Fog, hail and hills couldn’t stop the Optician Revolve 24 team completing their challenge for Blind Veterans UK over the weekend of September 16/17 at brand’s Hatch motor racing circuit.
At the time of writing the tally of donations has reached over £1,100 with a further £250 pledged by Carl Zeiss. Many thanks for online donations from Adaro, Verve, Hoya, Rodenstock, Specsavers, Grafton, Scope, Many from CooperVision staff and Martin Smith Opticians. Also to Carl Zeiss, Mondottica’s Spine and Norville for eyewear supplied.
This was always going to be a tricky event; race for 24 hours, as non-stop as possible, to see how far you could travel in a day. While sensible, experienced cyclists opted for teams of 2,4,6 or 8 Optician Editor Chris Bennett and CooperVision’s Paul Maxwell decided to take on Reveolve24 as soloists – 24 hours non-stop, alone on the bike.
A rudimentary plan was put in place based around three hour, 45 mile slots, set on a target speed of 15 miles per hour. On paper it looked fine, very doable, the trick was to keep out on the track and keep moving.
The duo arrived at Brand’s Hatch on the Saturday morning ready for the 3pm start. Our garage in the pit lane was the base for Blind Veterans UK and was abuzz with chatter, coffee and chocolate bars. In charge was Stacey who made sure we were well looked after along with four other soloists and a larger team from Anmering.
The plan was not to get carried away early on in the ride. Some of the teams could have eight, superfit cyclists so we didn’t want to try and jump on a wheel only to find it was on the track for an hour. The race numbers (I was 123-1) caused a little confusion. Initially we thought the -1 at the end meant the rider was a soloist. It didn’t. It just meant the rider was team member number 1. Needless to say we set off a tad too fast. Holding a wheel wasn’t easy as the groups were fast and very changeable. It seemed crazy but quite early on we decided to go it alone and not to try and hitch a ride on the back of bigger groups.
The other real shock was the course. Brand’s Hatch is not flat. Druid’s was a big climb from the outset and it didn’t take too many revolutions of the track before the momentum gained going in didn’t help much on the way out.
The first two scheduled stops – fuel and toilet- saw us ahead of schedule but as the rain arrived and the light left us the stops got longer. Food, coffee, changes of clothes all figured. At 3am we had scheduledmassage stop, this was sorely needed and welcome but a real time consumer.
By the small hours, the fog set in and the stops got a little too frequent: batteries, clothes, toilet stops. Aches and pains set in. A slight niggle in the shoulder at 9.00pm became a burning irritation by 4.00am and the call from the body to stop was loud. And at one point during the night one of the team members did fall asleep in the garage.
Revolve 24 is a full on endurance challenge and we knew we were in a tough ride. Push too hard and we simply wouldn’t finish. That is the nature of the beast and if you don’t secretly, deep down (very deep down) enjoy that sort of thing you wouldn’t enter the event. As Stacey pointed out the goal was to finish the 24 hours, distances and times were just a bonus.
By the small hours we had stopped beating ourselves up about stops in the pit lane. Once there the scene was of tired faced, riders sleeping under piles of clothes in the cold and the orange glow of thegarage light. It was all set to a soundtrack of disco tunes: anything from Baccara to Jay Z, enhancing the surreal scene under the sodium glow of the pit lights. Stacey would emerge smiling and offering tea, coffee, cake and snacks.
As the fatigue set in, in order to make the full 24 hours, we dropped the pace and a survival strategy was adopted. This proved to be the most enjoyable part of the ride as we were awake, alert and alive walking around with a soloist’s number on our backs. In reality our lap times didn’t actually fall that much. Each lap became centred around the climb at Druid’s: how far would the momentum going in take you up the hill coming out. The answer was always less than on the last lap.
As the fog weakened the daylight returned and there was a feeling of dawn and reality even thought by this time is was well into the morning. The highlight had to be the bacon and egg rolls for breakfast. When we walked into the pit lane, egg yolk and ketchup dripping down, virtually the whole garage went out and bought one themselves.
The morning passed quite quietly with the track noticeably less chatty and the clock counted out the hours. Different groups of riders joined the track for shorter rides. As the final seconds of the 24 hours ticked down my stats revealed I had ridden 428km in 110 laps, I had climbed over 5,000m and the calories burned were in the thousands.
I have to send out a special thanks to Paul Maxwell for keeping me going during the dark days, Stacey and Bod for looking after us so well and all of our supporters. Including Adaro, Verve, Hoya, Rodenstock, Specsavers, Grafton, Scope, Many from CooperVision staff and Martin Smith Opticians.
I also had the chance to try out two Progear frames from Norville complete with a daytime and night time Transitions and Drivewear lenses along with a Carl Ziess DriveSafe lens in a Spine frame. Carl Zeiss Vision has also pledged a £250 donation offline. Added to the current online total that would bring the fundraising to £1,380.