For The Love Of Distance

We’ve got to start at the beginning, with the idea. If I were asked for a single point of inspiration, I would talk about Boru Mccullagh’s All Roads Considered films, documenting his own ride around the world. But this has been brewing for much longer than that. I’ve always loved an endurance challenge but my first real step into this world of pain started in lockdown when my sister convinced me to run a 5k with her. My technique was terrible, and I was far from fit but I enjoyed it. Quickly I progressed from 5K’s to 10K’s, favouring the slower pace and more chance to get into the flow. Once in that flow state, I felt like I could keep going for as long as I wanted, so I did. I quickly pushed through fifteen and twenty kilometres before accidentally running a half marathon. At this point, I’m living with my cousin, ex-pro cyclist and GCN presenter James L-W. Despite this, I’m not interested in cycling and see it as a bit inferior to the purity of running, so I keep pushing the distances to the point where a Sunday afternoon would regularly consist of a forty to sixty-kilometre run. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s not sustainable. It wasn’t long before I’d picked up a knee injury that, for the most part, put an end to the long stuff that had been giving me so much. I tried lowering the intensity, taking breaks and doing exercises, but I never managed to get back to the distances that I really enjoyed and ended up dropping running altogether.

Having lost this I was in a bit of a hole. I was now living with a close friend who was running a bike shop. She told me that they were going to be hosting an ultra-endurance bikepacking race, The Wild West Country. In our local pub one night, the site of many a bad idea, I told her that she, being the boss, should enter on behalf of the shop. Understandably, she wasn’t initially sold on the idea of cycling virtually nonstop 800K around the west coast of England. She shot back with the challenge, “I’ll do it, if you do it”. Naively, as I had never ridden a bike more than 20K, let alone a road bike, I agreed and after a few more drinks we were sold. We had three months to train, plan and acquire our kit. I would be riding an entry-level specialized road bike lent by the shop. It took a couple of weeks and a couple of falls to get used to paddle shifting and clipped-in pedals but it wasn’t long before our fag packet training plan called for our first 100K. We’d signed up for an Audax. Free non-competitive cycling events that take place all over Europe. A couple of other friends joined us and it was a good day. Giving us a tiny bit more confidence but that was of course only an eighth of what we had to do in a couple of months. I continued to build up the distance and did my first overnight ride just a few weeks before the main event. 300K carrying the kit I would have in the race. I also got to test out my sleeping setup, a tarp stretched over my bike and my sleeping bag inside a foil survival bivi. Far from comfortable but that’s not what this was about.

The night before the start would have been a little nervy if not for a couple of beers as we went over the route files and checked our bikes. Waking up at 5 am the next day, the start was a blur. With friends and family out to see us leave we set off in groups of five snaking through the Gloucestershire countryside as we slowly spread out. By 5 pm after passing through Bristol and Bridgewater I was on my own and it would stay like that for the next three days. That night just after 2 am the infamous Porlock Hill got the better of me and I settled down for a few hours of sleep.

Waking before first light, I checked the tracking website and saw I was right in the middle of the pack. I’ve never been a competitive person but this was good motivation. The second day took me into Devon before heading south after Woolacombe into Dartmoor. I finished the second day sleeping in Ludwell Park in the heart of Exeter.

By day three I was well and truly into the pain cave. Inwardly I became fiercely competitive with two other riders who were racing as a pair. They were strong and seemed to my sleep-deprived brain to be chasing me. They overtook me in the morning and I shadowed them through Dorset and into the night. Telling myself I wouldn’t stop before they did. Finally, after checking the tracking, I realised that I had passed them. Despite being into the AM I pushed on to widen the gap. Going into the race I’d only wanted to finish and now I found myself racing not only because I wanted to place as high as possible but because it was the only way I could keep my body and mind from giving up. I had to have a reason for the suffering. Just finishing wasn’t enough anymore.

Waking up on the fourth day, I was shocked to see that the pair were climbing the hill I had slept on top of. I broke camp as fast as I could, threw my bike over the fence and as I rolled downhill I beat my legs with my fists as they had seized up in the night and were refusing to spin. I spent the whole morning trying to gap them before I caught a massive tailwind that I took full advantage of. Flying past my parents who had driven over an hour to see me. I finished around 4 pm, utterly broken and in serious need of a beer, arguably the root of all of this pain. I’ll spare you the particulars but sitting on a bike for four days when both your cycling shorts and your saddle don’t fit can do some unimaginable damage.

Now, I won’t say that this ordeal made me want to jump back on a bike and go cycle around the world. In fact, the bike wasn’t touched for a good month or so but I had found a new endurance avenue to explore. It wasn’t until over a year later I thought about giving another one a go but this time I would do it on my own bike. One that I had built specifically for endurance riding and would hopefully relieve some of the uneasy pain. In November 2023 I bought myself a second-hand Ribble Carbon SL. Originally designed for gravel racing I thought it was a good platform to build on. That Christmas I stumbled across Boru Mccullagh’s films and although I knew it was going to be incredibly hard I didn’t see any reason I couldn’t at least give it a try. I set my sights on Istanbul. Roughly three and a half thousand kilometres. Just like running, it only seemed natural to see how far I could push it.