Boe Harper – 24h 06m 06s on the 11th August 2018. A valiant effort by Boe missing out by 6 minutes on entering the Hall of Fame!
In Boe’s words:
As I ride away from king Alfred on my trek top fuel into the sunrise slightly more nervous than usual wondering how the next 24hours is going to plan out for me. It wasn’t long before I came across a few random stragglers from the boomtown festival.
Shortly after at Holden farm the dreaded hissing noise from my back tyre! My first mechanical already!! Quick tyre plug and I was on my way again. I had increased my tyre pressure a couple of PSI to try and gain more speed, thinking this could be the reason for the puncture I let some air out and cracked on.
Reached Amberly on target time feeling good and eating/drinking well.
Met my support crew and the top of the climb after the road and stocked up.
All was going well made it to Eastbourne, target time was around 11 – 11:30 hours thinking that would be easily doable and not have pushed me too hard on the first half.
Sure enough I was feeling fine and turned around and plodded back up the steep climb I’d just hammered down.
It was around 4-5pm I left Eastbourne on my homeward leg. I was over half way! I’d made the turn around!
Got to Washington and turned the lights on for the night stint. This brought around change and a bit of excitement. Ridding in the dark is totally different. All was quite and the wildlife started appearing.
As I got to amberly to meet the support crew i remember thinking I was struggling to chew food. From the start I wanted to eat as much natural food as possible as I knew I couldn’t survive that long on gels and race food.
The time had come to really concentrate on not only the dark trail but also what I was eating to keep bonking at bay.
Cocking rolled around and I got creative with drinks mixing Coca-Cola with electrolytes.
That was my fuel for the rest of the night. The only thing that I could get down quick and easy.
Butser hill climb out the way – thank god. Surely that is the last climb now!
Having a quick stretch of my back at sustainability centre I realised that I would need to really pick up the pace for this last section to make it back in 24 hours.
Back in Winchester 6 mins over my target time 😭
Il be back to join the others in the sub 24 hour club one day!
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