Chase the Sun 2024 – Route, Recap, Review, UK South

route File: via Ride With GPS

I follow Mark Lewis on YouTube and he never fails to deliver an entertaining take on his training, challenges and having a generally more sensible person as a wife. He’s a very competent middle-aged Hyrox athlete but describes himself as slightly better than average (he’s a lot better than average). Anyway, he brought Chase The Sun to my attention when he attempted it a few years ago. From memory, he seemed to struggle a bit to finish but was doing it solo rather than tagging along behind someone for 200+ miles. I remember thinking at the time, “I’ll never do that.”

Obviously, last Saturday, “I did do that.”

Q: What is Chase The Sun?

A: A 200-mile East Coast to West Coast Bike Ride in the UK, starting at sunrise, and aiming to finish before sunset.

A mate dropped out a little while back and I took their place, the organisers do not give refunds or deferrals after a certain time (tut, tut). I never let a freebie entry go to waste.

How Hard Was It?

I mean, it’s patently not easy for almost everyone but if you’ve done a Century ride, then you’ll be able to do a double century. Just go a bit slower and find other people to draft off. That, as always, was my plan.

It didn’t turn out that way though and I ended up doing most of the pulling for our group after the first stop when the availability of others wasn’t as predictable. We did a crap job of taking advantage of other people and my legs felt the brunt of it on the day.

I ate vast quantities of food and either that or pure luck seemed to stave off cramps.

So I was alright for the entire ride. The same can’t be said of our Team and we had some physicality issues towards the end (others cramped!). I also let the team down with a punctured latex inner tube that had deflated during the day as it normally does, finally giving way to a pinch puncture in a pothole (doh). Still, I got that puncture near the end in Cheddar Gorge which was a stunning place for a puncture.

Summary: Made it by sunset, got the T-shirt (gilet), got the certificate. Job done

Event Organisation

It seems well organised but maybe a tad expensive. Something like £170.

The event starts just before sunrise. Then groups of 30 or so stagger off at various intervals for the next half an hour. That could be improved, I got very bored waiting at the back. Nice sunrise though, I rarely see them.

There was a meal provided at the end and at the halfway stage, and there were marshalls near turns at the start but less so at the end.

Riders are tracked by a public GPS unit that everyone carries. If you give some unique URL to family and friends they can follow you. I have neither so didn’t bother (actually that was a joke). I just turned my spare iPhone on at the halfway stage and let Find My do its thing for anyone interested (nobody was).

Numerous pubs and shops along the way had been informed of the ride and were actively encouraging people to stop for paid food and freebies water/squash. You definitely need to carry your additional food which I did and which I entirely ran through.

Quite a few people have support vans. there are also support vans for cycling clubs and toward the end one very kind lady in a van provided us with the water and Tiffin cake we ‘needed’.

You finish at Weston Super Mare pier and your checked-in baggage is there waiting for you if you’d paid extra for that service.

Weather

Mild drizzle at the start and maybe a 10km/h headwind for most of the day. Direct sunlight made itself felt somewhere in the afternoon for the first time and stayed long enough to give us a decent sunset at Weston. It was never cold but the free event-gilet was donned towards the end for the descent through Cheddar Gorge.

Logistics

Perhaps the hardest thing for me was adjusting my body clock. You have to get to the start and start at 4:30 am.

I couldn’t find any local hotels within easy cycling distance, they were either booked up or uninterested in people staying for one night (the organisers could help more with this). So the only options were a 30ish minute drive away. I reasoned that loading the car in a Travelodge car park at 3:30 am wasn’t much better than leaving home in SW London at 2:45 ish, the latter option benefitting from my own bed (Eight Sleep).

Now my problem was that I **HAVE** to sleep at least a couple of hours. So I used prescription sleeping tablets progressively over a few days to bring my bedtime forward to 9 PM. It worked. Yay!

I drove there and my partner brought the car back, also suffering from having to adjust their body clock.

As it happened it was easy enough to park the car at the hotel where the event HQ was situated, I checked my bags in and someone had registered me the previous night at the race briefing.

The bag and I arrived in Weston in the late afternoon. Luckily we had friends who lived nearby, so we had an excellent night bed and lift waiting. Beer and whiskey were also waiting, I skipped the latter…sorry Scotland.

Gadgets & Kit

• Hammerhead Karoo 3
• Wahoo TRACKR HRM
• Garmin Forerunner 965
• Polar SENSE
• Stages Gen 3 Dual, Dura-Ace 11spd
• Garmin Varia RTL515 Radar and safety rear light
• Ravemen PR1400– in case we got there very late. Also doubles as a battery pack
• Ravemen FR160 – Safety front light for continuous use
• Shimano Di2
• Shimano RC-903 S-Phyre Shoes
• Specialized Evade 3
• Sungod Vulcan with an almost clear lens
• Whoop ASSOS Bib Shorts
• Whoop 4
• Cervelo R5
• Hunt 82mm Aerodynamicist
• Pirelli P-Zero TT Conti Race lite spare and 2x Vittoria Latex tubes
• Apple Watch LTE (unused, was an emergency phone and credit card effectively)
• CYCPLUS M2 Battery Pump – awesome, worked when needed
• Some random handlebar bag that went on the front and 2x High 5 bottles

Some of that gear is pretty decent, fast stuff. I reasoned that ‘fast’ meant it made ‘slow’ a bit easier. Which it probably did.

• Gear issues – 1x latex puncture (unplanned!)
• Karoo needed charging (planned)
• FR160 needed charging (planned)

Route

It’s a nice route, as you can see above it’s nearly a straight line through the countryside from East to West. Bizarrely it almost went past my house and my partner’s childhood house.

The route didn’t feel particularly hilly even though the total gain was 2500m. I suppose that was spread out over a long distance.

Once out of London, I remember most of the roads being quiet rural roads and mostly with surfaces that were in much better condition than in London. There were a few gravelly country tracks and a few main roads but they were by far the exception rather than the rule.

I didn’t see especially stupid car driving or cycling. That said one guy went into the back of a car which promptly drove off without stopping. Totally the cyclist’s fault in this instance and he was OK but embarrassed and scratched (yes, I stopped)

There were lots of excellent countryside views, especially over to the West and of course especially with Cheddar Gorge. Even Weston Super Mare seemed to have improved from the last time I was there in a different life, many moons ago.

The aftermath

I’ve been doing a fair bit of longer rides over the last 2 months including a few back-to-back centuries. Strangely I didn’t have sore muscles the next day.

That said, I had 5 days off training after the ride. I just didn’t feel like pushing myself until today when I went back to the short, fast stuff I enjoy.

330km. Job well done. Bottom well sore.

Would I recommend It?

I’m neutral on that. Either it appeals to you or not. It’s not a tickbox event but it is a good challenge.

I’m a bit sad that I missed out on Ride London this year. I had sort of trained/hoped to do a fast one but it was raining so I stayed in bed. CTS made up for that but in a different way.