting a lot worse today nothing is worth your health"