Royston Wood - Lands End to John O Groats

Lands End to John OGroats Cycling the Google Route

Roys Mad Adventure

Published byRoyston Wood at Smashwords

Copyright 2014Royston Wood

Dedication

This book isdedicated to my long suffering wife and one person Remote SupportUnit. Without her support looking after the kids, the dogs, thecat, the guinea pigs, the fish and the house (whilst also working)I would not have been able to complete this ride. Hercommitment is long overdue is not only throughout my nine day absence fromhome for the ride itself but also for the frequent day longtraining rides leading up to it.

Beyond havingto deal with all the day to day things normally shared between two,she also has to offer me mental support by phone and text and keepmy blog going during the ride.

And lets behonest, I wasnt much use to anyone for my first few days backeither.

If you wouldlike to follow the route ridden in this book you can download theroute file here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3-Rtk-1DBnSdV9SRUdzNFBySHM/edit

DNF.

Threeletters. Just three little letters. Three tiny littleletters.

But therethey were, sat next to my name: Did Not Finish!

Defeat NFailure. Thats what they meant to me.

Of course,thats not what they really meant. No. They actually stood for Damn(k)Nee Failed. But, physical incapacity aside, it felt like DefeatN Failure.

Staring hardat the screen, where the results for the London Edinburgh London(LEL) Audax cycle were posted, I raged internally against the crueltwist of fate that had put me in this position. If Id been tenseconds later (or earlier) this wouldnt have happened. Or if Idjust taken a different route home that day. Or if the bloody lorrydriver had kept his eyes open!

I took abreath to calm down. I was being melodramatic. Why would I havetaken a different route home? I always cycle that way. And if I wasten seconds earlier or later then I might have been hit bysomething else and damaged more severely. What had happened hadhappened. I couldnt change it. It was fate. Kismet.

Bollocks: Idont believe in fate. If fate exists, what is the point of havingfree thought? Where is the benefit in having choices if everythingis predestined? And surely my destiny was to complete the ride. Amere lorry knocking me off my bike shouldnt have stopped that.Destiny Not Fulfilled!

OK. Thatsdefinitely melodramatic.

Time for acup of tea. Well, coffee. Decaf.

Waiting forthe kettle to boil I wondered about the wisdom of setting myselfthe challenge in the first place. It had seemed like a good ideaback in the depths of winter: something to set my sights at; a goalto focus on; a target to aim at; and any other clich you can thinkof. Really it was an excuse to bugger off on my bike and ignore myresponsibilities for a while.

For a while?Five days to be more precise. In a nutshell, entrants to LEL havefive days to ride from London to Edinburgh and back again; adistance of just over 1410km or about 875 miles. Dotted along themapped route are several check in points where food and, in somecases, sleeping facilities are provided.

Being of theopinion that most people are quite sane, I figured that not toomany people would be interested in riding LEL. When I Googled theride I was amazed to find the world is full of nutters. Somecycling forums had been discussing the ride for over three years!Because of the logistics involved Audax UK, the organisation thatruns the event, only holds it once every four years, like theOlympics. And like the Olympics it attracts an international entry.I was later to discover that 1,093 riders entered the event from 32countries. 94% of entrants were men, providing proof, if it wasever needed, that women are saner than men.

My musing wasinterrupted by a high pitched whistle from the kettle: it hadfinally boiled. Our state of the art, stainless steel, rapid boilkettle had given up on us and wed been making do with a tiny,stove top, camping kettle until we got around to buying a new one.Wed been making do for about two months.

Nursing mycoffee I considered that the entry list of over a thousand couldhave been much higher. Entry was originally limited to 1,000 and,expecting a high demand, the organisers had announced that bookingwould open at 2 oclock in the morning on a rainy Sunday at thebeginning of January, a time that only the truly dedicated would beup and around for (ok, so they didnt announce it would be araining; but it was).

Being trulydedicated I went to bed with my laptop and set the alarm for01:55.

Just beforeturning out the light and trying to get a small amount of sleepbefore the all-important booking, I decided to log onto the websitein advance, to save those precious few seconds when hundreds ofpeople from around the world jammed the system. And lo, the bookingwas already open! A full three hours before schedule. Hoorah! Quickas a flash I booked, paid, logged out, shut down and went to sleepa happy bunny.

When thealarm went off the next morning I struggled out of bed and sneakeddown the stairs, trying not to wake our two year old son. He has ahair trigger wake up mechanism linked to the squeaky stairs and Ineeded to get coffee inside me before facing an overly bright andcheerful toddler on a Sunday morning.

Waiting forthe kettle to come to the boil I smiled as I remembered that I wasnow booked on LEL. Then I frowned, thinking that I hadnt reallyridden much more than 10 miles together for months. So I went tothe toilet for inspiration.

In the toiletI dug through a stack of old Arrives, the quarterly Audaxmagazine, until I found an edition with write ups of the last timeLEL was run.

Pouring astrong coffee to get me going for the day, I sat at the kitchentable and read an article that made me wonder what I was gettingmyself into. As the rain hammered against the French doors I triedto think what it might be like to ride for five days, with verylittle sleep, if it was pouring with rain the whole time, whichapparently it had last time around.

But thecaffeine had kicked in by now so I was feeling positive and wasbuzzing with excitement.

By the time Ihad finished reading a second article I was starting to wonderwhere everyone else was. I glanced at the clock and had to doubletake. 02:34! I had forgotten to reset the bloody alarm!

I went backto bed and tried to sleep through my caffeine high. It didntwork.

Its funnywhen I think back to it, like a scene from a sitcom, but it wasntmuch fun at the time. Ive been drinking mostly decaf sincethen.

Finishing thelast of my current decaf I glanced back at the laptop screen wheremy shame was still displayed. Definitely Not Fit.

Well, I knewthat wasnt true: Id trained pretty well and completed my firstSuper Randonneur series in the months prior to the LEL. Thats aseries of four rides of 200km, 300km, 400km and 600km, which soundslike quite an ordeal until you consider that LEL was almost as longas all of those put together.

That is whatwas gnawing away at me. Was I fit enough? Did the injury stop me?Or did I just give up?

After puttingin the training, just ten days before the start of LEL I was hit byan articulated lorry whilst cycling home from work in a cycle lane.All things considered I was really lucky. My bike was damaged, mybrand new Sat Nav was smashed, my cycling clothes were ripped, myright forearm and shoulder had hardly any skin on them and my kneewas swollen with damaged ligaments - but I was alive.