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Sussex cyclists to attempt John O'Groat-Land's End in less than 48 hours

Guinness World Record attempt to take start at 10.30am on Friday 23 June

Four cyclists from Sussex will set off a week on Friday in an attempt to ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End in less than 48 hours – and in the process set a new Guinness World Record.

Karl Burkett, Steve Clark, Ollie Taylor and Tim Clark will set off from north east Scotland at 10.30am on Friday 23 June, each aiming to ride an 80-kilometre shift before handing over to a team mate.

They will have a support crew of four, as well as a videographer who will be making a documentary of their efforts.

Burkett said: “The idea came from watch The Race Across America (RAAM). We plan to ride 80km sections and maintain an average speed of 27.5 kilometres an hour for the 48-hour period.

“Yes, we could go quicker but maintaining the pace and recovery time is vital. Our training has been 100-kilometre sessions at all sorts of times of the day and night in preparation.

“We have had great support from several sponsors, all of which can be seen on our Facebook page.”

Those include Proper Cycling & Coffee, based in Hasssocks, and Skoda, Station Garage in Horsham, which will provide their support vehicle.

There will be a live tracker on their Facebook page, and they are also raising money through Just Giving for the Air Ambulance service in Devon & Dorset.

Birkett added that the team’s main concerns for the journey were “Traffic, Roadworks and anything else that might hold us up!

“Rider safety is also a top priority but the event has been well planned out and thanks to Skoda we have a support safety vehicle that can remain with the riders most of the time.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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11 comments

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cjwebb | 6 years ago
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Sounds like the headwind fairies follow road.cc, as I hear from their facebook page that they suffered from a headwind all the way, only subsiding yesterday evening. 

Sadly this means they didn't (quite) reach the 48 hour target  2

 

Guinness also set the route to take, so very hard to compare against any other JOGLE attempts which may have been more direct.

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nniff | 6 years ago
1 like

JOGLE into the prevailing wind is a different kettle of fish to LEJOG with the wind - speaking as someone who commutes 20 miles NE in the morning and 20 miles SW in the evening I know which I find faster and easier.

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paulrattew replied to nniff | 6 years ago
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nniff wrote:

JOGLE into the prevailing wind is a different kettle of fish to LEJOG with the wind - speaking as someone who commutes 20 miles NE in the morning and 20 miles SW in the evening I know which I find faster and easier.

 

I did a JOGLE (9 days 984 miles) back in 2013. We had a headwind all the way from Glasgow (the wind even changed direction when we hit the south west to keep it as a full on headwind). The difference between a JOGLE and a LEJOG is aboslutely huge.

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kitsunegari | 6 years ago
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Best of luck chaps! What an endeavour.

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daccordimark | 6 years ago
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These guys are doing JOGLE as opposed to Woodburn and Butler who did LEJOG so you can't directly compare the times. I can't be bothered to register on the Guinness site to find out what the current record is for JOGLE - perhaps there isn't one. Presumably they have all sorts of different categories for the record including relays.

Butler's record of 44hr 4m took 58m off Woodburn's but he had the advantage of a tri-bar setup compared to Woodburn's standard road bike. It would be interesting to see if any of the current long distance stars could beat Butler's time on a full TT rig.

 

 

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dolphin-hop | 6 years ago
0 likes

They hope to do it in less than 48hours on a standard road bike so lets not judge just yet!

Good luck guys.

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Leviathan | 6 years ago
3 likes

Isn't going downhill cheating?

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Astana Man | 6 years ago
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this JOGLE is going to be done on std UCI regulation road bike i believe, no TT bikes are allowed, no tri bars and no disc wheels, all other records have been done on TT bikes and setup, so they really do have things stacked against them, still 48hrs or less,,, thats a bumpa ride on road bikes, good luck chaps, will be following you on your facebook page  1

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Rod Marton replied to Astana Man | 6 years ago
0 likes

Astana Man wrote:

this JOGLE is going to be done on std UCI regulation road bike i believe, no TT bikes are allowed, no tri bars and no disc wheels, all other records have been done on TT bikes and setup, so they really do have things stacked against them, still 48hrs or less,,, thats a bumpa ride on road bikes, good luck chaps, will be following you on your facebook page  1

That's 3 hours slower than John Woodburn took in the pre-aero/carbon/disc days.

Good luck, anyway.

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SingleSpeed | 6 years ago
3 likes

So 4 hours longer than Gethin Butler who did the same distance by himself  1

 

Good luck to them all.

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Grahamd | 6 years ago
1 like

Great ambition, wish them every success.

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