provisional 2013 FNRttC Calendar

[mmmmartin]

i speak too soon, just had a reminder email from east coast trains, paid £14.60 on the 8pm train.

 

[mmmmartin]

It is currently £22.15 for the 8pm with no railcard. if you book via East Coast remember to make the bike reservation as well. On arrival I plan to go to Pizza Express for a meal, it's out of the railway station in York, left, and along the road a bit over the bridge and on the right.
And I also plan to ride back to London after a kip in the Ibis hotel (just paid £26 for a room), as I did last year. Departure probably about 10pm on Saturday night, arriving at Sawbridgeworth station near Stansted, which is 300k from the Ibis hotel (or it was last year, anyway). I'll be riding the route of LEL, as I did last year after the York ride, except this time I hope for less torrential rain, fewer gales, and more accuracy on the route instructions especially around Spalding.

 

[Flying Dodo]

£13 x 2 on the 9 pm departure for York now booked including 2 bike spaces. So I won't have to bring my bike bag this time. It also means there would be a maximum of 4 bike spaces left on that train.

Although East Coast already have available cheap fares back to London from Hull on the Saturday, as that involves a change at Doncaster, I'm going to hold off, waiting for Hull Trains to release theirs (currently only up to 23rd March), as their service is direct to Kings Cross.

That way you avoid the anxiety of having to run down the platform, trying to get the locked guards van opened, bike securely lashed into a stand, then jump out of the guards van, sprint back to the first available carriage to jump aboad, all in the 45 seconds that the train is actually in the station.

 

[mmmmartin]

Adam hi - I was pondering the purchase of a £10 single Hull to London, in case I opt to take the easy way out.

 

[Flying Dodo]

Adam hi - I was pondering the purchase of a £10 single Hull to London, in case I opt to take the easy way out.

For £10, it's worth a punt. You could always try and sell it on, if you decide to go ahead with cycling back south.

 

[martint235]

I'm currently looking at riding to York on the Friday and back from Hull at some point. I'd better look at booking a hotel room.

This is all dependent on not having some scrote in a van result in me damaging myself again this year.

 

[Davywalnuts]

I'm currently looking at riding to York on the Friday and back from Hull at some point. I'd better look at booking a hotel room.

This is all dependent on not having some scrote in a van result in me damaging myself again this year.

Should you be looking at cycling straight back, as part of LEL training? Theres always bus shelters if needs must?

 

[martint235]

Should you be looking at cycling straight back, as part of LEL training? Theres always bus shelters if needs must?

The hotel room is quite cheap so it's just there as a backup really. Cycling straight back is a possibility.

My plan for LEL involves a 300 mile first leg but after that I'll just be cycling during the day for around 170 miles each day.

 

[mmmmartin]

Should you be looking at cycling straight back, as part of LEL training? Theres always bus shelters if needs must?

Sensible people look away now......

For what it's worth, which is not very much, I shall "enter" a one-man "do-it-yourself" Audax event starting in Hull and ending near London, a distance of 300k and a bit. Because of the minimum speed requirements of an audax event, if you include a FNRttC in your "DIY one-man audax", the slowness of the FNRttC with the midway stop and the regrouping means you need to ride the rest of the route at a fantastic speed to get faster than the 13.4kph minimum overall for an audax event. So it makes sense to just enjoy the FNRttC, have a kip in a hotel and then set off and start the audax at the hotel.
Doing the FNRttC, and then using up time by sleeping in bus shelters etc will mean you could not do the whole thing in overall minimum speed for an audax, so is not good LEL training, which is also about speed (as well as distance, obv). You need to go fast enough during the 119 hours allowed for the 1,400k to get enough sleep to continue to function (brain as well as body), it's not just about distance.
Because you are allowed 7 hours for a 100k distance, you get 21 hours to do the 300k Hull to London and as I need to arrive in London before the trains stop on Sunday night so I can get home to Kent's leafy suburbs, I need to start about 10pm on Saturday night. This obviously involves riding through the night. This is the point: if you set off from Hull at say 9am after breakfast you'll arrive 300k later on the outskirts of London about 6am on a Sunday morning when the trains are not running. So I think it makes better training to sleep and then ride back through the second night and the full day, which is closer to how LEL is likely to work out. And just to prove my earlier point that it's not worth much, you also get a precious 3 audax points and complete a 300k at audax speed, which is part of becoming a Super Randonneur (a 200k, a 300k, a 400k and a 600k in the same year) and completing a Randonneur Round The Year (RRTY) which is a ride of 200k or more every month for a period of 12 months. (As of now I have five months done, in this, my third attempt. Other years have been disrupted by weather and Real Life.)

That's why bus shelters are not a good option.

 

[dellzeqq]

have you ever had the feeling you've stumbled in to a different universe? Those P+Lite types have no idea what madness lurks on other parts of Cycle Chat.

 

[StuAff]

Considering some of those P&L types don't actually seem to ride a bike, they're in no position to talk about sanity.....

 

[dellzeqq]

Considering some of those P&L types don't actually seem to ride a bike, they're in no position to talk about sanity.....

Hush, Stu! It's well know that their bikes have been stolen/morphed in to 4x4s in the middle of the night/sold to pay for the horsefeed

 

[StuAff]

Soliciting?

 

[redfalo]

Gutted to learn that I'll miss the first ride due to other travel arrangements

However, I might go for the Reading ride on 12 April. And I just booked a train ticket on the 2100 train from King's X to York, arriving 2310. Will take the Brompton. Prices for Hull - London are still pretty ridiculous.

Cheers Olaf

 

[sbird]

Gutted to learn that I'll miss the first ride due to other travel arrangements

However, I might go for the Reading ride on 12 April. And I just booked a train ticket on the 2100 train from King's X to York, arriving 2310. Will take the Brompton. Prices for Hull - London are still pretty ridiculous.

Cheers Olaf

Ooops! Dates have changed Olaf and you're welcome still if you can make it. Reading to Brighton on 12th April, Reading to Stonehenge on 13th June (the Solstice ride) and 20th September to Lymington (from Reading!).

Apologies!