I did the Mersey Roads 24 in 2006 and it was such a 'defining' experience that I've only ridden more than 50 miles in a day on about 10 occasions since...
Here's a distillation of my dubious
wisdom hindsight:
* Hydrate but don't over-hydrate. The 2006 race was one of the hottest days I've ever experienced in the UK and I drank so much in the morning that I spent a huge portion of the evening and night peeing. It would have been really useful to have mastered the art of 'going on the go'.
* Don't start too fast. I set off well inside the kind of effort that I'd done my one and only 12-hour at. I got through 100 miles in 4:35, and I caught and passed the eventual silver medallist Neil Skellern around that time...
* Really get used to whatever it is that you intend to eat. I ate mostly tinned rice pudding and fruit, bread pudding and drank Allsports Winter Training Formula, but I really craved savoury stuff. My nutrition strategy went completely belly-up and, although I never hit the wall, I was copiously sick on several occasions.
* Practise doing bottle hand-ups.
* Try to get hold of a spare number so that you can put it on your night top - saves faffing about with safety pins.
* Make sure that you are recognisable to your support team and that they are recognisable to you (it sounds obvious but it's easier said than done in the night-time).
* Make sure your lights are fully charged and that your Garmin thingy works if you want to have a record of your ride.
* Ibuprofen.
* Dry socks and spare shoes.
* Big jerry can.
* Talk to your fellow riders. I was going through a bad spell on the Quina Brook circuit (it's horrible) but a couple of minutes riding alongside a lad from Farnborough and Camberley CC really lifted my spirits.
* Let some air out of your tyres for the Quina Brook circuit. They might have resurfaced it in the past nine years, but to me it was like being repeatedly kicked between the legs.
* Make sure your supporters have lots of spare wheels for you. A spare bike is good, too.
* If you need to sleep, ask your supporters to wake you up after 2 minutes - NO MORE. It's amazing how refreshing just the tiniest bit of shut-eye is.
* Allow your supporters to sort out their own rota for helping you - it is much too much to expect a single person to provide support on their own. I was lucky enough to have my parents, my brother and a 24-hour-experienced friend, who took the night shifts in pairs. Because my folks aren't really the type for sleeping in bus shelters, they booked a Travelodge room in Shrewsbury, and when they left in the small hours of the morning, Matt and Mike took over from them.
* You'll have good patches and bad patches. I wanted someone to just put me out of my misery in the middle of the night, but once the sun came up I got a second wind and was lapping the finishing circuit at 22 mph or so.
Most of all, enjoy it and, if you ever do a second one, make sure you've learnt from your experience. I would do so many things differently...
- Tim
