Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Audax => Topic started by: Banjo on 10 December, 2014, 07:46:10 pm
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A few years ago most of us will remember Eddie Izzards amazing back to back 43 marathon runs with no training .
Has there ever been a similar phenomenon in the audax world ?
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I once managed 43 marathons, boy was I sick afterwards, peanuts everywhere :P
(I think they're called Snickers nowadays)
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Not sure what you're asking Banjo.
I did PBP in my first year of Audaxing (i.e. no "training") but I'm sure there are plenty of others who (foolishly) have done the same.
Maybe I should have done it in drag...
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The first time The Adventure Show filmed an audax event, the production company got one of their presenters, Dougie Vipond (one time drummer on beat combo Deacon Blue) to do the 300k Snow Roads. He was used to doing 50 mile rides quite briskly (17-18mph) but had no experience of longer distances.
Despite early mechanicals and feeding problems, he did get round well within the time limit. :thumbsup:
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That was a credit worthy achievment by Dougie Vipond but he was far from a novice cyclist if he could do fast 50 milers.
I was wondering if anyone with almost no experience had completed an Audax.
I am trying to get my head around which is most important, physical or mental endurance.
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Not sure what you're asking Banjo.
I did PBP in my first year of Audaxing (i.e. no "training") but I'm sure there are plenty of others who (foolishly) have done the same.
Maybe I should have done it in drag...
Prior to doing your qualifying rides for PBP what was your longest ride?
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As impressive as Eddie Izzard's achievement was, the pace at which he ran the early ones (10 hours typically) was such that each marathon was a very different kind of event to that of most runners. I think it would be more difficult to pull of a similar feat with Audaxing given the maximum time cutoff.
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Eddie Izzard said he had done 5 weeks of training before the marathons. Don't know if he had done any running or other fitness before that.
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That was a credit worthy achievment by Dougie Vipond but he was far from a novice cyclist if he could do fast 50 milers.
I was wondering if anyone with almost no experience had completed an Audax.
I am trying to get my head around which is most important, physical or mental endurance.
I have a couple of stories.
In about 1937, a chap Bernard Hayes from Birmingham bought a bicycle and rode the next Friday from Birmingham to Plymouth and back on the Sunday to visit his girlfriend.
In about 1938, another chap from Birmingham, Alfred Lee, borrowed a bicycle to ride with his brother’s cycle club ( The Speedwell ) from Birmingham to Rhyl and back within the hours of daylight on a July Sunday. He never rode a bicycle again.
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In 2001, the year before my planned LEJoG, to test whether I could cycle 100 miles a day, I cycled to my Father-in-Law's in Manchester without any prep (I was a non-cyclist in 2001).
It was 200 miles in 2 equal days.
I made it but I was reduced to going up and down stairs on my arse and hands for 2 days afterwards. To say that 200 miles came as a shock to my leg muscles is an understatement.
The following year I did about 6 longish training rides (40 miles to work and 40 miles back, six times) over 2 months and I was fine on a 9 day LEJoG.
It doesn't take much prep really, however no prep at all can leave you incapacitated, as I found out.
Eddie Izzard's achievement is amazing, and the fact that some days he was on his feet for 10 hours makes it even more so.
(A top class marathon runner could "jog" a marathon in under 3 hours)
Getting up in the morning, when you are losing toe nails, and realising you are going to run another marathon, again, needs some serious determination.
Fitness is no use without determination on Endurance events. I doubt that few PBP DNFs are down to a lack of fitness and yet 25% don't finish.
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PBP DNF rates are typically 1 in 7 starters for 'good years' and up to 2 in 7 for 'bad years'.
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Achilles and knees are often the problem, then there's Shermer's Neck. One big stumbling block is saddle sores. The skin you sit on hardens up.
You can't just turn up and do PBP it requires qualification rides of 200, 300, 400 and 600 kilometres. You could just turn up and do LEL without much training. There were a couple of ladies I filmed at the start who were essentially doing that. I think they made it to Edinburgh, but dropped out after encountering the big hills and headwinds on the Telford Road.
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I am trying to get my head around which is most important, physical or mental endurance.
IMO it is mental endurance and having no brain is a great help (and I speak from experience!)
Riding a bike at a steady pace is relatively easy on the body compared to the pounding of running. Neck problems, knees (big gears?) and other assorted niggles that become a major feature can multiply in importance if the head allows that to happen. Of course, the derriere is of critical importance on any long ride.
I've seen lots of situations, both cycling and in other areas, where the person was capable of carrying-on, but the mental willpower had completely dissolved, and they did not achieve what they hoped to achieve.
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Quite a few people have done LEL as their first Audax without having done loads of cycling beforehand. Rimas / zigzag and Andy Allsop spring to mind.
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Von Broad otp did his first 200 in November 2006 and finished the 'orribly wet 2007 PBP. All on a self-built recumbent.
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I was regularly riding to work and back before I did my first Audax, but an Easter arrow of about 425 km with headwinds was very different to 50miles in a day.
That was when I discovered my back won't let me do things like that. :-[
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ISTR a post here some months ago, talking about a Welsh audax which picked up a hanger-on: on the outward trip, some riders got chatting to a bloke onna bike (I think he'd been out to the shops), who decided that it sounded like fun, so accompanied them to Anglesey and then back to the arrivee. I *think* that it was a >200km ride.
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That's a nice story jsabine.
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It would be an absolutely lovely story - if it wasn't bollocks. ;)
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It's true, I've seen the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4h0WMhzA6Y
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It would be an absolutely lovely story - if it wasn't bollocks. ;)
Surely not? You're spoiling my illusions about the veracity of absolutely every word posted on here.
(The fallibility of my memory for what I think I've read is, of course, entirely irrelevant.)
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Such characters do exist but they are rare and a bit special. A few years ago, Danial Webb ran a new very hilly 100+k from Todmorden (about 3AAA, I think). A chap turned up on what looked like a single speed (I may be wrong) BSO with straight bars. He was in day clothes and a pair of huge army-style boots. I think he was called Nathan. There were some pretty good riders on that event. Nathan finished in the first two or three. I have occasionally seen him trundling about dressed pretty much the same, but not recently.
Bob Bialek is certainly another such character.
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ISTR a post here some months ago, talking about a Welsh audax which picked up a hanger-on: on the outward trip, some riders got chatting to a bloke onna bike (I think he'd been out to the shops), who decided that it sounded like fun, so accompanied them to Anglesey and then back to the arrivee. I *think* that it was a >200km ride.
The yacf equivalent of snopes.com below, if I have remembered it right.
It was not quite as described and definitely not a novice rider. It was on Mike W's LLanfair PG 400 in 2013 (I think). On the outbound leg a rider who was out on a local loop picked up a few riders and asked what was happening, think we were somewhere on the coast near Abergele. He was in lycra, on carbon rims and had signed up for the Manchester > London ride at great cost. He was intrigued by us riding a similar distance but for around £200 less, and decided to use the opportunity to tag along and pick people's brains to get a take on training etc. I think he had to stop to buy lights somewhere on the outward leg as he did not have any with him. I remember meeting him on the return from Holyhead before parting company somewhere after Abergele on the return after he had probably clocked around 200km.
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It's true, I've seen the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4h0WMhzA6Y
Oh EPAC no doubt
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Local rider here in MK and sometimes poster on here did LEL (09?) without doing any other audax rides.
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Bob Bialek is certainly another such character.
I've never met the chap but based on reliable reputation Bob Bialek is a VERY hard caver.
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Local rider here in MK and sometimes poster on here did LEL (09?) without doing any other audax rides.
I certainly signed the brevet cards of some first time Audaxers at the end of LEL 2005.
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If youre quick enough, riding LEL doesnt need any Audax background.
Its no more impresive than Mo Farah (2012 version) doing a marathon a day (at Izzard pace) for 5 days!
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When I helped out at the Dalkeith control on LEL 2 x ago, there were quite a few riders came through that hadn't even ridden 100 miles before the event. Just fit folk who like the challenge and the unknown.
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Bob Bialek is certainly another such character.
I've never met the chap but based on reliable reputation Bob Bialek is a VERY hard caver.
Hi, Simon,
Yes, I think he problem made a lot of the caves himself, looking for the shortest route to some Audax starts.
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Hi, Simon,
Yes, I think he problem made a lot of the caves himself, looking for the shortest route to some Audax starts.
Ha! You may well be right Peter :-)
I guess ultimately the moral is 'don't judge a book by it's cover'.
The guy Nathan may have been a keen TA member, soldiering every weekend. Maybe he worked on the bins or a did heavy landscape gardening type work; I know a couple of lads who do that and it keeps them pretty tough. Another bloke I've worked with is just a natural athlete, plays a bit of football and runs regulary'ish at a casual level but can still easily knock out a 1:30 Half Marathon if he wants too, which is reasonable keen club runner level. Finally I learnt a long time ago to never underestimate the toughness, determination and level-headedness that a certain good friend possesses.
You just never know what people are doing away from cycling and/or what under-lying potential they have.
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I am trying to get my head around which is most important, physical or mental endurance.
as this is the question, FWIW here is my answer... I think mental endurance is the most important - there are thousands of riders who could easily do audax distances but don't because they don't want to, and hundreds who were only just able, and who have done it: clearly if you don't want to finish, you'll not start, or start and climb off somewhere and get a lift/hotel/train.
Physical endurance reduces, to some extent, the amount of mental endurance required for two reasons 1. getting the physical endurance requires hours in the saddle (or getting fit some other way) which requires / develops mental endurance. and 2 - although there will pretty much always be pain (and indigestion, and sleep depravation) involved in the early days, especially for distances over 200km, the fitter and stronger you are, the less it's going to hurt.
However, the idea that it's all about wanting it /mental endurance IMO is overplayed in sport in general, and in audaxing too - ultimately you've got to have the strength in your quads to get you round. The hillier the ride, the more important the power (and lack of excess weight) is. If your legs don't have it, they'll turn to mush, and even maintaining audax speed will be too hard. That said, you don't have to have that much in your legs to get round flattish rides* at minimum speed, but you have to have a bit more fitness and a lower BMI than the average UK citizen.
I think that a advice to 'go for it' often underplays the need for a level of background fitness (and/or youth) to recover from big rides, and how much suffering will be involved if you don't have it. That's not to say it's bad advice, it's just that I don't think it prepares people for the suffering they're letting themselves in for, or helps them understand that the reason the riders around them aren't suffering anything like as much is that they've got 00's more long distance miles in their legs.
...in terms of PBP I decided to do it in 2015 around this time of year in 2010. I'm sure (with hindsight) it would have been possible, but given my state of fitness then (an average club cyclist who'd done a few 200 audax events) - i didn't think doing a first SR and PBP the following summer sounded like enough fun, or that it was achievable enough. I'd much rather have done what i've did and built up season by season: 2,3, and then 400 in 2011, (Wessex) SR in 2012, LEL 2013, Mille Cymru 2014... with a plan to do PBP next year. Obviously there's risks to that strategy because you never know what's going to happen in life, but there is a risk that overdoing it leads people to get back from Paris and put their bike in the shed until the following spring :o , or worse decide that long distance isn't for them, when in fact with a slower build up, and being less close to their absolute limit for less time, they'd probably have enjoyed it much more, and might regularly be riding long distances now.
Andrew
* the consensus seems to be that PBP falls into the general category of 'flattish'
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...in terms of PBP I decided to do it in 2015 around this time of year in 2010. I'm sure (with hindsight) it would have been possible, but given my state of fitness then (an average club cyclist who'd done a few 200 audax events) - i didn't think doing a first SR and PBP the following summer sounded like enough fun, or that it was achievable enough.
Everyone's different ... but I do think that an average club cyclist who's done a few 200s is probably pessimistic if they reckon they *need* 20 months rather than 8 to build up to a well-organised 1k+ audax.
At this point in 2012, on top of a fairly low commuting base (6 or 7 miles each way) I had spent about 3 months building up from an extra 2 or 3 30 or 40k rides per month, some on my own, some with slowish CTC groups, and did a single 100k ride with a faster mob. I decided I was going to ride LEL, struggled round the Poor Student as my first 200, then rode the Willy Warmer at the end of the month with an extra 50k to and from home.
A couple more 200s, a failed Arrow, a 300 ECEd to 4, and then a weekend with back-to-back 200s and additional riding totalling just under 600k left me feeling I could get round LEL OK. I did the distance - but my inexperience showed in how I (failed to) manage my sleep and time in controls, and I finished out of time.
This year I've been fitter and more used to how to economise on time: I rode my first 600, got round the Irish 1200, and had an inglorious DNF on the Mille Cymru. I don't really struggle mentally on 200s (or, to a lesser extent, 300s) any more, though there's still generally a low point when I ask myself what on earth I'm playing at, but there were longish periods on the Mile Failte and on WCW that I found hard.
I think what I'm trying to say is that if, as someone of fairly average fitness and relatively low cycling mileage, can get to the point where an LEL failure is purely down to poor time management, then a long brevet ought to be within the grasp of most regular riders - if they choose. (That said, I've barely ridden for three months - I fear I'm going to struggle next year.)
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ISTR a post here some months ago, talking about a Welsh audax which picked up a hanger-on: on the outward trip, some riders got chatting to a bloke onna bike (I think he'd been out to the shops), who decided that it sounded like fun, so accompanied them to Anglesey and then back to the arrivee. I *think* that it was a >200km ride.
The yacf equivalent of snopes.com below, if I have remembered it right.
It was not quite as described and definitely not a novice rider. It was on Mike W's LLanfair PG 400 in 2013 (I think). On the outbound leg a rider who was out on a local loop picked up a few riders and asked what was happening, think we were somewhere on the coast near Abergele. He was in lycra, on carbon rims and had signed up for the Manchester > London ride at great cost. He was intrigued by us riding a similar distance but for around £200 less, and decided to use the opportunity to tag along and pick people's brains to get a take on training etc. I think he had to stop to buy lights somewhere on the outward leg as he did not have any with him. I remember meeting him on the return from Holyhead before parting company somewhere after Abergele on the return after he had probably clocked around 200km.
Yes, that ride, 2013 (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=71309.msg1491838#msg1491838). His name was Wayne and he rode well over 200km: I remembered chatting to him at the Connah's Quay/Shotton control just as we entered Wales; he rode to Holyhead with another group and we picked him up on the way back before Penmaenmawr and dropped him off in Prestatyn. Prestatyn-Holyhead-Prestatyn is a nice 200, Shotton's a fair bit further, and he'd already been out riding all morning. I seem to recall he was very chatty -- certainly fit enough to ride and talk at the same time -- and very interested in it all, but ill-equipped in the lights dept even having stopped to buy some. We still had 100km to go after dropping him off to get to arrivée.
Not really an Eddie Izzard clone, though.
And £200 to ride to London? Crikey, that's twice the price of a return train ticket!
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I am trying to get my head around which is most important, physical or mental endurance.
Failure enters the head many miles before it affects the legs