Richmond bike patrol in the early hours on Tue (about 2am), still blowing a hoolie once away from the shelter of the school building. Some helmets and other unsecured gear were found over 400m away from the bike park. Luckily they had some reflectives and I picked them up when playing my torch across the dark school fields towards the cricket pitch. bikes were found parked half way up the control inbound route, all around the tennis courts, and spread out into the school playing fields. Bike patrol was a long walk.
Overnight bike patrol I had a fleece and alpine down duvet under my hiviz. Anything less and I’d have been too cold at walking pace. I was one of the team leaders for marshalling. One of our Marshall’s on Monday morning when the rain was biblical and wind blowing away, had to go inside after 30 mins because they were too cold.
When I was on control desk on my previous shift, the chefs came over to ask how many inbound. First request we reckoned 700 inbound, then 500 inbound. For some riders who I thought would get the reference, I said “Welcome to Hotel California”.
Some riders took around 11 hours to cover the distance from Malton to Richmond. A distance of only 94km, to give an idea of conditions. Many reports of the roads being lined riders stopped at side of the road, exhausted. Some riders holed up at Rainton, 45km away, too scared to continue in conditions.
We had to ration food. One of the brevet control stamps was being used to ensure riders weren’t returning for multiple portions. We had to stop riders taking blankets to sleep. We had to reserve them for first aid, for those riders truly hypothermic in a bad way.
We cranked up the heating in the control.
We had between 1,000 to 1,250 riders holed up here overnight Mon / Tue. When we released them Tue morning we released at a rate of 400 per hour.
