London-Edinburgh-London Ep.1 Getting Ready!

#ultraendurance #londonedinburghlondon #endurancecycling #cycling #endurancetraining #longdistancecycling #randonnée #randonneur #randonneuring #blockprojectsLondon

Edinburgh London is a 1530 kilometres (950 miles) self-supported cycle ride across the United Kingdom. The route takes you between the iconic capital cities of England and Scotland.
London Edinburgh London is not a race, but you have a maximum of around 128 hours to cycle along the route up to Edinburgh and then back to London.

No, this doesn’t look mildly suspicious, does it? I’m either headed to Medigene or I’m going on a cycling adventure. Hey good people, August Block here again. It’s been a long time since we talked. Uh, I probably owe you a more inclusive update, but just to give you a quick overview, last year I didn’t post any videos. Uh it was kind of a a wash. Some things happened like Hurricane Hela Helen came and wiped out my parents’ house and I uh took off work and rebuilt it for them by myself over 6 months and I didn’t really get a chance to train that much and uh nor make videos. I just had to get them back in their house as quickly as possible. Uh all the while I had London, Edinburgh, London pending. So, I knew in the back of my head that I had to like start logging some miles here. So, I was able to do some maintenance training, but I really couldn’t like dedicate time to it until like 6 weeks ago, 8 weeks ago. So, um I crammed a bunch of miles in. I was strategic about it. I did weight train strength training. I had to trim down because I’d packed out a bunch of weight cuz I was eating junk food and going up building this house all day by myself and just eating whatever I could find. Uh so I was strong but I wasn’t in I wasn’t lean. So now tonight I’m actually going to fly to London and I’m just doing the final packing up and I’ll just walk you through kind of like what this looks like. Okay. Uh, first I’m going to jump into my nutrition cuz that’s kind of a trick. My plan is to mainly fuel outside of like eating stations, but on the bike mainly fuel with um the uh edge energy gel. Now, these things are called a superstarch. And I didn’t believe it at first cuz, you know, it’s only got 1.8 8 O and they claim that it will provide endurance energy for up to 75 minutes and I was like there’s no way. But I did do a bunch of research on it and I tested it over and over and over again and literally if I eat one of these packs at 1.87 every hour, my fuel level is even and clean. Um and then uh I can I can so I can run for like forever with these things. The only thing it doesn’t have it doesn’t have any uh electrolytes in it. So once you start running low on electrolytes, if your bottles are just pure water, you’re not going to get electrolytes. So I convert and start mixing in this EFS Pro Fuel. And I’ve got all of these premixed here for high concentrate in my Camel Back for 5 hours of fuel. Okay. So, together with 10 packs of the edge uh Ukan edge packs, which come in like strawberry and pineapple and salted caramel. So, 10 packs of that and two uh two pack two uh 10 scoop servings of this mixed in my Camel Back will give me 20 hours of fuel. Uh so, that’s 20 hours of fuel. if I didn’t stop and get anything else. I could potentially just fuel myself for 20 straight hours on that. So, what I did was I broke this into three different sections. Now, I also have other things cuz I’m going to get sick of those flavors and I’m going to get sick of those flavors and I’m going to want some texture and I’m going to want to eat something obviously. So, you know, that’s just like a perfect scenario. So, to to fill that in, I’ve got these RX bars, which I’ve talked to you about before. RX bars, scratch bars, and for some quick energy, different flavor, Stingers, and then Cliff double espresso shots. Uh, so those are my main fueling things that I’m going to be carrying. So, the fueling thing on this is going to be a a big fun test. I have two drop bags here. One at Richmond and one at God, I’m going to kill this name. Interleon. Interlethon. Okay. Yeah. So, one at Richmond, which is about 456 km, and then coming back at 826, I have two drop bags. And in those drop bags, I’m going to have a new kit. So, I’m going to get like uh 20 hours of fuel that I’ll carry with me on my bike. Uh plus, I’ll be able to eat at all these stops. You know, I probably don’t need that much fuel. It’s probably going to be extra weight. If I get to my first bag and I’m like, “Okay, I’m carrying too much weight with this fuel because I have fuel at the stops.” Then I’ll maybe I’ll offload some of it to lighten my load. But to start philosophically, I’m going to have enough fuel there and uh for 20 hours, then I’ll refuel, repack at my bike at my bag, and then refuel again at my other bag. So I can fit everything in my bag as it stands right now with really not much problem unlike Paris Press Paris where you didn’t have to even have your you didn’t have to have navigation on your computer and you didn’t need to use cues sheets because there were arrows and guidance and people and everywhere along so you could just ride and focus on the ride. Uh but with leel you really have to navigate yourself and the truth is you can even build your own route. They give you a route, but you just have to get to those places, you know, uh, and hit the controls. So, what I’ve done is first check out all my maps. Um, here is that I take these Q sheets. I’ve got my navigation on my Garmin. My Garmin’s a little uh older. It’s a 530 Edge, so I will upgrade eventually, but it’s been doing a great job, but I’m not sure. I kind of want to get it all in one ride. So, I’m not sure if it’s going to hold out for me, but I hope it does. Uh, and then I have all of these are my Q sheets, right? And they are cut small and laminated with like just like self lamination cuz I’ve had them where the water just destroys them. So, this takes it’s like a little crafts project. It takes you a couple hours to do it. But, you know, it’s all fun for planning. Here is my master plan. So, this is the entire route, right? And what I have there is marked as you see the first column. I marked it whether I’m going to eat or I’m going to sleep. So obviously if I sleep I’ll probably eat too. But so I have um I’m going to eat in Boston and then I’ll eat in Molton and then I’ll sleep in Richmond and then I’ll eat in Bmpton and then I’ll eat in Moffett and then I’ll sleep in Interly Lean. Uh and then I’ll eat in Richmond again. Eat in Hessle, eat in North Stow and eat in Riddle. Uh so those are my plans, right? So again, sticking to your plan, good luck. But having a plan first is the most important thing. So then if you’re if you modify on the fly, it’s like not stressful. But if you never have a plan like where am I going to stop tonight? I’m not really sure. But if I’m like at 375 km, and I know I need to get to Richmond, which is 467, I might just say, you know what, I’m just going to slug it out. But if I didn’t have a plan to shoot for Richmond, I would just be like, I don’t know when I should stop, you know, and then you just like get fatigued and stop. So, I planned all that out. There’s a high likelihood, like I’m saying here, cuz I haven’t trained up for this, you know, I very few miles for the year. I mean, I would hope to go into it with at least 5,000 miles, maybe 8,000 miles for the year. I only have 3,000 miles for the year. I did load them pretty uh much right before I I’m leaving for the last eight a lot of them were last couple thousand miles were loaded in the last two months or more. So that’s that’s good, you know. All right. So that’s my navigation. I got the on computer. I’ve got these, you know, I got my phone. Probably going to lose a signal. There’s a possibility I’m lost in a village. That’s okay. I’m in it for the adventure and uh I’ll figure it out. I’m really looking forward to it. Okay, now I’m going to jump out and go get my bike tweaked. Come with me. Hey. Hey. Hey.