Meet the author

By John Swindells 10 Dec 2022 | Comment

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I've been riding bikes ever since I needed transport to university. Back then I used to cycle a few miles each way on a heavy but useful mountain bike (Carrera Kalarahi, a Halfords semi-cheapo brand). A few years later I cut my racing teeth in time trialing, using a dedicated bike that I could optimise for straight-line speed, and found the longer events (100 miles and 12 hours) more suitable for me. I ended up racing for CC Breckland as they were (and still are) very strong in time-trialling. I also did the odd bit of cyclo-cross racing, but only as part of the BUSA champs.

After a lull in the action to raise a family, I got back into time trialing and had a go at road racing and cyclo-cross. My eldest son Dan had started CX as a youth rider, and I thought I might as well have a go too; I joined Gt Yarmouth CC for a bit, and later on switched to Iceni Velo where I also dabbled with road racing.

During 2016 and 2017 started to ride a few longer leisure rides. It wasn't until 2018 though that I rode my first audax, having been introduced to this world by an Iceni Velo clubmate. I rode 26 200km+ rides that year (including a couple over 300km), but only two were actually audaxes.

For the next few years I continued to ride lots of longer rides, usually solo and either at leisure or at pace on my TT bike. Almost all of these were around 200km, although one was almost 500km (a dawn 'til dusk challenge). A big motivator for these longer rides was my discovery of the Eddington Number, a fiendish combination of distance and quantity. Read more about it here!.

Finally, in 2022, I decided to go long on audaxes. My Iceni Velo clubmate and audax expert (Mike) had convinced me to enter the 1500km London-Edinburgh-London event in August, so I started entering a small number of calendar events and riding lots of other DIY events. For the 2021/22 season I managed to rack up 100 points, including a successful LEL outing (London-Edinburgh-London, 1500km).

So in summary, I'm fairly new to the audax scene, but have decent experience and am really looking forward to many more years of these long-distance challenges.

Past accomplishments

2022: SR series (200, 300, 400 and 600km audaxes in one season)
2022: London-Edinburgh-London 1500km audax

Future challenges

2022: Randonneur Round the Year (an audax each month for 12 consecutive months)
2023: Paris - Brest - Paris 1200km audax
2023: London - Lands End - London 1000km audax
2024: Lands End - John o'Groats 1000km audax

If you'd like to follow me on my adventures, please check back regularly at swinny.net or follow me on Strava!. The events I'm interested in are listed in my Audax events page.

Comments

by Peter Simes on 01 January 2023

Really great to read some informative and entertaining commentary especially around cyxlocross events. I started following CX during the pandemic on Eurosport and was hooked. I am now looking (at 60) to do my first CX

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Calendar

All Audax: long-distance cycling events | All events

July 2024 1 event August 2025 1 event

About the author

My name is John Swindells and I'm a keen recreational cyclist with a preference for long one-day rides. I've also previously dabbled in time trialling and cyclo-cross. See more of what I get up to on Strava!