Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Audax => Topic started by: Pale Rider on 04 August, 2017, 12:46:38 pm
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Seems to me the spikes in demand for both beds and food at controls were greater this time than in 2013.
As well as the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire controls being mobbed on the first night, I read various reports of log jams/food shortages at other controls later in the ride.
Many riders, at least publicly, seem quite phlegmatic about it, apparently taking the view that beds and food are available on a first come, first served basis, rather than expecting both to be available on demand.
My guess is the organisers won't be happy with what happened, even if the riders are not minded to complain.
In an ideal world, there would be a reasonable choice of food and a bed available for every rider that asked for it.
Is that a realistic target to aim for?
And how might it be achieved?
Reducing numbers may be seen as a backward step, but would help ease pressure on controls.
Upping control capacity, or the number of controls, is another obvious answer.
Or attempt to better manage capacity by having bed/food availability somehow published to the riders in real time.
Nearly all of which would cost money and time.
A substantial increase in the entry fee would allow the organisers to spend, spend, spend, but might take the event too far away from its audax roots.
Danial and the team have a good track record of taking feedback on board, so I'm sure they will be keen to hear any suggestions to improve control service for next time.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
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The only two controls that were mobbed were Louth (night 1) and Brampton (nights 2 and 3). That is partly my fault, because I put too much gap between the fast and full-value riders. This resulted in too few riders making it to Pocklington, which had bags of space throughout. A bigger control in Louth would be useful, or rather more space in the control.
The school is really keen to work with us again, and will do the catering too now that they've seen it happen. It's a shame they wouldn't do it before, as we suffered terrible food shortages in Louth and Spalding; the catering in both was amateurish at times thanks solely to the supplier that I chose to work with. This was my fault too and I was mortified to watch it unfurl.
On the whole I'm quite happy with the event this year. I always welcome ideas and feedback though.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
Is having segregated sleeping arrangements a requirement?
I would be surprised and disappointed if there were only 50 females out of the 1500 (or so) starters.
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Alwyn, can I just say how incredibly refreshing it is to "work" for someone who, when a thing cocks up, is able to sit back and look at it (this close after the event too!) and then hold their hands up to say 'fair play, that one's on me' so straightforwardly?
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The only two controls that were mobbed were Louth (night 1) and Brampton (nights 2 and 3). That is partly my fault, because I put too much gap between the fast and full-value riders. This resulted in too few riders making it to Pocklington, which had bags of space throughout. A bigger control in Louth would be useful, or rather more space in the control.
The school is really keen to work with us again, and will do the catering too now that they've seen it happen. It's a shame they wouldn't do it before, as we suffered terrible food shortages in Louth and Spalding; the catering in both was amateurish at times thanks solely to the supplier that I chose to work with. This was my fault too and I was mortified to watch it
On the whole I'm quite happy with the event this year. I always welcome ideas and feedback though.
Don't beat yourself up, there were heroes (and heroines) on and off the bike. 👍
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As a helper at Eskdalemuir we seemed to cope. We only got riders through southbound of course, so only half the load of other controls. There was some anxiety as we moved into Tuesday, with the majority of riders still to arrive. The longer it took for the peak to arrive meant that the eventual peak would be bigger. And it did come, but the hills after Edinburgh played their part in spreading the riders into manageable bunches.
The local villagers were on top of the catering and they were fantastic. The menu was limited, which meant that I had nothing to eat for three days except soup, pasta bake and chicken pies for breakfast dinner and tea (translation for you southerners: breakfast, lunch and dinner).
Beds were a limiting factor. Or rather, space for those beds. We couldn't physically get more than 55 beds down on the available floor space. I don't think we were an "official" sleep stop.
Actually, the real bottle neck at Eskdalemuir was the entrance lobby, where we only had room for 5 at a time, taking off, or putting on shoes. It would have helped if riders had carried their shoes with them in the supplied carrier bags. The potential for losing your shoes was enormous. For next time, we'd need a gazebo (or two) outside to manage this.
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Actually we were a sleep stop, Mike, in that we were down on the control chart as having 30 beds. We opened up the community hall up the road to try and accommodate the greater number requiring sleep and we had beds and floor space but insufficient blankets. However, now I know that we were only designated 30 spaces - and the riders could have known that - I feel less bad than I did at the time, running the overspill hall, having to explain about the lack of blankets. I don't know how everyone got on but I did ascertain that Alexander and Steven, the two Germans who were last to leave me finished in time. Sadly Gordon and his riding companion, who got very cold, did not, but there may have been other factors.
Peter
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Alwyn, can I just say how incredibly refreshing it is to "work" for someone who, when a thing cocks up, is able to sit back and look at it (this close after the event too!) and then hold their hands up to say 'fair play, that one's on me' so straightforwardly?
+1
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As one of the earlier riders through I would say all the helpers did a superb job at all the controls , even when a group of us arrived back at Brompton on day two which was packed by then I think it was Chris Crossland phone Alston to see if there was room there for me , that to was full so he went looking for floor space for me. Got a hard floor space but that was a no sleep night for me but had a two hour or so rest and told myself hey it's a Audax get over it 💨💨
Some of the others were a bit cross as attempting to ride from there to Barnard Castle with over 400k in your legs is probably beyond most of even the fast people , I'm sure with a bit of thought this can be solved either through qualification so less numbers or being able to book your bed slot where your bag drops are maybe extra sleep controls , I think the problem you get is if you charge them £350 they probably expect a bed for a few hours or it needs to be made clear it's Audax your on y own .
Hardest think I have ever done thanks for everyone who put it on .
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As I said on the other thread, I think the bed booking desk should start handing out blankets when the beds are full rather than asking people to come back later. I'm assuming spare blankets and space aren't a problem, at least at Louth and Brampton.
In my case I turned up at Louth at 1am completely exhausted and the advice given was to come back in half an hour*, which I took at face value, but of course there wasn't really anything coming free and wouldn't be until much later. If I do an event like this again I'll head straight for a dark corner myself, but as this was the first night of my first one and I was so tired I was at a complete loss. I feel like the advice given out by the desk should reflect what an experienced rider would do.
(* I don't mean this at all as a criticism of the guy there, who was definitely trying his best, seemed absolutely mortified by the situation, and is probably reading this)
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Bed booking was probably the hardest job on the rota I think. In general we didn't seem to get swamped at Thirsk, just very, very busy for a lot longer than I remember being at Barney last time. The extra 500 riders was noticeable for the volunteers as the surge where you needed to be flat out just carried on for a lot longer. I think that was about as many people as the event could have coped with in this current model. Some of the volunteers were looking more spaced out than the riders by the end :)
I'm feeling a little guilty now because we had loads of extra blankets around for some reason.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
Is having segregated sleeping arrangements a requirement?
I would be surprised and disappointed if there were only 50 females out of the 1500 (or so) starters.
I don't see any point in segregating sleeping facilities. Most exhausted AUKs are beyond modesty and niceties. Segregation would just increase queuing and potentially waste free 'beds'.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
Is having segregated sleeping arrangements a requirement?
I would be surprised and disappointed if there were only 50 females out of the 1500 (or so) starters.
I do not think that it was a requirement but was something we thought we could offer. In the end it was sleep anywhere. And there were certainly more th.an 50 females. probably nearer 2 - 3 hundred.
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At St Ives the food preparation area looked out onto the bike racks. Although this was fortuitous (not part of the intention) it meant that I could see a bunch of 30 riders arriving and divert as many hands as possible to the food service point and pause their food preparation activities. That way we got them served in double quick time and five minutes later could revert to our food preparation tasks. That probably won't be possible in many places, but having a runner to take a message to the kitchen when there is a sudden flood of riders (especially grouped together in Fenland winds!) could help reduce some of the queues that take place.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
Did any female rider complained about having to sleep near male riders? (Or the other way round?)
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I was one of those who having paid out £330 was expecting a bed maybe, a snack hopefully and a coffee definately.
St ives was OK squash and pasties , didn't need it then so heyho
Spalding the food just ran out as I got to the front of the queue and there was no coffee
Louth no food no space on the floor .. the coffee was truly wonderfull tho
Queued for a bed and when one came available someone else was already in it.
No sleep and no breakfast I left for pockington and found some food along the way
By then I was overtired having been awake since 2am sunday , hadn't eaten or drunk enough so diverted to market rasen train station
Feel a bit pathetic now but in reality I should have checked the route for food and drink stops as per normal
I'll know better next time than to trust anyone who aint me and to prepare properly
Learned a lot, had a great time ,met some lovely folk no regrets at all
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On the whole I'm quite happy with the event this year. I always welcome ideas and feedback though.
AsI said to you this morning, I think you and the team have done a great job and the focus on riders' needs was very welcome.
If I could offer one bit of advice it would be this: stay away from this and other fora for about a week and let all the moaners have their moans and declare how much better they would have organised things. More thoughtful and constructive comments will come later, I'm sure. Compared with the last time I rode LEL (2009) the organisation this year was superb - and in many aspects better than a certain French event).
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Learned a lot, had a great time ,met some lovely folk no regrets at all
I would echo this. I may not have a 1400 in me, I am not sure at the moment. But I loved this LEL and have no regrets. Some sadness obviously but the whole tenor of this year seems differe from my viewpoint.
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Feel a bit pathetic now but in reality I should have checked the route for food and drink stops as per normal
Seems a shame when the package you bought included pre-paid food (of some sort) at each control - but it does seem as though a future tweak could be to waymark any roadside opportunities (petrol stations, convenience stores, bakeries). By all accounts of what food was on offer, if I had been riding I might quite often have wanted to bounce a control and head to the next 24h service station - riding PBP I usually preferred to do that (substitute boulangerie for service station) but of course the difference there is the food is not pre-paid.
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1 very simple suggestion would be to have a male / Female tick box on the entry form so that there could be a realistic attempt at a segregated bed system. We were told thet there were 50 female on the event so put 18 beds into a separate area. I think in the end everyone kipped where they could find a bed, regardless of gender.
Did any female rider complained about having to sleep near male riders? (Or the other way round?)
Not that I know of but it was when we were first setting up on Saturday that it was mentioned that there were 50 female. so we set up an area. When they were coming in there were a lot more than that. After the setting up I had nothing to do with the sleeping arrangements as I was meching cooking parking serving and everything else.
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The Louth control really is out on a limb, 80km from Spalding and 100km from Pocklington, it is a an obvious sleep stop especially for riders with an afternoon start.
It was swamped when I was there, no food and no available beds. I think it`s very poor and potentially dangerous if a control can`t provide some food, how difficult is it to cook porridge or toast? It was known that 1500 riders would require a meal here. I pity riders who, with no local knowledge had to ride 180km through the night on one meal from Spalding.
I don`t think an adequate number of beds can be arranged within the space at Louth.
Maybe another stop, not necessarily a control, within 20 or 30km could spread the load?
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how difficult is it to cook porridge or toast?
Not difficult at all. Doing it for several hundred people at the same time in an unfamiliar catering kitchen is trickier. If you want to see how tricky, can I suggest that you register as a volunteer for the catering brigade in a honeypot control for 2021?
Alwyn has already said upthread:
The school is really keen to work with us again, and will do the catering too now that they've seen it happen. It's a shame they wouldn't do it before, as we suffered terrible food shortages in Louth and Spalding; the catering in both was amateurish at times thanks solely to the supplier that I chose to work with. This was my fault too and I was mortified to watch it unfurl.
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Even trickier if you don't have any food in. We bought extra on top of what we had when we heard the reports from further south. Thankfully Stefan the chef had got his numbers right and we didn't need the contingency, but it got quite close.
We were lucky that 6am-midnight every week day we had access to a supermarket just down the road. Some of the other controls are far more remote,
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Also, riders could check out so that the next control actually knows you're incoming and can consider when to put the porridge pot on.
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The only way you would get >80% compliance on checking out would be for controllers to retain brevet cards when riders check in and return them when they are leaving. This unit does not recommend or endorse that approach.
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It's be interesting to see what percentage checked out at different controls. I suspect we got quite a lot of them to at BC.
And I think that all bananas and flapjacks should be kept behind a checkout desk and you get one when you check out. Incentivisation :D
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It's be interesting to see what percentage checked out at different controls. I suspect we got quite a lot of them to at BC.
And I think that all bananas and flapjacks should be kept behind a checkout desk and you get one when you check out. Incentivisation :D
+1
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I was on the door at Eskdalemuir during the rush and it was busy. From my perspective, it was a truly professional operation by a small number of volunteers under immense pressure for an extended period. I thought they smothered themselves with glory.
Later, I might get around to writing up my experiences: I was at Loughton on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then to Moffat then to Eskdalemuir then to Loughton for the Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday. So it was a view of the event shared only by Chris Crossland - we were together for days and days. A finer man never wore socks.
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The Louth control really is out on a limb, 80km from Spalding and 100km from Pocklington, it is a an obvious sleep stop especially for riders with an afternoon start.
It was swamped when I was there, no food and no available beds. I think it`s very poor and potentially dangerous if a control can`t provide some food, how difficult is it to cook porridge or toast? It was known that 1500 riders would require a meal here. I pity riders who, with no local knowledge had to ride 180km through the night on one meal from Spalding.
I don`t think an adequate number of beds can be arranged within the space at Louth.
Maybe another stop, not necessarily a control, within 20 or 30km could spread the load?
Early in my ride planning,I identified the 100 km. gap between Louth and Pock. as the first challenge with a 1.15 start. When I arrived at Louth the bike racks were full and I knew that the control was rammed ,with many more riders still on the road. There was food and I ate and decided to push on to Pock.
In retrospect ,it did me a favour by giving me the spur to keep moving.
The obvious point for a sleep and food stop would be Barton on Humber. You have to go over the bridge to get to Pock. so you don't need all the stamping and barcoding set up , just beds and basic food and drinks.
On the return leg, it was a similar story but the control was coping as riders had been spread out more by the wind and rain. Louth looked a long way on a pitch black and rainy night.
Lanterne rouge OTP steeled us to get back on our bikes and go for it, and the famous five set sail into the night. The journey was epic but in the end it was worth it ,even though I faded in the last 5 miles and was last into the control. It put us ahead of the game,which was to pay off in the fens.
If the orgs. want to keep the logistics simple , the answer is a bigger control at Louth.
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Sorry, bit of a rambling post.
One very minor thing I did at Louth was note down the number of wake ups for different times in the morning so that we had advance warning of breakfast numbers, eg. 31 riders waking at 05.00, better have a spare tray of porridge ready.
A more general question: Does a "Control Operating Manual" exist. As a first time volunteer and reading through the various comments here and on facebook I get the impression that things were sometimes done quite differently at different controls. Is there already a manual summarising empirically determined best practices, useful checklists, best practice menus, etc? If so, does someone or a group of people "own" this document?
For example, in designing the route and distances between controls. Let's say that beds are limited to 3 hours per rider and there are 250 beds at a control (as we had at Louth) then the rate limiting factor for throughput for riders requiring sleep at that control is about 80 riders per hour irrespective of food service capacity. So it could take almost 24 hours to process all 1500 riders needing a bed at 100% occupancy, 80 new per hour plus 3 hours to complete sleep. Might it be possible for riders to provisionally book some bed time slots in advance for controls. This could give advance visibility of when the rider numbers are going to peak - useful to controls but also to riders - surely it's better to know in advance that no beds will be available rather than finding out when you get to the control. I realise that there are many reasons why riders won't use the slots they've booked but I think it's better to start with planned utilisation versus time. This also give some advance insight into when volunteers can go and catch some sleep.
Was rider tracking new for 2017? As the event management system evolves each time I'm sure that prediction and planning for peak loads will get easier. In the early hours of Thursday morning at Louth we were expecting another 800+ riders in the 14 hours before we closed and we were anxious about being overwhelmed at some point. The big bulge never materialised and throughput was fairly steady and manageable.
Having had my "first contact" with audax I'd love to get involved in the planning of the 2021 event (after the dust has settled). I used to work in process and industrial engineering and balancing the throughputs of controls taking into account all rate limiting factors is not unlike planning a new factory to optimise and balance overall throughput through several production stages. Some of what I'm suggesting could be planned using a spreadsheet but some of it (eg. bed booking) would be better coded as an add on to the rider tracking software. I'd be happy to contribute whatever I can to existing systems - again, after the dust has settled.
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As A LEL rider caught up in the over-crowded Louth control on the first night, as well as being the only other organiser of a 1000 km+ AUK event this season I thought I'd make a couple of points. There's nothing out of the ordinary that's happened in LEL that doesn't happen in any event over 1000 km! Anybody who whinges about Louth is in for a very big shock when they arrive in Loudeac* in 2-years time!
However, most other events don't offer food and beds included in the entry fee either. I suppose when they've paid upfront they'd expect the facilities to be available. I've had similar problems on the Mille Pennines.
* Loudeac's a rather "busy" control on PBP
Andy Corless
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Sounds like a reallyuseful skillset to offer! I'm sure this will be most welcome after the dust has settled.
The current LEL team are excellent listeners and very adaptable, as is needed with a mushrooming event.
It's sometimes difficult to consider lessons for next time (before they are forgotten, undocumented) without upsetting those who have worked their anatomy off for the current run and need a rest.
I hope the team are having the restful weekend they need and deserve! (I suspect looking at this board should wait a few days for some.)
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how difficult is it to cook porridge or toast?
Not difficult at all. Doing it for several hundred people at the same time in an unfamiliar catering kitchen is trickier. If you want to see how tricky, can I suggest that you register as a volunteer for the catering brigade in a honeypot control for 2021?
Alwyn has already said upthread:
The school is really keen to work with us again, and will do the catering too now that they've seen it happen. It's a shame they wouldn't do it before, as we suffered terrible food shortages in Louth and Spalding; the catering in both was amateurish at times thanks solely to the supplier that I chose to work with. This was my fault too and I was mortified to watch it unfurl.
I will be volunteering in 2021.
I appreciate Alwyn is putting his hand up and saying it should be better, it takes some character to do that, thank you Alwyn.
I think Alwyn is right, you need professional caterers you can rely on. However well meaning and hard working volunteers are it`s unrealistic to expect them to cope.
I`m concerned about solutions for next time and think it may be better to have smaller controls, closer together to prevent the unmanageable situations at "honeypot controls".
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it may be better to have smaller controls, closer together
Controls closer = more controls = more volunteers = need more people who can run a control. That's a big ask.They are like hen's teeth.
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I think Alwyn is right, you need professional caterers you can rely on. However well meaning and hard working volunteers are it`s unrealistic to expect them to cope.
From my experience, volunteers can cope perfectly well regardless of the numbers, but only if the system is in place and you have a leader in the kitchen - and ideally a leader with a lot of experience of being around cyclists. It's all about leadership, planning and systems. CrazyEnglishTrialthlete did good at St Ives.
I would have thought there's enough experience in the kitchen from 2 bigger LEL's now to fine tune the operation and to share knowledge and experience.
I doubt you will ever control spikes. They are not so easily controllable. Weather plays a huge part. Sometimes it's just convenient for a huge group to congregate on mass at any one time. Bad weather at night is a big factor. The folk that have time in hand, stay put when the weather gets rough as opposed to pressing on, joining the folk that just have to stop because they are so tired. It doesn't take much.
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Yeah, there were controls on 2013 and again this time that were running volunteer kitchens that were OK and kitchens run by professional caterers that struggled.
Danial doesn't need anyone to tell him running out of food isn't OK. He's already said it isn't OK. And he's got 4 years to figure out what to do about it plus I think he might want to catch up on some sleep first.
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It's be interesting to see what percentage checked out at different controls. I suspect we got quite a lot of them to at BC.
And I think that all bananas and flapjacks should be kept behind a checkout desk and you get one when you check out. Incentivisation :D
I think a clear, dedicated checkout point is helpful. Self checkout (with a controller supervising in case of problems is good; a separate controller sitting on the opposite side of the main entrance works well, with or without flapjack supplies.
Waiting for otherwise busy controllers to come free, or to check in the large group of riders that has just arrived, just encourages you (well, me) not to bother, as does a control desk that's not immediately on the exit path (especially one in a different building).
As for exit data allowing the next control to forecast arrivals better, that's obvious - but I think a lot of riders thought that checking out was more about allowing relatives to keep track, and I heard several volunteers say something like "you don't need to" or "you don't need to bother" when riders asked them where to do so.
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Fortunately I didn't experience any issues with any controls; there was always food, although sometimes not necessarily a wide range at night, which is when I did most of my riding.
There were always beds as well.
However - I spent much of my time just ahead of the 'bulge' and was checking how close they were getting to me. That appeared to help massively.
Alwyn: don't beat yourself up over it. Logistical challenges like this happen and riders did need to carry some additional food, not just relying on a big meal at each control.
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If incentive to check out is required, you could combine it with a shoe desk.
Check out, or cycle on in your socks.
That would also help manage shoe removal, which i believe caused a snag or two.
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I think Alwyn is right, you need professional caterers you can rely on. However well meaning and hard working volunteers are it`s unrealistic to expect them to cope.
From my experience, volunteers can cope perfectly well regardless of the numbers, but only if the system is in place and you have a leader in the kitchen - and ideally a leader with a lot of experience of being around cyclists. It's all about leadership, planning and systems. CrazyEnglishTrialthlete did good at St Ives.
I would have thought there's enough experience in the kitchen from 2 bigger LEL's now to fine tune the operation and to share knowledge and experience.
I doubt you will ever control spikes. They are not so easily controllable. Weather plays a huge part. Sometimes it's just convenient for a huge group to congregate on mass at any one time. Bad weather at night is a big factor. The folk that have time in hand, stay put when the weather gets rough as opposed to pressing on, joining the folk that just have to stop because they are so tired. It doesn't take much.
I am putting together a long list of bullet points on running catering at an LEL Control which will be available to future controls as I would rather like to ride LEL again in 2021. I learnt a lot in 2013 from the school catering manager at Barnard Castle who helped us out and was able to put this into practice this time around.
I was also fortunate in having a very good controller (PhilD) both times and some excellent volunteers, some of whom have posted above, who were committed to doing what ever was necessary to get food out to the riders.
Getting 1400 riders fed without anyone having to wait more than a minute or two for food on Sunday was as memorable an experience as I have ever had in Audax.
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We [the ACME Peloton + assorted hangers-on] arrved at Louth from the 16:00 start and riding through the night, to find it picked clean and a lot of miserable, hungry riders. Our dilemma was: do we call 'follow us, chaps, to the 24-hour garage' and look like heroes, or total wallies as foreigners go off-route and get even more confused? I didn't want that responsibility and we had made no commitment at that stage to babysit anyone: over the Fens into the wind on the return was a different matter; we were quite a train.
We managed to waylay A.N.Other on our diversion to a cafe over the Humber Bridge, who was suitably puzzled. This also happened on our naughty main road route from Cambridge to Great Easton and from there to Moreton on the 2013 route. I was also amazed how many passed the two good cafes in Longtown [with bikes parked outside] after failing to get much to eat at Brampton on the way north.
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We [the ACME Peloton + assorted hangers-on] arrved at Louth from the 16:00 start and riding through the night, to find it picked clean and a lot of miserable, hungry riders. Our dilemma was: do we call 'follow us, chaps, to the 24-hour garage' and look like heroes, or total wallies as foreigners go off-route and get even more confused? I didn't want that responsibility and we had made no commitment at that stage to babysit anyone: over the Fens into the wind on the return was a different matter; we were quite a train.
We managed to waylay A.N.Other on our diversion to a cafe over the Humber Bridge, who was suitably puzzled. This also happened on our naughty main road route from Cambridge to Great Easton and from there to Moreton on the 2013 route. I was also amazed how many passed the two good cafes in Longtown [with bikes parked outside] after failing to get much to eat at Brampton on the way north.
I was one of the hanger-ons who started with you at Laughton and rode with you through the first night (was wearing my French cycling club colours), when you did your disappearing act I nearly followed you but thought better of it, now I wish I had after reading your post. Thanks for the company and help those early hours, was a nice way to get into the ride.
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The obvious point for a sleep and food stop would be Barton on Humber.
Hull West premier Inn for the win.
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The obvious point for a sleep and food stop would be Barton on Humber.
Hull West premier Inn for the win.
Welton Church Hall ;)
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I have a vision of the verger in Dad's Army saying " You will have to see the vicar about that".
I think he might be out on his bike that week in 2021. Or is once enough?
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The Louth control really is out on a limb, 80km from Spalding and 100km from Pocklington, it is a an obvious sleep stop especially for riders with an afternoon start.
It was swamped when I was there, no food and no available beds. I think it`s very poor and potentially dangerous if a control can`t provide some food, how difficult is it to cook porridge or toast? It was known that 1500 riders would require a meal here. I pity riders who, with no local knowledge had to ride 180km through the night on one meal from Spalding.
I agree with these sentiments but would like to add that on the return leg, Louth seemed to have learned much from these tribulations and things were running more smoothly. At all times, the volunteers at Louth were never less than extremely helpful and accommodating under extreme pressure.
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I agree with these sentiments but would like to add that on the return leg, Louth seemed to have learned much from these tribulations and things were running more smoothly. At all times, the volunteers at Louth were never less than extremely helpful and accommodating under extreme pressure.
Indeed, I gather it was circumstances outside their control - supplier problems.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy - Sun Tzu, China, 5th Century BC. Even in our battle-hardened ACME Peloton, there was a lot of tearing up of spreadsheets going on, and much re-thinking on the fly.
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Louth and Spalding catering etc .. were set up with a small, apparently experienced , individual hiring staff and buying supplies. I had doubts from quite early on .. as he needed a very large advance to fund his business. As we got closer and closer ..despite reservations we just can not change as by then we had advanced him over £20,000 . And tho I am prepared to go to court .. even winning I dont think we would have got anything back .. sadly no good contract evidence and I dont think he had any assets either. So it is soldier on .. reality is that I suspect he did not provide the quantity of food that we had paid for .. but this is impossible to prove . The scale of the demands on his hired in staff and their ability to cope under pressure were way beyond their capabilities.
Danial has already admitted that it went wrong and accepted responsibility .. not much else to add .. we got it wrong .. but hopefully will have learnt.
By the way .. he claims he lost £10,000 on the event and is now looking for more money from us.
NO WAY
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The check-in/check-out system tracks precise individuals - whereas in the kitchens w just needed approximate numbers.
In lieu of mandatory checkouts, a simple exit head count by a volunteer on the gate, forwarded (phone, text or email) to the next control every hour or half-hour was all that was needed to have a good picture of the likely inflow and when and have time to prepare for it.
(Given some of the IT glitches, it may have been useful for each control to have been manually forwarding a heads-in/heads-in count to the next control anyway as a backup anyway)
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But in the control dashboard (not public tracking) you could see stuff like how many riders north or south-bound you had had through - so you could know how far through the field you'd got, which was really handy for stock control/ordering. We did have a little cheer when we realised we could tell the kitchen 'less than a thousand to go!' - didn't tell them it was 999 though. And the flow charts (can't remember if that was in a different bit of the site?) predicted number of arrivals in the next hour/2 hours/3 hours - obviously their accuracy would be impacted by riders not being scanned into/out of dorms or back out onto the road since all the system could know about a rider is that they had checked in to a given control and were therefore either somewhere in that control or somewhere on the road towards the next one - but they did give us a clue about when the bulge might turn up.
ETA - and there's no way where I was that we could have spared a volunteer to head count consistently throughout the event IMO, and if it isn't done consistently then what's the point? Bear in mind that our gates were a significant distance from anyone else in a place with atrocious mobile signal - so someone would have had to run up that hill and back down again every half hour while someone else stayed there counting. Or riders could just check out on the system that was already in place. Yes, the bag drop thing mucked it up for the last 500ish km for some riders. I'm sure that can be avoided next time.
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Oh - and if we'd head counted people going past the desk as exiters, we'd have had about 4000 riders exiting due to some of the faffing yoyos.
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In lieu of mandatory checkouts, a simple exit head count by a volunteer on the gate, forwarded (phone, text or email) to the next control every hour or half-hour was all that was needed to have a good picture of the likely inflow and when and have time to prepare for it.
(Given some of the IT glitches, it may have been useful for each control to have been manually forwarding a heads-in/heads-in count to the next control anyway as a backup anyway)
Great idea - if you have enough volunteers at your control ...
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I doubt there would be a sufficient volunteer pool to be able to supply an exit headcounter 24/7 at umpteen controls. It would be BORING, potentially cold and thankless.
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At some point chips/timing-mats or GPS trackers[1] will become cheap enough that they could be considered for a future LEL.
I'm not suggesting they replace the Brevet Card as proof-of-passage (that should continue to be driven by human interaction) but automation can take away the bulk of the work for rider tracking by automating the collection of the raw data.
1. SPOT trackers are expensive and difficult to obtain in the numbers required (transcontinental race have said they had to limit entrants to 300 due to the lack of availability of trackers). GPS trackers with cellular data updates would be good enough for the UK despite the patchy mobile data coverage (I don't think there's any control where there isn't mobile data availability in a 5 mile run in to the control and within 5 miles leaving a control. That would be enough to build some good rider tracking and prediction systems).
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I can't remeber anything about Louth. Spalding food was reasonable quality for the main but could have done with more. The lentil soup was a piss take.
Everywhere else that I reached the food was great and the volunteers were fantastic throughout.
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We had advance warning of the very first riders at Pocklington showing up early, because I was looking at the #lel2017 tag on Instagram and saw a photo posted from the humber bridge. I warned the kitchen staff, and they put some sandwiches and donuts out just before the first riders turned up. ;D
I don't think that's scale-able to the whole event though.
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At some point chips/timing-mats or GPS trackers[1] will become cheap enough that they could be considered for a future LEL.
I'm not suggesting they replace the Brevet Card as proof-of-passage (that should continue to be driven by human interaction) but automation can take away the bulk of the work for rider tracking by automating the collection of the raw data.
1. SPOT trackers are expensive and difficult to obtain in the numbers required (transcontinental race have said they had to limit entrants to 300 due to the lack of availability of trackers). GPS trackers with cellular data updates would be good enough for the UK despite the patchy mobile data coverage (I don't think there's any control where there isn't mobile data availability in a 5 mile run in to the control and within 5 miles leaving a control. That would be enough to build some good rider tracking and prediction systems).
I think trackers could be really beneficial even now - we don't need EVERY rider to have one, just a representative sample. Watching the dots flow towards your control would be very useful (and it's a much more intuitive view than the current barcharts).
There will always be quite a few riders _wanting_ to be tracked publically, so that would ease the cost.
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I really don't understand why an event like LEL would use chips and timing mats. It's such a hassle compared to just keying a number into a device at a control. That way you need a few dozen devices (a phone will do it) as opposed to a few dozen readers, thousands of chips and bracelets, plus the devices anyway.
The easiest way to get trackers for an event like LEL is to have something made bespoke - basically a battery attached to a gps chip and a SIM card/SMS chip. But Chinese factories won't get out of bed for fewer than 10,000 devices, so that doesn't work for us either.
The easiest solutions would be to build an app with a very low battery drain, or just give spot trackers to the 5am group. But I'm not sure LEL should really push the whole 5am group any more to the fore. It's beginning to feel inappropriate.
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But I'm not sure LEL should really push the whole 5am group any more to the fore. It's beginning to feel inappropriate.
I thought it was just me thinking that. Please don't let outside pressure turn it into a race or some sort of "challenge ride".
Audax is unique, with it's volunteer ethos and emphasis on finishing not times.
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But I'm not sure LEL should really push the whole 5am group any more to the fore. It's beginning to feel inappropriate.
I thought it was just me thinking that. Please don't let outside pressure turn it into a race or some sort of "challenge ride".
Audax is unique, with it's volunteer ethos and emphasis on finishing not times.
Did the earlier group not get through controls quickly though and keep them a little clearer for later arrivals. I thought getting a bunch of riders ' up the road' was a great idea. I agree that quick riders shouldn't be the emphasis of the ride at all but separating them out a bit is a good idea is it not?
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Agree entirely with that part of it and the fact that the early starters accept a lower time limit than the hoi polloi, adding to their pressure.
However in every start wave there were mixed abilities. By the time I had attended to a tyre problem on the first leg, I had been passed by the fast riders of the group setting of after me and soon after, the main bunch from that wave arrived as well.
But in alwyn's post there was a hint(maybe I misinterpreted it) that the fast group was being treated as some sort of elite , somehow better than the rest . There will always be someone faster than me,and I really don't mind the fact that the fastest rider group is assembled on previous experience, but I still maintain that we risk eroding the potential goodwill of volunteers if LEL becomes a pseudo race, even at the front of the ride.
If someone is told that the first rider was through here yesterday ,it can have a negative effect on their morale whereas others just say "So what".
Some of the social media posts seemed to emphasise the riders position not just their progress.
Ride London and many sportives ask riders to state their expected journey time on their entry form and then set starting groups accordingly.
Accepting that LEL is bigger than your average AUK event, is that the way to go?
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You are at cross-purposes here. Danial is talking specifically of the invitation-only 5am starters. This is a tiny part of the ride. The creation of the 100 hour group was a brilliant idea designed to get faster riders away and on the road to allow an increase in numbers by 500 riders but not create a bigger bulge at controls. This was a good plan but like all plans, it didn't survive contact with the enemy, namely the riders. Some entered the 100 hour group simply to get a place in the event knowing they weren't going to make it round in time but didn't mind that, others entered but didn't get anywhere near the 100 hours. Hence the increase in the overall DNF figure, which was increased by the 60 per cent DNF in the 100 hour group. Behind that headline figure the DNF rate is about the same as last time and the same as PBP.
If you wanted to lower the DNF figure (but why would you?) the easiest way would be to put the final scan desk at 1,401k, maybe in a rented house or van/pub/tent. This would take nearly three hours off riders' times so many who are three hours OOT will reach that scanning desk within their time. Then they'd pootle back to Loughton at their own speed. You'd simply move the desk and its concomitant volunteers from the reception area at the school with no need for extra resources.
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I was in the 5am group. I joined it knowing that I certainly wouldn't be the quickest but I was confident I could get round in under 100 hours. My main motivation was that I would be ahead of the bulge and hopefully have quieter and quicker to negaotiate controls, I wasn't the only one in the group thinking this way and I ended up yoyoing riders from the 5am group the whole way round. I didn't feel like we were treated as any different to the rest of the field, I certainly hoped we weren't. I think we did benefit enormously from quiet controls but at the same time I don't think I saw any riders from our start group needing any 'extra ' help at at controls due to fatigue, general unprepardness etc and hopefully we were pretty 'light' on controls. I'd be interested if the view about the early starters is different to my experience from someone looking in rather than out though. If there are similar 100 hour groups next time I think a big emphasis will need to be on this years statistics as getting round in 100 hours was a big ask even for the fittest according to the finishing figures. I have nothing negative to write about this years event, all the volunteers were stars, all the riders I encountered were friendly. The talk of a pop up control between Pocklington and Louth is a great idea, I cycled round Barton on Humber at 6.30am trying to find some breakfast but nothing doing. If there is a hall in Barton it would be perfect.
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If you wanted to lower the DNF figure (but why would you?) the easiest way would be to put the final scan desk at 1,401k,
You made a suggestion after Windsor Chester Windsor 2015 of having a finish control at 601 km. If I remember correctly it was explained why that wouldn't work, and the same stands true in this case.
The ride finishes at Loughton, not somewhere in Essex. And as we don't have mandatory routes in the UK how would anyone decide exactly where to place that 1,401 km control?
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Was in the 7.30 start. Given I'd survived vedettes on fixed I'd give it a go.
It was a very lonely ride due to the smaller field and the gap between final 100h and first 117h group. I was t going as well as in 2013 either. I only saw one other rider between Pocklington and Thirsk. He'd made about 5h on me by then.
I did have a period between 80h and 90h fields in 2015 where I didn't have anyone to ride with (everyone who caught me was too fast for a while) but I found a nice group overnight to Villaines which made it a lot easier on the head and rode with many different people at various times and enjoyed myself. I did enjoy the company of Alan Parkinson this year. Always good value.
If I'd spent more time on the bike after BCM I'd have had a faster pace but it would still have been on my own. The training I've been doing has been split between rowing and cycling. I've hit 3m power PBs recently but I expect my endurance is not what it was - I've not finished a 1000km+ event since last PBP. Immediate future will be about rowing though I might drag my sorry carcass around a DIY 400k later this month just to get the 10th SR monkey off my back.
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Some entered the 100 hour group simply to get a place in the event knowing they weren't going to make it round in time but didn't mind that, others entered but didn't get anywhere near the 100 hours. Hence the increase in the overall DNF figure, which was increased by the 60 per cent DNF in the 100 hour group. Behind that headline figure the DNF rate is about the same as last time and the same as PBP.
I know alwyn is against qualifiying rides but maybe they should be part of the deal for 100h groups?
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Some entered the 100 hour group simply to get a place in the event knowing they weren't going to make it round in time but didn't mind that, others entered but didn't get anywhere near the 100 hours. Hence the increase in the overall DNF figure, which was increased by the 60 per cent DNF in the 100 hour group. Behind that headline figure the DNF rate is about the same as last time and the same as PBP.
I know alwyn is against qualifiying rides but maybe they should be part of the deal for 100h groups?
I think you had to have previous 'form' to be in the 5am group. I had a sub 100 time for 2013 and an OK time for Mille Cymru which I assumed is why I got into the 5am group. Alwyn can answer better than me.
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Some entered the 100 hour group simply to get a place in the event knowing they weren't going to make it round in time but didn't mind that, others entered but didn't get anywhere near the 100 hours. Hence the increase in the overall DNF figure, which was increased by the 60 per cent DNF in the 100 hour group. Behind that headline figure the DNF rate is about the same as last time and the same as PBP.
I know alwyn is against qualifiying rides but maybe they should be part of the deal for 100h groups?
I think you had to have previous 'form' to be in the 5am group. I had a sub 100 time for 2013 and an OK time for Mille Cymru which I assumed is why I got into the 5am group. Alwyn can answer better than me.
Later posts from alwyn suggest that either previous form, or sufficient self-confidence to blag it (either convincingly or amusingly) were enough for a 5am start.
When the dust settles and the organising team have had a few more nights' sleep, I'd quite like to see a fairly detailed set of figure around DNFs (notably those 100h riders who were HD by virtue of finishing >100h but <117h) - I'm sure that they will come in due time, albeit not necessarily made fully public.
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If you wanted to lower the DNF figure (but why would you?) the easiest way would be to put the final scan desk at 1,401k,
You made a suggestion after Windsor Chester Windsor 2015 of having a finish control at 601 km. If I remember correctly it was explained why that wouldn't work, and the same stands true in this case.
The ride finishes at Loughton, not somewhere in Essex. And as we don't have mandatory routes in the UK how would anyone decide exactly where to place that 1,401 km control?
Then a case of trimming the distance from way over to say 1405k
There is 4 yrs in which to achieve that.
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But WHY? Why is it necessary to have more riders finishing? It is an Audax - a very hard one. The responsibility for getting home is the rider's, not the organisers'. Certainly volunteers do all they can to help but paying the entry fee doesn't guarantee a finish. The correct way to decrease the DNF numbers is for more riders to finish.
Peter
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Then a case of trimming the distance from way over to say 1405k
There is 4 yrs in which to achieve that.
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Very very difficult to achieve .. given location of available controls .. absolute requirement for a safe route . Distance was just 2.5% over .. well under permitted amount.
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I really don't understand why an event like LEL would use chips and timing mats. It's such a hassle compared to just keying a number into a device at a control. That way you need a few dozen devices (a phone will do it) as opposed to a few dozen readers, thousands of chips and bracelets, plus the devices anyway.
I agree that tracking arrival times is easily done as it is now, but the question was about improving estimation of rider arrivals to give the kitchens a chance to ramp up in time and not waste food by having it ready when not enough riders are in. The implication is that rider departure time is more useful which is trickier to reliably obtain from controls.
Mats/chips may not be specifically required, it was just an example of what technology exists now that could help automate the rider tracking (and specifically control exit which currently requires cooperation from the riders).
Having a good idea of where riders are (without GPS trackers) requires:-
a) Details of departure times
b) A good model (basing things on a riders previous speeds between controls, group speeds between controls to account for differing weather/terrain, etc)
Having tracked linger time for a large percentage of riders on LEL2017 it may be possible to create a reasonable model for future LELs based on this data that just requires control arrival times (which are collected like they are now with no extra technology required). From there you might be able to extrapolate to have a reasonable prediction for the bulk of riders.
I'd be interested in the anonymised dataset (including drop bag checkout/checkin) to see what modelling could be done. The idea would be to analyse the complete set to extract behavioural patterns and identify different rider types (stamp and go riders, touring riders, longer stops at bag drop locations. riders up against time limits) and temporal patterns (average stop times at different times of day, average speed drops due to fatigue/terrain, etc) to build up the model. Then replay the minimal dataset (bag drop locations, rider arrival times) in chronological order in an attempt to predict the arrival times of riders at subsequent controls. I could also see how well a model worked against the LEL2013 dataset.
The easiest way to get trackers for an event like LEL is to have something made bespoke - basically a battery attached to a gps chip and a SIM card/SMS chip. But Chinese factories won't get out of bed for fewer than 10,000 devices, so that doesn't work for us either.
There are plenty of trackers that exist that are battery+GPS+SIM, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to get 1500+ of them (including PAYG data only SIM cards). Also the tracker is more expensive if it can't be used for future rides. It has to last 7 or so days on a single battery and the battery has to be replaceable. The service it reports to must have some form of API for bulk API collection, and it has to be reliable (and waterproof)!
The easiest solutions would be to build an app with a very low battery drain, or just give spot trackers to the 5am group.
Unless a mobile is powered/charged by something along the way then not running in airplane mode between controls will drain the battery far quicker than any app. In areas of low/no signal the phone boosts transmission power in the hope of contacting a base station, this is the major battery drain.
It would have to be an app that was capable of periodically disabling airplane mode, waiting for a possible signal, sending position update and then settling back into airplane mode. AIUI airplane mode cannot be disabled by an app.
Even then we have many foreign riders that may find roaming data access on their phone prohibitively expensive and swapping to a local SIM stops them from being in contact with their friends/family.
For those that do power their phone on the go, given the numerous existing apps I can see some service in the future which gathers the data from the various services (Garmin Connect, Strava, FindMyPhone, etc), normalises it, and presents it over one consistent API. Then riders could register with this service providing access to their data to LEL and it is taken from there...
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Are we losing the point of what Audax is, a (largely)unsupported long distance bike ride over a given time and distance, with controls as set points? Whether it's 1400, 1405km of whatever, no one is forced to enter if they don't like the arrangements?
By the way, for tracking I use the track my iPhone app, works like a charm and keeps Mrs P happy. Not perfect I know but works for us
A
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I'd be interested in the anonymised dataset (including drop bag checkout/checkin) to see what modelling could be done. The idea would be to analyse the complete set to extract behavioural patterns and identify different rider types (stamp and go riders, touring riders, longer stops at bag drop locations. riders up against time limits) and temporal patterns (average stop times at different times of day, average speed drops due to fatigue/terrain, etc) to build up the model. Then replay the minimal dataset (bag drop locations, rider arrival times) in chronological order in an attempt to predict the arrival times of riders at subsequent controls. I could also see how well a model worked against the LEL2013 dataset.
I don't think drop bag checkout/checkin would be much use. Certainly at Pocklington all we did was scan bags when they arrived on the van. We didn't scan them when giving them to riders, and after problems with controls scanning out bags further up the route (it was resetting the time in hand figure on the tracking display), we didn't scan them out of the control either.
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I'd be interested in the anonymised dataset (including drop bag checkout/checkin) to see what modelling could be done. The idea would be to analyse the complete set to extract behavioural patterns and identify different rider types (stamp and go riders, touring riders, longer stops at bag drop locations. riders up against time limits) and temporal patterns (average stop times at different times of day, average speed drops due to fatigue/terrain, etc) to build up the model. Then replay the minimal dataset (bag drop locations, rider arrival times) in chronological order in an attempt to predict the arrival times of riders at subsequent controls. I could also see how well a model worked against the LEL2013 dataset.
I don't think drop bag checkout/checkin would be much use. Certainly at Pocklington all we did was scan bags when they arrived on the van. We didn't scan them when giving them to riders, and after problems with controls scanning out bags further up the route (it was resetting the time in hand figure on the tracking display), we didn't scan them out of the control either.
Sorry, wasn't clear. I'd just want the locations of a riders bag drops, not the times that anything happened to them.
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Are we losing the point of what Audax is, a (largely)unsupported long distance bike ride over a given time and distance, with controls as set points? Whether it's 1400, 1405km of whatever, no one is forced to enter if they don't like the arrangements?
It's not just 5km over-distance, and you know it. I'm not convinced that the over-distance is a problem, but there is an argument that an event much harder than entrants were led to believe is a problem.
It doesn't matter on a 200 too much, but this event is a 5-day experience/trip/holiday. If it's waaay harder than you'd planned, that could be 3 days of your holiday ruined. The counter-argument is that it makes for better stories/adventures!
Incidentally, "no one is forced to enter" would be a poor excuse for a shambolic event - fortunately we didn't put on a shambolic event, but I do see this defence used for all sorts of things over the years.
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That's true, matt. (Referring to the no0one is forced to enter defence for shambolic events - which this wasn't at all)
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It's not just 5km over-distance, and you know it. I'm not convinced that the over-distance is a problem, but there is an argument that an event much harder than entrants were led to believe is a problem.
If you're referring to LEL, then there is absolutely no evidence that this has been the case. Quite the opposite, actually.
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It's not just 5km over-distance, and you know it. I'm not convinced that the over-distance is a problem, but there is an argument that an event much harder than entrants were led to believe is a problem.
If you're referring to LEL, then there is absolutely no evidence that this has been the case. Quite the opposite, actually.
Totally agree. I don't think anyone was lead to beleive riding 1400km is easy. I think a lot of riders under estimated the challenge, some by a massive amount, but that is down to them and not the publicity/information coming from the organisers.
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Totally agree. I don't think anyone was lead to beleive riding 1400km is easy. I think a lot of riders under estimated the challenge, some by a massive amount, but that is down to them and not the publicity/information coming from the organisers.
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My point exactly, the official distance didn't change part way through the event and was visible pretty much from the time the route was confirmed, along with the climb profile.
Did anyone really believe it was going to be easy?
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This is turning into the same discussion as we had after alwyn et al. put on the fabulous Windsor Chester Windsor 600 in 2015 as a PBP qualifier.
"It's not fair, it was over distance."
Yes, LEL was over distance. It did say on the route page of the LEL website: https://londonedinburghlondon.com/route/ the ride was 1,441 km long. That wasn't hidden away somewhere. The fact the times on the brevet card accounted for this extra distance may life a lot easier.
My PBP 2015 track is 1,237 km long, which as a percentage of the ride is more over distance than LEL.
"It's not fair, it was harder than expected."
Oh, there's climbing on LEL? Who would have thought that may be the case? Anyone looking at the profile going over 500m on the LEL website (https://londonedinburghlondon.com/route) should have been prepared. And the AAA points on the AUK webpage (http://www.aukweb.net/events/detail/17-1/) would also have given a hint to anyone who understands how AUK gives out hilly points.
It's not fair people only got 100 hours
Well PBP has three different groups (80 hr, 84 hr & 90 hr). Anyone riding in the 100 hour group decided to go for that group and knew (apart from Dominic* :facepalm:) there was a 100 hour limit. Had I not been riding with my dad I would have gone in for the 100 hour group and if I had finished in 101 hours then c'est la vie.
"It's windy in the fens"
Yes, yes it is. Nowt the LEL team can do about the wind, apart from remove the chilli beans option from the catering.
*Started with the 7.15am group not having realised that this put me in the 100 hour bracket (until I saw the e-mail about the diversion).
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Having a good idea of where riders are (without GPS trackers) requires:-
a) Details of departure times
b) A good model (basing things on a riders previous speeds between controls, group speeds between controls to account for differing weather/terrain, etc)
You know, rider tracking was on the agenda for LEL as long ago as the 2005 edition (the last edition I had any involvement). Having been used successfully by PBP controllers since 1987 (using Minitel), and publicly web-based for the first time by PBP in 2003. With my access to the AUK online database, I offered to (try to) provide some sort of similar service for LEL in 2005. There was no enthusiasm for it from the controllers, who felt (then as now) that they had other priorities, and couldn't envisage the benefits to them. (I should add that the organiser and most of the control personnel were of course completely different then from now, this is not a comment on the present LEL organisation.)
Having tracked linger time for a large percentage of riders on LEL2017 it may be possible to create a reasonable model for future LELs based on this data that just requires control arrival times (which are collected like they are now with no extra technology required). From there you might be able to extrapolate to have a reasonable prediction for the bulk of riders.
This planning was done in 2005, and I think also back in 2001, using data from previous editions. I'd be astonished if it wasn't extensively researched for each subsequent edition as well. Obviously more data is better, but even with only arrival times and no departure times, it is still very usable because it's pretty clear just from arrival times the general road speed for each leg, and the numbers choosing to feed or sleep.
This stuff is nothing new, is all I'm saying.
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Us controllers met in May and discussed the rider tracking system. We all agreed a common approach, albeit one that would result in different outcomes from each control. We agreed that we would scan everyone in, and encourage everyone to scan out. Our ability to do this would always rely on our capacity. So if a control got swamped, there was less encouragement to scan out.
The controllers know why this information is useful, and understand how it makes managing their control easier next time. So they were very supportive of encouraging people to scan out.
I believe we have a 65% scan out rate, which is superb. It’ll be really interesting to see what that tells us about how long people stop for, and when.
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This planning was done in 2005, and I think also back in 2001, using data from previous editions. I'd be astonished if it wasn't extensively researched for each subsequent edition as well. Obviously more data is better, but even with only arrival times and no departure times, it is still very usable because it's pretty clear just from arrival times the general road speed for each leg, and the numbers choosing to feed or sleep.
This stuff is nothing new, is all I'm saying.
I had some 2005 data in 2009, but nothing earlier. Just departure data but you're right that just the departure data in itself is very useful. It was that data that drove the push to have better sleeping facilities.
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Us controllers met in May and discussed the rider tracking system. We all agreed a common approach, albeit one that would result in different outcomes from each control. We agreed that we would scan everyone in, and encourage everyone to scan out. Our ability to do this would always rely on our capacity. So if a control got swamped, there was less encouragement to scan out.
The controllers know why this information is useful, and understand how it makes managing their control easier next time. So they were very supportive of encouraging people to scan out.
I believe we have a 65% scan out rate, which is superb. It’ll be really interesting to see what that tells us about how long people stop for, and when.
We have matching departure scans for 70% of arrival scans. At Great Easton they had self scan on departure, with a big TV wide screen so riders could see how far ahead of the time limit they were as they scanned on departure. Should have taken a photo of the setup, maybe Iddu did. So for something that wasn't mandatory but was encouraged I'd say we got a very good take up rate from riders. I'm sure a higher take up can be achieved next time.
Bed scanning was less successful in it's take up. We captured 1100 riders as they scanned in to sleep. But just under half scanned back out after they'd had a sleep. So we know when they went into the sleep area, but we don't know when they came out and how long they hung around a control before departing. Still we'll know how long they spent at a control they slept in, for a high percentage of riders.
Interesting the lead 5am riders were some of the best for scanning at every opportunity. We know Anco didn't sleep at all (in a sleep area at controls) and longest time in a control was 24 mins and shortest 1 minute . We know Darren Franks and Jasmin Muller entered sleep areas in a couple of controls for approx. 20 mins each time. But I also know from speaking to them at the finish that they wouldn't really call it sleep.
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We didn't scan any of the sleep at Moffat because we were short on volunteers. I thought it was better to make sure the riders got what they wanted/needed first and scanning at that point just seemed like a 'nice to have' rather than essential. With more volunteers that would've been different.
Scans on leaving the control went ok. Riders knew it was something we were doing and why it benefitted them, so they went along with it willingly. They often asked about time in hand too - I'm not surprised Iddu's inspired screen idea went down well.
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"I'm not convinced that the over-distance is a problem, but there is an argument that an event much harder than entrants were led to believe is a problem. "
If you're referring to LEL, then there is absolutely no evidence that this has been the case. Quite the opposite, actually.
Nope, wasn't referring to LEL - just explaining why significant over-distance CAN be a bad thing.
(IMO, it would be nice to get LEL down towards 1400.0km, but as stated by many already there are huge logistical factors getting in the way of this! Everyone knows that PBP is over-distance - despite being compulsory route. )
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... because we were short on volunteers
And that is perhaps the limiting factor for LEL. Danial and the team have shown that there is apparently no limit to the numbers of riders willing to take on the LEL challenge; buying in professional catering and hiring bigger control venues can be included in the higher entry fee which ever more riders appear to be happy to pay. Goodness knows how many is the maximum, but PBP shows it could be thousands.
As a club, Audax UK needs to ask; are we prepared to support LEL by persuading our ever increasing membership to help out at a control in 2021. The role of volunteer is better now that we are doing what we are good at - greeting the riders and generally getting them sorted out with sleeping, bike fixes, etc - and if we have enough numbers we can even have a decent shift system.
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I got asked a _lot_ who I was "supporting" by some of the other volunteers, and never really knew what to answer. I mean, I vaguely cheerlead for the VC167, and the Fridays, and I had quite a lot of mates riding and one brother-in-law (although I didn't get out of bed when he came through southbound cos I'd only got into my bed a couple of hours beforehand). I volunteered to support 'em all - even Mr High Maintenance with his bloody iced tea demands. A much bigger and more expensive event would lose me as a volunteer, because why would I give up a precious week off if it wasn't to support my friends and my community in their frankly ridiculous and borderline self-harming endeavours?
Altho the EldestCub has just worked out he'll be old enough in 4 years time...
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... because we were short on volunteers
And that is perhaps the limiting factor for LEL. Danial and the team have shown that there is apparently no limit to the numbers of riders willing to take on the LEL challenge; buying in professional catering and hiring bigger control venues can be included in the higher entry fee which ever more riders appear to be happy to pay. Goodness knows how many is the maximum, but PBP shows it could be thousands.
As a club, Audax UK needs to ask; are we prepared to support LEL by persuading our ever increasing membership to help out at a control in 2021. The role of volunteer is better now that we are doing what we are good at - greeting the riders and generally getting them sorted out with sleeping, bike fixes, etc - and if we have enough numbers we can even have a decent shift system.
Given some of the comments that volunteering is more taxing than riding the event, you could try offering 14 audax points for volunteers ;D
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Team debrief to come .. but my pennorth is that we are now at the limit in several areas.
1 Central team .. Danial is under pressure for many many consecutive months .. but seems to cope and hold a job down .. but if he opts out .. any new boss would be stunned at the demands of the task . Can not comment on Phil and the time he put in .. but his skill level is high and he was absolutely essential. Me .. well you just need an old honest guy with time .. but even fitting this .. my wife is making threatening noises about 2021 .. ( never mind the risks of Old Father Time )
2 Controllers .. it is really tough to be a controller .. this time we were lucky we have several experienced ones.. who know exactly what they are doing .. and we also had people stepping up for the first time .. BUT .. to the best of my knowledge .. there is not a large pool of willing potential volunteers for this role .. so could get tricky
3 Control locations .. really hard to find schools that are willing to step in and allow us to put 1500 riders thru .. bed and catering pressures are substantial .. and we can not extend the start times any more.. so how on earth could we ease the already existing headaches of Night 1
4 Volunteers. Known to be really rewarding as a task .. but also incredibly hard work .. I dont think there is a bigger pool available .. we would have taken more this time if we could find them
I accept that for an overseas rider whether is £319 or £419 is immaterial when paying for flights already .. but a higher price allowing more bought in skills .. just does not fit comfortably with our AUK background.. so I dont think a higher price is a way forward to take more entries, and a much higher price to take fewer entries is just not audax
just my pennorth
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Personally, I think the event is just the right size now.
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Well, FWIW, I agree with both the above posts by FB and Alwyn. Spot on. Especially FB's first two points:
1 Central team .. Danial is under pressure for many many consecutive months .. but seems to cope and hold a job down .. but if he opts out .. any new boss would be stunned at the demands of the task . Can not comment on Phil and the time he put in .. but his skill level is high and he was absolutely essential. Me .. well you just need an old honest guy with time .. but even fitting this .. my wife is making threatening noises about 2021 .. ( never mind the risks of Old Father Time )
I can only imagine.
2 Controllers .. it is really tough to be a controller .. this time we were lucky we have several experienced ones.. who know exactly what they are doing .. and we also had people stepping up for the first time .. BUT .. to the best of my knowledge .. there is not a large pool of willing potential volunteers for this role .. so could get tricky
This point I was much closer too.
We hear quite a lot about volunteers [and that's nice because I was one :-)] but what people are probably not so aware of is the enormous amount of work that each controller wades through to lay down the bare bones of the structure before anybody's even turned up on site. Most volunteers treat the event like cyclists, in that they basically turn up and do what needs to be done, just taking it for granted [not in a bad way] that everything's been organized and all they have to do is do whatever they're asked. Let's see what the rota says. Sure, there's a lot of self-initiative that goes on, and it would drive controllers barking mad if volunteers didn't have some kind of initiative, but all the jobs allocated to volunteers hasn't happened as if by magic, it's been set down in a very carefully considered system by each controller weeks and months before hand. It's a lot of work. This is the job of the controller - chief volunteer of the control if you like - a largely thankless and most definitely low glamour job going on quietly in the background.
This is really essential work.
Things can always be improved, and they should be, but event success trickles down from the top. Get the top positions right and it makes everybody's job that much easier - especially that of the volunteers.
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+1 to Roger and Danial.
Increasing the capacity would increase the challenge of beds and feeding and places like Brampton would suffer greatly as space is limited.
My own experience from PBP in 2015, after also experiencing 2011, was that it had grown too large and problems arose. Hopefully, LEL will not follow that example and will remain as a very niche event that will be much sought by riders.
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Personally, I think the event is just the right size now.
... PBP in 2015 ... grown too large & problems arose. Hopefully, LEL will not follow that example and will remain as a very niche event that will be much sought by riders.
+1 to both.
1 Central team .. Danial is under pressure for many many consecutive months .. but seems to cope and hold a job down .. but if he opts out .. any new boss would be stunned at the demands of the task . Can not comment on Phil and the time he put in .. but his skill level is high and he was absolutely essential. Me .. well you just need an old honest guy with time .. but even fitting this .. my wife is making threatening noises about 2021 .. ( never mind the risks of Old Father Time )
I can't help wondering if the central team isn't too small for the size of the event.
Seems to me there are some substantial but fairly discreet chunks of the work that could be delegated if the right people can be persuaded to step forward?
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1 Central team .. Danial is under pressure for many many consecutive months .. but seems to cope and hold a job down .. but if he opts out .. any new boss would be stunned at the demands of the task . Can not comment on Phil and the time he put in .. but his skill level is high and he was absolutely essential. Me .. well you just need an old honest guy with time .. but even fitting this .. my wife is making threatening noises about 2021 .. ( never mind the risks of Old Father Time )
Thanks to all of you, you did a wonderful job! A special mention to Phil who received many criticisms for the little errors in the tracking system. Phil was excellent and didn't deserve these criticisms.
3 Control locations .. really hard to find schools that are willing to step in and allow us to put 1500 riders thru .. bed and catering pressures are substantial .. and we can not extend the start times any more.. so how on earth could we ease the already existing headaches of Night 1
In my view (rider in 2013, volunteer in 2017), the most stringent limiting factor was always the number of available beds. Food can always be bought in greater quantity, bed space can not. So could we imagine selling two sorts of entry tickets for the next time? A first class LEL with beds at controls, and a second class LEL with no beds? People who buy second class tickets know in advance they will have to book their own hotels. Just a suggestion, tell me if you think it's silly!
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. So could we imagine selling two sorts of entry tickets for the next time? A first class LEL with beds at controls, and a second class LEL with no beds? People who buy second class tickets know in advance they will have to book their own hotels. Just a suggestion, tell me if you think it's silly!
Actually I think that is a great idea! Use controls for proof of passage only and on your way.
Probably an admin nightmare but a great idea all the same!
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. So could we imagine selling two sorts of entry tickets for the next time? A first class LEL with beds at controls, and a second class LEL with no beds? People who buy second class tickets know in advance they will have to book their own hotels. Just a suggestion, tell me if you think it's silly!
Actually I think that is a great idea! Use controls for proof of passage only and on your way.
Probably an admin nightmare but a great idea all the same!
It was discussed (fairly briefly I think) a while ago, and largely rejected, on the grounds that i) the organisers didn't want a two-tier event and ii) it would place an extra burden on volunteers determining exactly what facilities an individual rider was entitled to.
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What about additional sleeping facilities in Marqee's in a field along the route between controls? Just beds and portaloo's, no other facilities.
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It works on PBP*, so I don't think it's right to rule out permanently.
*[to be precise, you pay for each bed you use en-route].
Yes of course it is extra work during the event - everything has its drawbacks. But it could be quite a simple system;
You want to come into the dorm? Show me your bed ticket.
We already have a 2-tier event (as do most 1000k+ rides); some riders booked hotels every night. It's well known that audaxers come in gnarly and soft flavours :P
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4 Volunteers. Known to be really rewarding as a task .. but also incredibly hard work .. I dont think there is a bigger pool available .. we would have taken more this time if we could find them
Possibly suggest that controls should allow (promote, even) the ability to volunteer for just one day, or even a few hours.
I would have volunteered but when I emailed I got the impression that they wanted you for the whole week or not at all, well - if you don't get paid for holidays or have limited annual leave you can see how that's a problem for quite a lot of people who would otherwise quite like volunteering.
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What about additional sleeping facilities in Marqee's in a field along the route between controls? Just beds and portaloo's, no other facilities.
Find a field next to the route, exactly by the road, with a gate to get in and out on to that road.
Rent it from the farmer who, for some inexplicable reason, is not using it.
Shift all the cow shit off.
Put up crowd control barriers for bike parking.
Find volunteers to man bike parking.
Pay a marquee company to put up aforesaid marquee.
Consult weather forecast, pray for no wind.
Consult weather forecast, realise it might rain. Pay marquee company to come back and lay flooring so beds are out of the waterlogged ground.
Pay portaloo company to put up portaloos.
Find a volunteer to ensure loos have paper.
Find another volunteer to take over when volunteer A sleeps.
Hire van to get volunteers to and from the nearby school used as a control so they can sleep/wash etc.
Find volunteer to drive van.
Ain't gonna happen.
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What about additional sleeping facilities in Marqee's in a field along the route between controls? Just beds and portaloo's, no other facilities.
Find a field next to the route, exactly by the road, with a gate to get in and out on to that road.
Rent it from the farmer who, for some inexplicable reason, is not using it.
Shift all the cow shit off.
Put up crowd control barriers for bike parking.
Find volunteers to man bike parking.
Pay a marquee company to put up aforesaid marquee.
Consult weather forecast, pray for no wind.
Consult weather forecast, realise it might rain. Pay marquee company to come back and lay flooring so beds are out of the waterlogged ground.
Pay portaloo company to put up portaloos.
Find a volunteer to ensure loos have paper.
Find another volunteer to take over when volunteer A sleeps.
Hire van to get volunteers to and from the nearby school used as a control so they can sleep/wash etc.
Find volunteer to drive van.
Ain't gonna happen.
Just a thought!
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the ability to volunteer for just one day, or even a few hours.
Loads of people volunteered at Loughton for one day or one morning. Loads. Many stayed for longer, and I did three days at Loughton then on the train to Scotland for three days at Moffatt, then Eskdalemuir, then on the train back to Loughton. A week in all. But you have just helped out when you could.
At Moffatt I got talking to an elderly couple who were camped nearby to wave to their son as he passed: they ended up volunteering and wearing the t shirt and staying all night, doing a shift of almost 24 hours. You could have helped for a short time if you'd wanted to.
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The volunteer registration page gave a set of ticky boxes where you could specify which days you were available, and which controls you could get to. Some of the "one way" controls in Scotland had relatively short opening times - Moffat for example would have officially opened about 21 hours after the fisrt riders set off, so in the very early hours of Monday, and closed about 53 hours after the last lot set off at 4pm so some time on Tuesday evening.
ETA - and I'd reiterate a point made somewhere by another poster, that it isn't just about the number of volunteers that you can rustle up, it also really matters who those volunteers are.
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At St Ives the food preparation area looked out onto the bike racks. Although this was fortuitous (not part of the intention) it meant that I could see a bunch of 30 riders arriving and divert as many hands as possible to the food service point and pause their food preparation activities.
That sounds like something that CCTV could provide at other controls.
Also, I wonder if a computer connected to a CCTV feed of a control entrance could be made to give a reasonably accurate count of people on bikes going in and out.
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Now I've had time to reflect, my thoughts on Louth are unchanged from the end of the event.
I'm pretty certain I know what went wrong at Louth, and to a lesser extent in Spalding. Happily, there's nothing there that cannot be fixed easily.
Louth is the only control that got swamped. Brampton got busy, but only Louth ran out of space. This was always my fear with Louth, but I was actually much more worried about the southbound traffic than the northbound.
Where I went wrong was spacing the riders out until 4pm, and leaving a gap between 8 and 9. If I had shifted 150-200 riders from starting at 3-4 to 8-9, most of those riders would have made it to Pocklington, where I had an extra sports hall almost empty. At Louth they estimate they were about 60 beds short, which is unfortunate but not a total disaster. Happily the school is building an extra sports hall next year, solving that problem.
What I also did wrong was underestimate the leg between Louth and Pocklington. I've ridden the route loads, but always split at Hessle, as that's where I usually get the train to to test the route around there. Again, I think this is easily fixed by putting some refreshment facility at the bridge. The Humber Bridge authority have a new events person, who is keen to work with events like LEL, and I think they would be up for letting us do something like this. I had tried to book the village hall in Swanland but they pulled out - I can always try again in 2021.
Finally, the caterer at Spalding and Louth was not up to the job. He was by far my most expensive English caterer, came with references and was excellent at devising and costing menus. I interviewed him and he was very, very plausible. As soon as I paid a deposit though, things started to go wrong. He wanted the full payment upfront, almost four months before the event, which alarmed FB and me hugely. Then came a mysterious VAT demand, which vanished as soon as it appeared. Then I had mobile bar companies asking to confirm their hire, which the caterer had booked but then emphatically denied he had. We were committed by then and I must confess I froze when confronted with the risk that he might never turn up.
I understand that the chefs at Spalding were great, even if the caterer hadn't ordered enough food. At Louth it was a different story. Only one proper chef turned up, bolstered by a couple of the caterer's family. We had paid for about five staff members for each control. The family members did hardly any work, were rude to riders, and committed food hygiene breaches that alarmed the controller enough to put someone else in charge temporarily. They had clearly failed to order enough food, wasted money on unwanted frippery, and cooked tiny portions of relatively expensive ingredients when I had briefed, again and again, of the need to provide big, big portions and to assume that everyone would eat seconds. Needless to say, the caterers wanted still more money after the event. I have refused to speak to them, and if I thought they had any money I would sue them.
So yes, heading north Louth was way, way below what I would have wanted to happen. The controller remains very upset at the failure, which was obviously not his fault. I am still mortified that it marred what I think was an otherwise pretty smooth event. Happily, I'm certain that we can fix things for next time - the school are very keen to be part of LEL2021, and this time they will cater for us. This is great, because the schools are generally very good at it.
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These things happen. Look at the pre-departure meal at PBP. The velodrome caterer came up with conference finger food, which was very nice, but it ran out in short order. I'm sure there were strong assurances prior to the event.
Brampton had a giant 24 hour Tesco 10 miles away. They made numerous trips there for milk, which was being consumed in large quantities. I've seen references to riders putting milk from their bottles into the coffee and tea that Drew was serving on Yad Moss, which might explain something.
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I had more than a few volunteers and riders complain about the behaviour of some riders in canteens. More than a few riders are prone to piling their plates with obscene amounts of food, only to bin much of it 15 minutes later.
Louth aside though, we estimated the food far better than in 2013. I've only had one bill for extra food this time; I had half a dozen in 2013. I slashed my food order for Loughton because I'd over-ordered.
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Louth was more than 60 beds short. They were limiting riders to no more than 3 hours bed booking from before midnight. Having booked a bed as soon as I arrived and then waiting in the food line for 45 minutes and then eating, my sleep stop was much shorter than I'd planned. Given the chance, another 2-3 hours sleep would have made the next few days much easier. I kept falling short of my planned sleep stops for the rest of the ride because I was falling asleep very early in the evenings.
I notice that there were more riders with dodgy digestion than is normal on long brevets. Virtually all of the affected ones I spoke to had eaten (a bit) and slept at Louth northbound. Many of them would have had main meals at Spalding.
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I had more than a few volunteers and riders complain about the behaviour of some riders in canteens. More than a few riders are prone to piling their plates with obscene amounts of food, only to bin much of it 15 minutes later.
If you weren't allowed to go back for seconds and didn't know what or how much your tummy would accept, what would you do?
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Virtually every rider eats at virtually every control, and given the incubation period for these things it would be impossible to ascribe symptoms to a single control.
Given the numbers at the control at the time, and the number of beds the control had, 60 looks about right. I'm going to trust my controllers on this one and resist the allure of anecdata. It's a moot point though, because the capacity at the control will increase 50% for 2021 and I would expect the demand to be lower with different start times.
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I notice that there were more riders with dodgy digestion than is normal on long brevets.
My experience at Loughton for the first three days, Moffat for two night and days and Eskdalemuir for two days then back to the finish: I spoke to hundreds of riders. Not one mentioned upset tummy.
After the wet PBP there were many riders who blamed the agricultural state of French roads and thus the certainty of having cow poo on your water bottle, which you then drank from. Hence the upset tummies. (Many riders use the Halfords water bottle with the little plastic cover for the spout. I remove the top and drink from the bottle.) But I reckon it was more to do with stress and lack of personal hygiene when under pressure.
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I had a cluster of reports of food poisoning, but they were from a control further north. I disregarded them because food poisoning doesn't happen three hours after you eat.
I also had a few complaints of foul-tasting water in Brampton. There was apparently a problem with the water supply in the town, which had tainted the water. The water was safe, but unpleasant to drink.
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I had more than a few volunteers and riders complain about the behaviour of some riders in canteens. More than a few riders are prone to piling their plates with obscene amounts of food, only to bin much of it 15 minutes later.
Louth aside though, we estimated the food far better than in 2013. I've only had one bill for extra food this time; I had half a dozen in 2013. I slashed my food order for Loughton because I'd over-ordered.
TBH the same thing happens at PBP, even when they're paying, especially at the early controls before they get a handle on how much they want. I generally hoovered up any surplus food on the tables at Mortagne. It saved queuing, money and waste. I like to be as 'green' as possible, and I'm not fastidious.
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Indeed. Crucially, almost every control accounted for this, this time.
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I notice that there were more riders with dodgy digestion than is normal on long brevets.
My experience at Loughton for the first three days, Moffat for two night and days and Eskdalemuir for two days then back to the finish: I spoke to hundreds of riders. Not one mentioned upset tummy.
After the wet PBP there were many riders who blamed the agricultural state of French roads and thus the certainty of having cow poo on your water bottle, which you then drank from. Hence the upset tummies. (Many riders use the Halfords water bottle with the little plastic cover for the spout. I remove the top and drink from the bottle.) But I reckon it was more to do with stress and lack of personal hygiene when under pressure.
We'll agree to differ then. I'll stick with anecdata conversations with the riders who were travelling at about my average speed.
I rode PBP07, amongst a couple of dozen 1000+km brevets. Stress during long brevets doesn't really come into it for me nowadays.
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Where I went wrong was spacing the riders out until 4pm, and leaving a gap between 8 and 9. If I had shifted 150-200 riders from starting at 3-4 to 8-9, most of those riders would have made it to Pocklington, where I had an extra sports hall almost empty. At Louth they estimate they were about 60 beds short, which is unfortunate but not a total disaster. Happily the school is building an extra sports hall next year, solving that problem.
What I also did wrong was underestimate the leg between Louth and Pocklington. I've ridden the route loads, but always split at Hessle, as that's where I usually get the train to to test the route around there. Again, I think this is easily fixed by putting some refreshment facility at the bridge. The Humber Bridge authority have a new events person, who is keen to work with events like LEL, and I think they would be up for letting us do something like this. I had tried to book the village hall in Swanland but they pulled out - I can always try again in 2021.
we used 15 beds in the extra sleeping area at Pocklington, which was at about 4:30 at 5:00 we had approx 80-90 beds empty in the main sleep area.
Instead of using humber bridge for a refreshment stop would be worth looking at putting a sleep in at Barton, looks like there is a primary school Castledyke on Castledyke way just off the route in the middle of barton approx 60km from Louth 40km from Pocklington
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I also had a few complaints of foul-tasting water in Brampton. There was apparently a problem with the water supply in the town, which had tainted the water. The water was safe, but unpleasant to drink.
Same problem happened in BC. Riders complained about foul-tasting water at the tap outside of the school. Then, they came back in the dining room, filled their bottles at the water cooling machine, and never complained again. Actually, it was the same water. The cold temperature made the foul taste undetectable.
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I was told by a couple of people that the BC water was tasting funny having come through a long hose. (I think it was BC, the memory is a bit addled) . Personally i found all water fine and never noticed any problems.
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I used the outside water taps at Brampton control to fill 1 drinks bottle and too noticed the odd taste and assumed it must some form of water treatment agent. I did not experience any ill effects.
On leaving St Ives control heading north bound, I picked up a flapjack to use as a mid ride snack in between controls. I found this to be a good idea. I noticed that not every control provided this option. Where controls are experiencing shortage or delays in providing meals, perhaps provision of cereal bars could enable a rider to progress to next control or at least sustain them to a convenience store etc on route. That is one mistake I made in not ensuring I was carrying enough snacks to nibble in between controls.
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I was told by a couple of people that the BC water was tasting funny having come through a long hose. (I think it was BC, the memory is a bit addled) . Personally i found all water fine and never noticed any problems.
The water's pretty manky everywhere at the moment, they tend to put more chlorine in at times of heightened terror alert. The Brampton water has changed source recently as well.
There was a long hose to the taps. The controller had been trying to use the same tap as 2013, which was a lot nearer, and was finally told that was not possible on the Wednesday before the start. The alternative tap was on the entrance road, which would have meant clashing with arriving riders. The filling point ended up at the first place which didn't interfere with traffic flow.
The result was that the water could stand in the hose, and warm up, with the chlorine not helping. That didn't happen as much during the peak flow, as the water didn't stay in the pipes as long, and those times were at night. Later, the volunteers ran the taps at intervals to avoid water standing too long.
It's a problem common to all the external tap arrangements to a greater or lesser extent. That sort problem is also a function of dealing with school caretakers out of term time.
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Brampton hasn't changed water source. People are getting confused with out here on the Cumbrian coast where we have changed source to reduce the abstraction from Ennerdale water (to protect fresh water mussels). That change only affects the western fringe of the county.
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I'm only repeating what the locals told the volunteers.
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Re the chat about a control/refreshment facility at Humber Bridge or Hessle..
May I suggest Hessle High Academy which is on the route located on Heads Lane, on the left just before the traffic lights, before you join Jenny Brough Lane. I have visited the school with work, its a new build with a modern kitchen and dining area and a separate Sports Hall, so it may be suitable for a control or a refreshment stop.
https://www.thehessleacademy.co.uk/hessle-academy/facilities-for-hire
Hope this helps.
M
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On leaving St Ives control heading north bound, I picked up a flapjack to use as a mid ride snack in between controls. I found this to be a good idea. I noticed that not every control provided this option. Where controls are experiencing shortage or delays in providing meals, perhaps provision of cereal bars could enable a rider to progress to next control or at least sustain them to a convenience store etc on route.
We'd recommended that our chef (Barney) make tray bakes and allow riders to wrap the cake in foil or cling film themselves to take away - a hassle, but an intentional one as many 'grab and go' bars end up squashed in a pocket 3 days later and we considered it wasteful.
They ignored our advice and as a result over 1,000 pre wrapped, expensive and often gluten-free cake bars were consumed in one day (Monday) leaving the chef a bit perplexed.
He coped admirably in every other way though - top team, Marcus and helpers
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As one who was in the bulge (presumably) and failed to secure a bed on night 1 (Louth), night 2 (Alston), night 3 (Eskdalemuir), my impression was that there were as people sleeping on the floors as the number of advertised bed spaces for these controls on the website. I just wanted to say this because I have my doubts that "adding 60 beds to Louth" (for example) would address the underlying issue. I don't know what the solution is (if there is one) but perhaps inviting more people who ride at night and sleep during the day? (Romanians? ;) )
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Was Alston really full at any point? The report I got back from the controller was they could have handled far more than they did.
They definitely had 30 beds at Eskdalemuir, and they crammed 242 into Louth. Alston had 30 beds in the youth hostel and I sent 120 beds and 250 blankets for the school - I estimated that they had space for 100 in the hall but happy to be corrected and apologise if that wasn't the case.
What I have are the bed request lists from Louth, which match what the controller says about the demand. Now, thinking about this, I should add more to allow for people who didn't even bother asking. For Louth it's moot anyway, because it will have a lot more capacity next time and hopefully less demand.
You have to also remember that not everyone who sleeps wants a bed in a dormitory. Some riders just want to get their head down for half an hour - catnapping around the clock is a surprisingly popular approach and a bane for controllers looking to keep tables clear
I'm reluctant to put more than refreshment and loos between Louth and Pocklington. It's a tough leg, especially if you don't know how to deal with hills like that. The climb to Caistor is brutal, especially because it is largely invisible. But I also think 2x50km legs are too short. A good compromise is providing what is essentially a garage stop.
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What I have are the bed request lists from Louth
When I got to Louth (about 1am) everyone was being told "come back in half an hour / an hour". The bed booking was also right next to the queue for brevet stamping, so lots of people would have overheard this without making themselves known. And there were people being told to find a dark corner instead. So I'd say the vast majority of people who wanted a bed and didn't get one (or ended up queueing excessively / or killing time in the dining hall etc) wouldn't have been recorded at all, or even made themselves known to the controller.
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That's very useful to know.
With an extra hall in Louth, and the extra hall in Pocklington, it should comfortably fit everyone who wants to stay around there on the first night. Some earlier times, and a break in the middle, should persuade a few more to push on.
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There were 30 beds at Eskdalemuir. There was also about 100 people lying on the floor. Plus the village hall. We were swamped, everyone coped excellently I thought. But what can you do? I reckon many riders tried to push on from Edinburgh to Brampton for some sleep but couldn't make it so lay on the floor at Eskdalemuir. They seemed happy enough.
To me it seemed that it had just dawned on these riders that an event like LEL doesn't really start until about halfway through.
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By the sound of things, there were quite a few riders who didn't expect to get beyond Edinburgh but felt o.k and decided to go a bit further.
Then they realised that the road ahead of them was through mamba (miles and miles of bugger all ) country.
Given the weather that afternoon, many felt that any port in a storm was worth hoving in to.
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Until about Brampton on the way back I was in the bulge. I have the impression that many people could have pushed through parts of the nights given more experience or available more experienced company. Especially for the Louth-Pocklington leg the problem was mostly in rider's heads, causing them to stay an excessive amount of time in Louth. For next time, a number of riders who are experienced in riding through the first night and not minding to have a few riders tag along could be very helpful in convincing those who don't dare to do this alone to push one from Lotuh to Pocklington. A facility of any sort near the Humber Bridge would also help.
I passed Eskdalemuir around 4am on the return leg. On the way to Eskdalemuir I remarked that the descents were very exhausting for many riders, mainly due to insufficient lighting and fear of lifestock wandering on the road. A lot of these riders decided to wait in Eskdalemuir until daiylight appeared. An option would be to inverse the northern section, having riders first head for Eskdalemuir and returning via Moffat. The Moffat-Brampton section should be great for riding during the night, two service stations nearby are a great back up in case you need anything.
I don't expect LEL to be any shorter next time, given the tradition of ever increasing distances, it's quite well possible that next time Great Easton is past the 1400km mark. If so, then the option of an 'extra' timecheck at 1400km is very feasible. It would certainly increase the chance of slow riders succeeding at LEL.
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^^^^ As mentioned up-thread, experiences vary and whether you are able to continue, or wether you may wish to continue, might depend on the previous weather or weather at the time. I could have pushed on from Brampton but thought why bother? I had already decided that 100hr was not on the agenda and decided 5hr kip at Brampton would put in in good order for the rest of the ride: Brampton had lots of space at the time. I left when it was light and off I went. Could I have carried on to Moffat? Probably. Was it more fun and enjoyable to stop at Brampton? Definitely. One such option might be to adopt the model by places like Denmark on PBP where they have the big peloton controlled by the team captain. But that is not for everyone and such events are a broad church where individual needs vary and plans change during the event. Overall, compared to PBP, I thought the organisation was super and those involved in the organisation and all the volunteers should be proud of what was achieved.
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The volunteers were great.It was all the other riders that caused all the problems. ;)
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By the sound of things, there were quite a few riders who didn't expect to get beyond Edinburgh but felt o.k and decided to go a bit further.
Then they realised that the road ahead of them was through mamba (miles and miles of bugger all ) country.
Given the weather that afternoon, many felt that any port in a storm was worth hoving in to.
I wonder how old MAMBA is. I can trace it back to the director of Scottish Natural Heritage in the 1990s. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TTquSNxSpq8C&pg=PA134&dq=MAMBA+Miles+and+Miles+of+bugger+all+Wilkinson+and+Waterton&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj04u_xpP3VAhUCJ1AKHbxpCFMQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=MAMBA%20Miles%20and%20Miles%20of%20bugger%20all%20Wilkinson%20and%20Waterton&f=false
I showed Heather a photo of the Scottish hills, and we fell into a discussion of the impact of sheep stocking rates on the regeneration of Rowan.
We had a chat about spikes at controls on the way to circuit training. The conclusion was that modelling tends to ignore the weather. It only needs a tailwind, a headwind or a torrential downpour to bunch the field.
If the role of modelling is to match capacity to demand, it's always going to be prone to unpredictable meteorology.
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The first time that I heard the acronym was from the lips of the well known Scottish philosopher Rab C. Nesbitt.
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The conclusion was that modelling tends to ignore the weather. It only needs a tailwind, a headwind or a torrential downpour to bunch the field.
If the role of modelling is to match capacity to demand, it's always going to be prone to unpredictable meteorology.
Nothing to stop the model incorporating meteorological factors. Yes, it would make the model more complex, but by studying the impact of the variable weather this year, more sophisticated planning could be an option in future years. You'll not know the weather in advance, but you could model a weather-agnostic rider throughput and then consider the impact of different weather patterns.
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The first time that I heard the acronym was from the lips of the well known Scottish philosopher Rab C. Nesbitt.
I think I saw it in a book about maps. They seem to constitute 10% of our library, 10% being maps.
The conclusion was that modelling tends to ignore the weather. It only needs a tailwind, a headwind or a torrential downpour to bunch the field.
If the role of modelling is to match capacity to demand, it's always going to be prone to unpredictable meteorology.
Nothing to stop the model incorporating meteorological factors. Yes, it would make the model more complex, but by studying the impact of the variable weather this year, more sophisticated planning could be an option in future years. You'll not know the weather in advance, but you could model a weather-agnostic rider throughput and then consider the impact of different weather patterns.
On the way to the LEL start I was massively delayed by a combination of congestion, and 'Upgrading to Smart Motorway' works. So far, so Groundhog Day.
The advantage that the motorway controllers have is that they are working on the same problem day after day. They can look at the surges in traffic, and fiddle with their response to real-time data on the problem.
There's a strong social dimension at LEL, which skews the response to feedback. I'm unlikely to have an objective view about Brampton, as my partner was the controller. Conversely, she's a trained scientist with abundant management experience, part of which is the essential capacity to 'spin'.
The strongest feedback will come from those with a negative experience, but it's hard to rank that response against what happened to them, as it was chaotic at the time of their experience.
So the problem is one of a long cycle time: Four years, or two if you count PBP. However, PBP has a different payment model, which encourages participants to make their own arrangements, and divert from official provision where needed.
An interesting area in feedback terms is the 'hilliness' of the ride. At no time over three participations did I resent the flat sections of LEL. Yet the message has long been that flat bits are 'boring', and we should seek to avoid them. But when we read accounts, many avoid hills where possible, taking the routes that are condemned as flat, dangerous and boring. But the usual suspects still tell us that they weren't challenged enough by the terrain.
Maybe we could construct an LEL video game, running all the scenarios time after time. Entry could be conditional on achieving a high enough score. You could do the same with controllers, but then you wouldn't get any, as what they put themselves through is not rational.
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The conclusion was that modelling tends to ignore the weather. It only needs a tailwind, a headwind or a torrential downpour to bunch the field.
If the role of modelling is to match capacity to demand, it's always going to be prone to unpredictable meteorology.
Nothing to stop the model incorporating meteorological factors. Yes, it would make the model more complex, but by studying the impact of the variable weather this year, more sophisticated planning could be an option in future years. You'll not know the weather in advance, but you could model a weather-agnostic rider throughput and then consider the impact of different weather patterns.
We looked at this in planning food for St Ives but it was impossible to plan for the combination of adverse weather on riders and riders collective/social response to the weather. That is they might decide to hold up or push on and that is something that has a social impact on other riders; they are more likely to follow the pattern of other riders. The other difficulty is local weather factors. A heavy shower or a local funnelling of wind can be quite confined and make a big impact if it hits a particular part of the route. We can all remember storms that drenched one town and missed the neighbouring town. My story is of a cricket match at Trent Bridge where the roads were awash only 3 miles down the road.
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I was able to go straight to the controller and ask them what was happening whenever I went to a control. I missed the peak demand times, which is probably a good thing. I didn't got to Louth or Spalding on the way out, as I would have got bogged down.
The response from Barnard Castle onwards was that the expected rush hadn't happened, but was expected at some point, albeit delayed. By St Ives on the return, I was being asked if I'd seen 'the bulge' out on the road, as no-one knew where it was. 600 to 800 riders were unaccounted for.
There wasn't an appreciation from some riders that control closing times were not elastic, in the sense that the control would be physically closing its doors, and be handed back after cleaning. I'm not too bothered about validation for all entrants, many are in it for the adventure, not the points. But without the spur of having your card taken off you, a key motivator is removed.
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Hmmm... lot's of good reading here and it is fascinating thinking about all the factors and things that go into planning the route. There is, of course, only one way to manage spikes and that is have 1500 beds at each control ;)
It's far too complex a system to plan for at a high enough level of fidelity to keep everyone happy. If someone could work out the flow model of 1500 elements over 5 days they would be very rich making money in casinos. I think the live analytics model is worth thinking about in terms of reporting numbers and making sure people are scanning all the time, but that is about being aware of what's happening up the road and (hopefully) having some flex to meet surges. I have no idea what systems were being used there but in my day job I tell people to use Google Data Studio a lot. In many ways I loathe Google but sometimes they are unbeatable, and analytics is one of those ways.
I am also aware that the general Audax population has a huge ratio of IT and digital people in it with a huge range of skills and experience that could be mined. I am astounded that one person did all the systems work. I mean chapeau, but that is a ton of work for one person on a system that has only one chance to be right!
As a rider I think that learning about controls, bed capacity and so on gives the event it's character. I know that pushing to Eskdalemuir is going to mean crammed on the floor somewhere, I know that 100k is a long leg from Louth to Pocklington, I factor in the 'emergency' stop at Alston if needed on the way out. All this is ride character, as much as the hills and the weather. This sleep/feed/weather/legs/WTF strategy element is what makes Audax a fun challenge. I am not sure I want that element reduced too much! Having said that, well, Louth, but that doesn't need raking over and we were always going to ride first night anyway. I was staggered by the number of people expecting to sleep there, no, get on with it!
I am also aware that being full value and starting lantern rouge meant I never saw the worst of it - but then that was a strategic choice...
Finally totally in awe of organisers, volunteers and controllers.
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When I filmed PBP 2015, the controllers at Fougeres were contrite about their IT glitches, which seemed to be WiFi based. It's mentioned on page 13 of the PBP results booklet. 'From Tuesday onward we experienced some issues in tracking riders and in communicating with the preceding and the next checkpoint'. I'm aware of that because I was there when it was happening, and I helped on the English wording in the booklet.
The whole process of managing these events is interesting. One problem lies in detaching 'the 'blame' element from analysis. That's complicated by the presence of contractual arrangements with commercial suppliers.
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As a rider I think that learning about controls, bed capacity and so on gives the event it's character. I know that pushing to Eskdalemuir is going to mean crammed on the floor somewhere, I know that 100k is a long leg from Louth to Pocklington, I factor in the 'emergency' stop at Alston if needed on the way out. All this is ride character, as much as the hills and the weather. This sleep/feed/weather/legs/WTF strategy element is what makes Audax a fun challenge. I am not sure I want that element reduced too much! Having said that, well, Louth, but that doesn't need raking over and we were always going to ride first night anyway. I was staggered by the number of people expecting to sleep there, no, get on with it!
I so agree with this. Being in the same group as Alotronic and the same ride through the first night strategy I had actually got pretty tired and decided a couple of hours sleep at Louth would be beneficial. When I got there it was obvious that was going to be an issue so I had a walk around, got a coffee and cracked on. We knew there was a 24 hour petrol station not far off route to get food and we knew how to get back to the route without back tracking. Some coffee and the sun coming up got rid of the dozies and I made it all the way to Alston before a proper sleep stop.
On the way back I got caught out in Eskdalemuir in what I suspect was a good part of the bulge. Of the 4 of us 3 got beds but there was an issue with mine. I assessed the situation and my state and decided I could push on to Brampton and that is what I did. I picked up a couple of other East Anglian riders along the way and we kept each other company and had a nice ride in. I only managed 30 minutes of sleep in Brampton, I woke and was struggling to get back to sleep with the seagulls on the roof and at that point I decided it was better to be riding then lying there thinking about going back to sleep.
Pushing on from Eskdalemuir got me ahead of the bulge and I then had a long sleep in Pocklington while those who had got beds in Eskdalemuir made their way south.
None of the issues I experienced felt like ride spoiling issues. Although it is a full TLC event it is still an Audax and a bit of self sufficiency can go a long way to avoiding loads of negative thoughts. I also had no negative experiences with the volunteers/controllers, they all did everything they possibly could to help but sometimes I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Good local knowledge (24hr petrol station) was put to good use, but for those without such knowledge? Also true for alternative routing. Many folk will be reliant on the route and facilities as provided and may not have taken the decisions that others took. After all, entry fee included prospect of such facilities. (As an aside, apart from an ice cream, a couple of Bounty Bars and 2 cans of coke, I spent nothing else which was in stark contrast to PBP where there is a constant outgoing of cash)
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On the way to the LEL start I was massively delayed by a combination of congestion, and 'Upgrading to Smart Motorway' works. So far, so Groundhog Day.
The advantage that the motorway controllers have is that they are working on the same problem day after day. They can look at the surges in traffic, and fiddle with their response to real-time data on the problem.
Motorway controllers have to deal with induced demand. The number of riders on a given ride can't increase, regardless of how effectively the controls are working.
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There are two variables you can control.
The location and size of your controls (in connection with the route)
The distribution, size, and time limits of each of the start groups
The former is constrained by the choice of route and places with appropriate facilities and locations willing to take on LEL.
The latter constrained by the overall size of the field and over how many days you can realistically run the event, and there's a max time limit you can't go beyond.
A number of the controls have to have deposits paid a year or two in advance. You have the size and time limit of each start group defined months in advance for when riders select their preferences. Actual starts are allocated a few months in advance to allow riders to make their plans but also so we can place the brevet card, drop bag, frame card orders to be printed having done the test runs.
Weather forecasts for the event dates are but a speck in the eye when all the variables you can control are in place. So your model essentially has to work on the basis of the most likely prevailing weather conditions. You can't go dicking about with rider starts if a weather forecast the week before says a strong northerly will be in place.
So essentially you're looking at getting the size, spread, and time limits of the start groups right (for the most likely prevailing conditions). You want the bulge spread out across a number of controls that first night when it comes time that riders want to sleep. The bulge very much thins (as in it's still there but more elongated so the peaks are much smaller) after the first night unless you get extreme weather and many riders get pinned down in a control location later in the event. But that comes under contingency planning, and the reacting to what's happening on the ground during the event. Each control doing the best based on what we know, what's happening on the ground, and what we have at our disposal.
All controls had live analytics both real time tracking info summaries and live forecasting showing riders arrivals over the next four hours. On a single page, they could also see the real time analytics and forecasting across all controls to get an event picture. Plus they could see how many riders were left to come northbound and southbound through their controls. These were in the form of graphs and we could see Louth unfolding in front of our eyes that first night as I remember discussing with Danial as we looked at the forecast bulge over Louth. Of course a plague of locusts is only a problem if they settle on your fields of wheat and are then joined by more.
A view I've discussed with Danial post event is that maybe sleep deprived volunteers just need some big simple numbers in front of them for live analytics during the event. Sometimes less is more when people are very tired.
So two things to be tweaked to help manage spikes.
Size, distribution, and time limits of each start group done the best we can with what we have and now know.
Real time information, distilled down to its simplest form, (big numbers) that can be understood and used effectively by sleep deprived volunteers during the event.
Plus as mentioned upthread potentially extra food / shelter controls in strategic places that may be open for some or all of the event. This was tried with Coxwold and Alston this time round. Of course this will mean finding extra controllers which will be easy (of course) and putting the price up which I'm sure no one will mind.
We've got a shit load of live tracking data to slice and dice in various manners. For instance for every arrival scan we have a departure scan in 71% of cases. Thatll enable us to build up a very accurate picture of just how many riders were in each control (at the same time) looking across the entire time span of the event, and which starts were they from? What is the distribution of time spent in each control and what's the 90th quartile etc? How does that vary across starts? I hope to produce some of the outputs of this for the next Arrivee. I understand it's just come out (I'm currently on holiday) so that gives plenty of time to prepare something for the next one.
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extra food / shelter controls in strategic places that may be open for some or all of the event. This was tried with Coxwold and Alston this time round.
Good idea - BUT - the experience of Ekdalemuir suggests that riders will be affected by the same weather - so they pushed on from Edinburgh when it was light then through Innerleithen and aimed for Brampton but ran out of steam at Eskdalemuir so very many were rammed into the smallvillage hall. If you had hoped to spread the bulge by placing a smallish sleep stop somewhere you might watch it becomeit rammed anyway, if there was a sudden heavy storm/headwind/ drop in temperature.
(For riders, I think the only way to avoid the bulge is to book a hotel on the first night. After that you can hope things are spread out more.)
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extra food / shelter controls in strategic places that may be open for some or all of the event. This was tried with Coxwold and Alston this time round.
Good idea - BUT - the experience of Ekdalemuir suggests that riders will be affected by the same weather - so they pushed on from Edinburgh when it was light then through Innerleithen and aimed for Brampton but ran out of steam at Eskdalemuir so very many were rammed into the smallvillage hall. If you had hoped to spread the bulge by placing a smallish sleep stop somewhere you might watch it becomeit rammed anyway, if there was a sudden heavy storm/headwind/ drop in temperature.
(For riders, I think the only way to avoid the bulge is to book a hotel on the first night. After that you can hope things are spread out more.)
Eskdalemuir is what it is. Though I'm surprised at so many stopping there. Given they knew the likelihood of a bed was near enough zero. In 2013 I left Brampton northbound with less than 30 mins contingency. But still made it back to Brampton the same day, and would have pushed on to Barnard Castle if I didn't want to see Yad Moss in daylight. So the equivalent of a 4pm starter leaving Brampton northbound with about 6 hours time in hand if we were to look at timings.
I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I'll get to find out again when I ride in 2021.
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I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I can confirm this. I've met only a few sizeable groups during the night, and that was near Pocklington on the way back. The others were between Innerleithen and Eskdalemuir. Immediately after Eskdalemuir it was very lonely, as it was between Louth and Barton. Since I rode the daytime sections in the bulge I conclude that hardly anyone was riding in the 2nd half of the night.
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(For riders, I think the only way to avoid the bulge is to book a hotel on the first night. After that you can hope things are spread out more.)
My strategy was to ride through the first night, with a start in the early afternoon. It worked quite well: arrived at around 5:30pm in Brampton where I had a dropbag and when I went to sleep at 7 maybe 5 beds were occupied. When I left some 5 hours later I was ahead of the bulge I think.
I'm a newbie with events like this, but there are many stories about busy controls and lack of beds on popular brevets; this prompted the plan above (besides, I enjoy riding at night).
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
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I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I can confirm this. I've met only a few sizeable groups during the night, and that was near Pocklington on the way back. The others were between Innerleithen and Eskdalemuir. Immediately after Eskdalemuir it was very lonely, as it was between Louth and Barton. Since I rode the daytime sections in the bulge I conclude that hardly anyone was riding in the 2nd half of the night.
That might be because of the 'relaxed' attitudes to intermediate control times. Why cycle into the night to make control deadlines if you don't think you have to? I don't know if the motive for that relaxation was for safety, or to relieve spikes.
That's fine up to Moffat, as Brampton is open non-stop for the returning riders. I don't know what happened at Moffat. I've been told of riders five hours out of time at Brampton outbound, but I don't know if Moffat stayed open longer for them, or Edinburgh etc.
I had a query at Eskdalemuir about who had gone through. That would have dictated if I doubled back to get some footage of the fast riders. That information wasn't available, which was something of a relief, as it was getting dark, and I needed to get to a hotel in Innerleithen. I did take some video of the exchange at Eskdalemuir, and the Brampton desk earlier.
https://vimeo.com/231737764
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I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I can confirm this. I've met only a few sizeable groups during the night, and that was near Pocklington on the way back. The others were between Innerleithen and Eskdalemuir. Immediately after Eskdalemuir it was very lonely, as it was between Louth and Barton. Since I rode the daytime sections in the bulge I conclude that hardly anyone was riding in the 2nd half of the night.
That might be because of the 'relaxed' attitudes to intermediate control times. Why cycle into the night to make control deadlines if you don't think you have to? I don't know if the motive for that relaxation was for safety, or to relieve spikes.
-little traffic on the road so you can use a main road
-not being fast enough to sleep full nights
-having a biorhytm which favours sleeping at the end of the night and not riding at the end of the night
-needing to gain enough time ahead to compensate for the headwind on the way back
etc.
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I had a query at Eskdalemuir about who had gone through. That would have dictated if I doubled back to get some footage of the fast riders. That information wasn't available, which was something of a relief, as it was getting dark...
Yeah who had gone through didn't serve any use for a control. How many had gone through they could answer, and how many still to come they could answer as well.
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Nice to note that the women (at another control) in Damon's interview couldn't access the info either.
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The provisional list for LEL 2017 suggests 811 finishers from roughly 1400 starters.
I'm curious to know if anyone has the answer to what the effect of having approximately 600 packed riders over the course of the event made on how busy the controls were? Had there been fewer packers would conditions at those hard pressed controls been even more challenging? Did most people pack late in to the event so the effect on most controls were minimal. Was it fortunate in some respects that there were so many who had packed?
I wonder if a lot of early packers would have returned to Loughton via the southbound controls anyway - maybe getting caught up by those returning from Edinburgh? I guess the nature of being a packed rider means that you cease to become part of the available control data.
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Nice to note that the women (at another control) in Damon's interview couldn't access the info either.
I was just trying to get an idea of the shape of the event. At the 24 hour they issue 100 mile and 12 hour sheets, so you know who to focus on. I've got an interview with Andy Wilkinson where I show him a 12 Hour sheet in 2015 at the Tern Hill roundabout, which was the first time he'd heard of Michael Broadwith.
I'm not that bothered about LEL as a race, but there seemed to be an element of that around, so I needed to get a feel for the main players. One of the background voices in that interview is Marko Baloh, the well known RAAM rider, and indoor 24 hour record holder, so I'd got that covered. I was trying to do some justice to those between him and Anco de Jong. Jasmijn Muller was obviously one, and I'd seen an Austrian near Hallbankgate. The rest had been in their rain gear, and I had no conception of who they were anyway.
At the first control, St Ives, I saw Matt and Robert on the desk, both veterans of the 24, and I had it in my head that there might be a way for volunteers to follow the 'race' aspect, as average speeds and stopped time hold a certain fascination for those who've done the 24, and other races.
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Nice to note that the women (at another control) in Damon's interview couldn't access the info either.
Seems odd that they didn't understand this text describing one of the charts on their control dashboard. I'd have thought it'd be pretty obvious this was the chart they wanted to look at for that info.
This chart shows the number of riders that have passed through your control northbound or southbound
What did you think that text meant when you read it?
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I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I can confirm this. I've met only a few sizeable groups during the night, and that was near Pocklington on the way back. The others were between Innerleithen and Eskdalemuir. Immediately after Eskdalemuir it was very lonely, as it was between Louth and Barton. Since I rode the daytime sections in the bulge I conclude that hardly anyone was riding in the 2nd half of the night.
That might be because of the 'relaxed' attitudes to intermediate control times. Why cycle into the night to make control deat/early dlines if you don't think you have to? I don't know if the motive for that relaxation was for safety, or to relieve spikes.
I can confirm too that in Barnard Castle, late night/early morning arrivals were very scarce. I don't think it is due to any strategic calculation regarding cutoff times. I think it's more a combination of 1) higher percentage of inexperienced riders, and 2) bad weather.
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Nice to note that the women (at another control) in Damon's interview couldn't access the info either.
Seems odd that they didn't understand this text describing one of the charts on their control dashboard. I'd have thought it'd be pretty obvious this was the chart they wanted to look at for that info.
This chart shows the number of riders that have passed through your control northbound or southbound
What did you think that text meant when you read it?
Phil,
Given that several people (from a variety of locations/demographics) found this hard to find/understand, it's possible that your UI wasn't as intuitive as you are trying to make out.
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I get the feeling that this time many didn't like riding into the night where as in 2013 there were always others on the road at night.
I can confirm this. I've met only a few sizeable groups during the night, and that was near Pocklington on the way back. The others were between Innerleithen and Eskdalemuir. Immediately after Eskdalemuir it was very lonely, as it was between Louth and Barton. Since I rode the daytime sections in the bulge I conclude that hardly anyone was riding in the 2nd half of the night.
That might be because of the 'relaxed' attitudes to intermediate control times. Why cycle into the night to make control deadlines if you don't think you have to? I don't know if the motive for that relaxation was for safety, or to relieve spikes.
I can confirm too that in Barnard Castle, late night/early morning arrivals were very scarce. I don't think it is due to any strategic calculation regarding cutoff times. I think it's more a combination of 1) higher percentage of inexperienced riders, and 2) bad weather.
I can distinctly remember more than a few soggy riders arriving during darkness at BC in 2013 having had a wet descent of Yad Moss and Teesdale.
With half decent lights the southbound descent is much gentler than the northbound.
We are back to the Edinburgh or bust group that I referred to above. Neither expecting to be nor planning for what happened on the way south.
The motive for relaxed deadlines AIUI, was to enable the maximum number of riders to finish within the overall time limit.
If you are out of time at intermediate controls, it can be game over, but the orgs. decided that if a rider had a chance to make up the time en route, then they should be given the opportunity.
I don't have a problem with that , but it may have deluded some riders into thinking that making up time was quite easy, tempting them to stay a bit longer at controls , eating away at their chance of success. The headwind in the Fens wasn't an issue because by then they had already, mentally, thrown in the towel.
Many were genuine triers but reading some of the anecdotal stuff from controls and on here, it seemed that quite a few treated the second half as an optional extra.
The orgs. cannot predict any of this ,so some things will never actually run to plan or even in the same way as the previous event. When LEL becomes "routine" or "as per average" then it will lose some of that character that riders seek out.
Maybe AUK should offer an L2E as a second string event? Get to Edinburgh within time and sign on for a second southbound instalment (all major credit cards accepted)
The tales of woe and weather from 2017 will make more than a few think again about whether the full package deal is a jolly good idea?
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who had gone through didn't serve any use for a control. How many had gone through they could answer, and how many still to come they could answer as well.
Having got ahead of the 'bulge', but then slept a fair bit, from Tuesday onward one of the topics on conversation while checking in to each control was 'where's the bulge?' At every desk they often shared that I was the 375th through (or whatever) and I inferred from what was otherwise shared that they had a fair idea of the nature (likely peak time and rough numbers) of the bulge to come, thanks to Phil's work and the increased familiarity of the volunteers on the desk. When ESL asked his questions (the answers to which were not ones of any use to the controls), it was still early days/time (2000 on Monday and only a few through) so there is an application training and familiarity issue here (which will have taken time given check-in desk manning rotas) - sorted by mutual instruction and practice, I expect.
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Maybe AUK should offer an L2E as a second string event?
I have no idea about the organisational difficulties this would bring, but I like the idea (even though I would go for the full package myself).
The Rando Imperator (http://witoor.com/en/rando-imperator/) had something similar. You could either do the full 600km from Munich to Ferrara, or 300km from Munich to Bolzano, or 300km from Bolzano to Ferrara. Start time for the last one was roughly in line with arrival of riders who rode from Munich.
Basic facilities near the Humber Bridge (in Humber Bridge Country Park on the North shore perhaps) is another idea that I like a lot. Something similar to Drew's Café (happy memories this) but with a loo; keep it basic so I don't get tempted to faff for too long ;D
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Maybe AUK should offer an L2E as a second string event?
A stupid idea and very sure that the top man of LEL would agree
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Nice to note that the women (at another control) in Damon's interview couldn't access the info either.
Seems odd that they didn't understand this text describing one of the charts on their control dashboard. I'd have thought it'd be pretty obvious this was the chart they wanted to look at for that info.
This chart shows the number of riders that have passed through your control northbound or southbound
What did you think that text meant when you read it?
Phil,
Given that several people (from a variety of locations/demographics) found this hard to find/understand, it's possible that your UI wasn't as intuitive as you are trying to make out.
Matt, when you are talking about UI you are referring the above text, another bit of text to describe charts function in words, followed by a two column chart, labelled and numbered axes and legend. These are the type of charts you learnt at school, and see every day in news articles and elsewhere. Now what specifically did you find challenging to understand about the above text or a two column chart? If you can't answer that, then this discussion is ended.
Here's an example two column chart (thrown up by Google) to remind you what they look like, and which seems to have been the cause of your difficulties in understanding.
(http://www.onemint.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/image6.png)
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Maybe AUK should offer an L2E as a second string event?
I have no idea about the organisational difficulties this would bring, but I like the idea (even though I would go for the full package myself).
The Rando Imperator (http://witoor.com/en/rando-imperator/) had something similar. You could either do the full 600km from Munich to Ferrara, or 300km from Munich to Bolzano, or 300km from Bolzano to Ferrara. Start time for the last one was roughly in line with arrival of riders who rode from Munich.
For some this created a hare effect.
At the Rando Imperator this benefitted the medium fast full distance riders who slept a couple of hours in Bolzano. They could tag along with the fast groups of fresh 300k riders. For the slower full value riders it was different, the fast groups were too fast and the slower 300k groups needed a tow from 600k riders on the flat last 100km.
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Maybe AUK should offer an L2E as a second string event?
A stupid idea and very sure that the top man of LEL would agree
Eloquently put :-*
But thinking a bit more about it, I've come to agree that there is not much merit in it.
If you'd ask me "what makes LEL special?", the two things that immediately popup in my mind are 1) the distance and 2) the superb organisation. And would people travel halfway around the globe to ride "just" a 600k brevet? Even when the organizers have such a sterling reputation?
Perhaps it's best to just leave the event as it is (including the current limit on the number of riders), make the small improvements already mentioned and just accept that not everything will go to plan and a substantial number of riders will not finish (in time). A 1400k brevet is not supposed to be a walk in the park, now is it?
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this discussion is ended.
Cool. It's been a pleasure.
But before you go - can you tell me about the feedback volunteers provided on the 2013 system? [assuming it's not secret] And how this influenced the specification for 2017?
Oh, and will you be designing the 2021 interface?
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who had gone through didn't serve any use for a control. How many had gone through they could answer, and how many still to come they could answer as well.
Having got ahead of the 'bulge', but then slept a fair bit, from Tuesday onward one of the topics on conversation while checking in to each control was 'where's the bulge?' At every desk they often shared that I was the 375th through (or whatever) and I inferred from what was otherwise shared that they had a fair idea of the nature (likely peak time and rough numbers) of the bulge to come, thanks to Phil's work and the increased familiarity of the volunteers on the desk. When ESL asked his questions (the answers to which were not ones of any use to the controls), it was still early days/time (2000 on Monday and only a few through) so there is an application training and familiarity issue here (which will have taken time given check-in desk manning rotas) - sorted by mutual instruction and practice, I expect.
Good points and although a full guide (in PDF format) to the tracking screens and charts was provided for controllers. Plus they had 5 weeks to get familiar with using the tracking screens and scanners whilst reading the guide. The volunteers had much less time in the event to get up to speed.
So a suggestion I'll put in is that we have a separate A4 or A5 "idiots guide" for each tracking screen. That can be printed off and laminated then left by the PCs and can be referred to by any volunteer thrust onto the desk at short notice etc.
I'd also like to distill the analytics back to its purest form, focussing on the key metrics the controllers found useful. Less is more when a volunteer is overwhelmed both in workload and tiredness.
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<snip>
The volunteers had much less time in the event to get up to speed.
<snip>
I'd also like to distill the analytics back to its purest form, focussing on the key metrics the controllers found useful. Less is more when a volunteer is overwhelmed both in workload and tiredness.
:thumbsup:
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I thought the two column southbound/northbound chart and the graph predicting next few hours incoming riders were extremely easy to read. We read the latter with a degree of caution, since we were working on the assumption that if riders weren't scanning out it would be best guess at best.
It took another volunteer who knew how it worked (having been shown by another volunterr who etc etc etc) about 2 minutes between check-ins to show me the charts and explain them, and I don't think I'm brighter than your average volunteer.
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It took another volunteer who knew how it worked (having been shown by another volunterr who etc etc etc) about 2 minutes between check-ins to show me the charts and explain them, and I don't think I'm brighter than your average volunteer.
Crinkly, you (and Phil) are very welcome to assume that i am the dumbest volunteer in AUK! But two points:
- there are clearly people who didn't work this out.
- where would your team have been without that "Student zero"?
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I'm not assuming anyone is dumb. I'd guess it is is possible that you didn't have a student 0 wherever you were. There will have been times when there was noone on the desk at BC who knew how the charts worked - and times when the language barriers will have prevented any peer to peer training or communication about beyond the most basic with riders.
But the information was there.
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I thought the two column southbound/northbound chart and the graph predicting next few hours incoming riders were extremely easy to read. We read the latter with a degree of caution, since we were working on the assumption that if riders weren't scanning out it would be best guess at best.
It took another volunteer who knew how it worked (having been shown by another volunterr who etc etc etc) about 2 minutes between check-ins to show me the charts and explain them, and I don't think I'm brighter than your average volunteer.
We had a 71% scan out rate, so very positive considering it was encouraged but not mandated. I think its still right to treat forecasts as a guide. You'd have a better idea what the weather was doing to push rider arrivals either backwards or forwards. It is why we didnt try and predict rider arrivals more accurately than to the nearest hour. Any more granular is a promise of false accuracy.
Sleep scans were less well utlised with many not scanning in, or if they did scan in not scanning out. The lead riders are those we have the best data on as they were scanned in and out of their 15 min catnaps. Less busy, so not hard to remember the scans.
I'd be tempted to drop sleep / bed scanning altogether, as unless it is used consistently it doesnt give good metrics on bed occupancy. Nor does it help forecasting as much as it could. Having said that I do know there's a request from riders for standardised bed booking across the controls. So we will see what comes out of the washup meeting and go from there.
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"in PDF format" !? - apparently there is something called HTML these days. Online and linkable from the screen it is explaining (even embeddable in the screen).
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"in PDF format" !? - apparently there is something called HTML these days. Online and linkable from the screen it is explaining (even embeddable in the screen).
PDF on the other hand can be output sensibly to dead-tree format, for ease of access without tying up the screen in question.
There are advantages to both.
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"How many had gone through" wasn't at all obvious to the control team I was part of (several of whom possess proper big brains, unlike mine!).
Not normally one to venture in to heated debates, but I'm surprised that the relevant info wasn't easily discovered by anyone scanning cards.
The failing may have been that the training given by the controller (who MAY have had time to read Phil W's guide, amongst a hundred other tasks in the last few weeks) was not disseminated to the volunteers sufficiently. After all, however simple it may be to ride a bike, if you've never seen one before and have no advice on how it works you might just try using it as a mangle
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There's a difference between ease of discovery and a thing actually getting discovered, thobut.
I'm highly computer literate and confident with digging my way around new software - something which you certainly can't assume of everyone who might volunteering - but that doesn't mean I'll actually explore a system sufficiently to discover a given feature if I'm either a) too busy doing something urgent or b) afraid of destroying some not-as-yet-understood state[1] that would prevent me from continuing with (a) without documentation, assistance or sufficient time to work things out from first principles. Particularly if I'm not aware that an immediately useful feature is there to be discovered.
[1] Eg. logging something out that I don't know the credentials for.
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Yeah - I didn't go rummaging until a More Knowledgeable Person showed me stuff, because the last thing I wanted to do was to muck up the scanning in process.
It was remarkably straightforwardly once I knew where to look. I completely grok that other people might not have looked or been shown.
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We had a 71% scan out rate, so very positive considering it was encouraged but not mandated. I think its still right to treat forecasts as a guide. You'd have a better idea what the weather was doing to push rider arrivals either backwards or forwards. It is why we didnt try and predict rider arrivals more accurately than to the nearest hour. Any more granular is a promise of false accuracy.
Would separate scan in and scan out desks be better? I was going to scan out at Louth (northbound) but the queue of riders scanning in was out the door, so I didn't bother.
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"in PDF format" !? - apparently there is something called HTML these days. Online and linkable from the screen it is explaining (even embeddable in the screen).
PDF on the other hand can be output sensibly to dead-tree format, for ease of access without tying up the screen in question.
There are advantages to both.
PDF can also be online and linkable, both within itself and in both directions with HTML based stuff.
I've created substantial technical manuals (for non-cycling related matters) in both, and the downsides of HTML are such that I'm unlikly to choose that option should I be faced with the choice in future.
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Would separate scan in and scan out desks be better? I was going to scan out at Louth (northbound) but the queue of riders scanning in was out the door, so I didn't bother.
Or even a "during the ride" section of the rider area in the website, allowing you to scan yourself out from your smartphone.
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'Managing Spikes', has a long history. In 2001 analysis was done on the results, and a graph appeared at the bottom of the Arrivee roundup of the results. http://www.aukweb.net/_resources/files/results/lel/lel2001.pdf
That informed the provision of controls in 2005, especially the twinning of Langdon Beck and Alston. Langdon Beck wasn't far enough from the previous control, and it ended up being very quiet there on the first day, especially as there was a tailwind. It had been proposed that LB would open later, for the Lea Valley starters to take advantage of it, but Heather resisted that, as she wanted to prepare the control. It picked up later on and became one the best controls, especially as it had a bar.
(http://www.aukweb.net/pix/jydkt4ex_tue_aug__2_19_08_44_2005.jpg)
The combination of the Thorne start and the Lea Valley start meant that there was a chance of a mega-spike, with two sets of riders along the course, and back. The controls were small back then, and the entry fee wouldn't stretch to much in the way of luxury.
A lot of lessons were learned from 2005, and Simon Doughty was very much the man to make sense of those lessons. Unfortunately Simon had a life changing interaction with a drunk driver on the way to work at Manchester velodrome. A nurse called Mel, who had been involved with organising CTC events visited him a lot, and was the source of updates on his condition here. Mel had been the controller at Thorne in 2005.
With Simon out of action, there was an election at an AGM to appoint an LEL organiser, the candidates were Mel, and Pam, an organiser in the Hampshire area, who was a travel agent, and booked the AGM venues. Mel proposed carrying on with the plans for an AUK flagship event, Pam proposed a more bare-bones approach.
Mel won the day, and commented to me that the AGM had little conception of what handing over the event to a strong-willed Lancashire redhead might mean. This clearly would be something to watch.
I had a front-row seat, as Heather was down to control at Alston. The plan was to use the school at Alston. That booking possibility foundered at short notice, apparently on insurance grounds. We'd taken to skiing at the Yad Moss slope, and Heather hired her equipment from the Alston Outdoor Centre, so when it was suggested as a control, as the Youth Hostels were booked, we already had an in.
The Outdoor Centre was clearly inadequate, so I went up with lots of prepared food, largely tins, and erected our tent in the grounds as a provisions store, to make space in the kitchen. The start was now Lea Valley only, so there was a measure of predictability. If anything slowed riders in the Alston area, the control would resemble an improvised dressing station at the Battle of the Somme, and that's what happened when the rain and the wind came.
There had been lots of input from Nigel Hall on predicting flow rates for 2009, and discussion on here. It was early days for YACF, and there were loads of theories. At some point someone would have to set the actual policy in stone, which Mel did at a meeting in York. That's the last we saw of Nigel, who'd been down to run a control. That was the last meeting prior to the event, so we wouldn't meet the new controller for Thorne.
2009 was the first year of a single start from Lea Valley, and about 600 were signed up. That was twice as many as had previously started from any single point. If there was a tailwind, the bulk of the field would want to sleep the night at Thorne, at 300km, which was clearly not possible. I was sanguine about this prospect, as Heather is from Thorne, and her mum lives there. I would have a bed and a bath, and something to eat at Jean's house. So I got to see Thorne twice on each passing, before and after sleep.
On the way back, Thorne had a voucher system to ensure that riders only went round for food once. The other controls were ad-lib, especially Alston, where we'd catered for 600, rather than the 500 who'd turned up. We still have tinned peaches in our larder from 2009.
I got the impression that the controller at Thorne in 2009 was keen not to see anyone else parachuted into a situation with a large capacity for apparent failure. The other controllers had seen the situation developing over the years, and had experience of controls such as Loudeac on PBP.
There are two camps on the subject of spikes. Those who feel that the problem is amenable to a technical solution, and those who quite like finding themselves on the set of a remake of M*A*S*H.
I'm reading a book called 'The House of God', about interns in 1970s US hospitals. I'm starting to suspect that medics and the military like the chaos and sleep deprivation of LEL, because it reminds them what it was like to be young. I can see that for someone who thinks they've just booked a holiday, it might look different.
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"in PDF format" !? - apparently there is something called HTML these days. Online and linkable from the screen it is explaining (even embeddable in the screen).
You do know that both PDF and HTML were first published in non draft format in June 1993 over 24 years ago? By "these days" I guess you mean for the last quarter of a century. Your comment reminds me of this.
http://youtu.be/OXDK3x5lAYI
We could of course subject some volunteers to the "gramophone test" to find out where on the spectrum they are.
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ESL your latter camp referring to those who do no planning or contingency of course.
A bit like saying to your 1500 riders, yeah just set off when you like, our emergency control teams are ready.
Then at the controls they wait there in complete isolation , no idea what is going on out in the war zone, a Radar character (why does Radar remind me of Matt?) at each gate , watching for riders and shouting "incoming" . As the riders come in, a list of needs is read out "Food, drink, neck gone, knees hurt, saddle sores, broken spoke.." And the emergency control teams are scrambled. The riders patched up and sent back out into the war zone.
Suicide is painless...
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M*A*S*H approach summed-up my ride. On the basis of "no plan survives first contact with the enemy" and "plan too early, plan again", I just decided to 'wing it' as usual and ride the bike and see what happened. No spreadsheet, no checking average speed etc, just making sure I had time in hand and only occasionally did I actually check where I was with regard to control times. I wonder what the split was in terms of folk like me and those who had a cunning plan?
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I'm guessing that might depend on the age of the riders. Younger people (assuming a reasonable amount of intelligence) shouldn't find LEL too gruelling as long as they are not too ambitious for their ability. It must get harder the older you get, although experienced riders can bring that to bear. The older you are, the more a plan becomes helpful, I would have thought.
Peter
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Matt spotted at St Ives
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/08/77/dd/0877dd3ab31fe24ff716d89c584deb14.jpg)
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In 2011 we got notice of changes in PBP arrangements from an article by Jan Heine. We arranged to get an interview with Jean-Gualbert Faburel about the new arrangements.
https://youtu.be/t68hZ54Bpuw
The gist of the changes was that the start time was brought forward, to enable more riders to get beyond the Loudeac bottleneck. There would be an intermediate stop at St Nicolas de Pelem. Wise riders had long gambled on the 'secret' control at Corlay, or St Martin, and this formalised that arrangement. Jean-Gualbert also emphasised the benefits of 'living off the land'.
What actually happened is that a sudden rainstorm hit the area between Loudeac and Carhaix, and riders holed up at St Nicolas, turning the marquee there into a convincing replica of M*A*S*H. I got it in the neck from some of the victims, for guiding them to St Nicolas.
I had been asleep in Heather's car at Loudeac during the rain. Heather likes the PBP atmosphere, so I have to ride or film. It gives me an opportunity to report on the event, without getting dragged down by 'events'.
The PBP process is fascinating. IT is one component of it, but it's not until you get the medal, brevet card and brochure in your hand, that it is over.
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I can remember that night ;)
I was riding behind the storm, could see the lightning further up the road. When arriving at St. Nic the bike parkings were packed so I asked a volunteer if it doubled as a secret control. The answer was no so I immediately continued. It took until the following day for the St. Nic sleepers to overtake me.
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Here's the footage I have from St Nicolas in 2011.
https://vimeo.com/232076505
There's a clear line from the 'Loudeac Problem' through preparations for PBP 2011 to St Nicolas.
Data acquisition on PBP2007 and PBP 2011 was similar to LEL 2013. There was no check-out, so information on time spent at controls would have been anecdotal. Heather shot comparative video at Loudeac in 2007 and 2011, during the 90 minutes I slept, which illustrates conditions.
PBP 2011 had electronic trackers, I still have one attached to my left shoe. That provided data on control occupancy, so would have informed control provision in 2015. PBP adopted the start system used at LEL 2013.
Pre-qualification for PBP 2015 enabled the start groups to be tailored to length of ride in 2014. That meant that the most experienced riders went off first. That seemed to ease the Loudeac problem. Data acquisition was compromised by a problem at Fougeres.
There was a problem with the pre-ride meal, which meant that the early starters scoffed the rather nice finger food. Security issues also meant the finish was disappointing compared to earlier years. Subsequent events around Europe show the wisdom of that decision.
The conclusion I reach is that these events are not perfectible. Completion depends on strength, cunning, resilience and experience. Those characteristics are rewarded, and there will never be a magic formula that ensures fairness in the result, where the 'deserving' get their just desserts.
The problems in these events are more social and political. There's an ageing volunteer base, and organisers are afraid that analysis of performance will discourage retention of volunteers and recruitment of new ones.
Statistical analysis seems to offer a way looking at the way the event runs without making value judgements.
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I've had a lifelong ease with and love of mathematics, it is what my degree is in, and it equips you with a number of great tools and skills for life.
You're right statistical analysis is one of those great tools for looking at an event without starting off with the barrel of distortion that is your perspective and memory of it. There has been some great studies into the nature of our memories, and basically how piss poor they really are, how you can end up with false ones etc.. Memory when sleep deprived is even worse.
The trick with any analysis is not to jump to conclusions before you've done it. That would be a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
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My instinct from an 11.45 start was that I needed to reach Pocklington on the first night to sleep, which would give me the best chance of finishing within time.
I saw riders trying to book beds at Louth northbound. I thought that was a terrible idea. I would expect that the majority of riders on a similar start time would have failed to finish if they'd slept at Louth. But it would be interesting to see how the numbers play out. I had a conversation with NeilV on this subject - he'd slept at Louth! And finished just fine, thank you.
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My feeling from an 1145 start was pretty much the same, that Pock would make subsequent days that bit easier - but I started feeling sleepy as I neared Louth, and really didn't fancy another 100km through the night with few or no services.
In the event the queue for a bed was about 20 mins, but the queue for food was more like 45, so from a 2250 (ish) arrival it was getting on for 1am before I was in bed. (I know - at least I got a bed and food.)
Finished fine, without ever feeling under massive time constraints, but equally never felt like I'd got enough of a cushion to be truly comfortable.
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My instinct from an 11.45 start was that I needed to reach Pocklington on the first night to sleep, which would give me the best chance of finishing within time.
If you're fast enough to reach Pocklington while it's still night time from an 11.45 start you don't need to worry about not finishing within time.
I was in the same start group as you. If there'd been beds available, a couple of hours sleep at Louth would have fit my schedule perfectly.
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When the anonymised data is released...etc...etc.
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I'm going to defend Matt, and his comments about the tracking system.
As has been noted Matt was with us at St Ives. The first control after the start. As Controller I took the view that the tracking system northbound was of little help to us, as we knew what the start pattern was so worked with that. I suppose it might have been possible to determine how many actually started compared with the anticipated schedule, but I never discovered how to do that. In any case, with nearly 200 riders hitting us per hour for quite a bit of the day, the controllers didn't have much time for digging around in the system for more information, which at that stage wouldn't add much to our knowledge anyway. As we were also recording riders through on good old paper, we did have a pretty good idea how many had passed through at any time. Again, it wasn't particularly relevant for most of the day.
Matt wasn't with us for the southbound riders, so has no experience of our use of the system after he left. We did use the analytics, and found them very useful. They would have been more useful if I could have spared another PC to run them alongside the card-logging function.
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There was no food voucher system at Thorne in 2009.
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Mattc possibly has difficulty with IT, as he was unable to register himself as a volunteer.
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There was no food voucher system at Thorne in 2009.
My memory certainly does play tricks. I recall some sort of meal request system. One would order a meal at the hatch, and that would be it.
Thorne was never popular as a place to work, as there are no windows, giving it a 'bunker' feel.
I took some video of the four times I visited. Thorne was the most rational of the controls in 2009, there was a list of prices for 'extras'. Which is something I didn't see anywhere else.
https://vimeo.com/232232190
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A volunteer decided on a waiter system late in the day, which caused conflict with the cook and was soon dropped.
Managing the cash at that control convinced me of the need to all inclusive in 2013.
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Every other control I saw on LEL 2009 was all-inclusive. Obviously your chance of getting a bed was pretty minimal, and depended on being fast. My step-mum Margaret expressed some concern about the commitment to provide beds in the pre-event information, as that might be construed as a contract. So I reckon the decision to charge for beds was a sensible response to that issue.
The general response at the final meeting in York prior to the event was that Mel had 'gone off on one', and everyone continued with their arrangements, apart from hiring a skip to throw the disposable plates and cutlery in, and hope it was cool enough not to attract flies.
Heather was somewhat distracted by waiting for a date for an exploratory operation for cancer. LEL took her mind off that. She got the date during the event, and we booked at ultra-short notice for Semaine Federale. Mel had personal issues of her own, and the post-LEL analysis fell into a heap.
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I had to charge for the beds, because I'd had to pay for them out of my own money. I didn't buy the argument that people would sleep on the floor, but was very surprised at how quickly the beds filled. By 10pm my mini dorm was full.
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I had no real experience of the start in 2009, as I had my own personalised 6am start on the number 666. I made my way to the first control at Thurlby via the A10, Ermine Street and the A15, so I could film the first arrivals. When I got there Gerry was hosting a pre-event party with sparkling wine, most civilised.
I got an insight into the behaviour of the front-runners, both at Thurlby, and then Washingborough, as I took the A15, and the field went on a tour of obscure South Lincolnshire lanes. I saw Bob Johnson on the A15 of course.
https://vimeo.com/232237961
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Mattc possibly has difficulty with IT, as he was unable to register himself as a volunteer.
Ooops! Sorry.
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My instinct from an 11.45 start was that I needed to reach Pocklington on the first night to sleep, which would give me the best chance of finishing within time.
I saw riders trying to book beds at Louth northbound. I thought that was a terrible idea. I would expect that the majority of riders on a similar start time would have failed to finish if they'd slept at Louth. But it would be interesting to see how the numbers play out.
Deano
Had the urge to answer your question, having started with you, and enjoyed an early morning Louth to Horncastle with you and Graeme. Like you, I pressed on over the Humber (crossing about midnight).
Answer: Of the 450 I guess started 11:00 to 13:15, the number who logged out at Louth having spent at least 75 minutes there (ie more than eating and faffing) was 173. Of those 173, 95 finished and 78 did not: a 45% failure rate - above average (compared with the overall failure rate).
So "the majority of riders on a similar start time [to 11:45] who slept at Louth finished".
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My instinct from an 11.45 start was that I needed to reach Pocklington on the first night to sleep, which would give me the best chance of finishing within time.
I saw riders trying to book beds at Louth northbound. I thought that was a terrible idea. I would expect that the majority of riders on a similar start time would have failed to finish if they'd slept at Louth. But it would be interesting to see how the numbers play out.
Deano
Had the urge to answer your question, having started with you, and enjoyed an early morning Louth to Horncastle with you and Graeme. Like you, I pressed on over the Humber (crossing about midnight).
Answer: Of the 450 I guess started 11:00 to 13:15, the number who logged out at Louth having spent at least 75 minutes there (ie more than eating and faffing) was 173. Of those 173, 95 finished and 78 did not: a 45% failure rate - above average (compared with the overall failure rate).
So "the majority of riders on a similar start time [to 11:45] who slept at Louth finished".
Thanks AJ - I had a quick scan of the figures myself and couldn't find any support for my thoughts either.
I'm still pleased I rode on though - coming south was tough, and having that time in hand made for a more relaxed ride.
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Just coming back to this thread after a while. I put together a list of all the things we planned for catering at St Ives, what worked and what didn't work so well, that I'll put into the planning process for next time. It's about a 10 page document based on learnings from St Ives in 2017 and Barnard Castle in 2013.
As I'm hoping to ride it in 2021 whilst I'm still fast enough to enjoy it.
Happy to send to any who PM an email address.