Passing the Cathedral: Marathon in 2020. Source: Gosivity, wikimedia commons |
Marathon Monument. Source: Maros Mraz, wikimedia commons |
Passing the Cathedral: Marathon in 2020. Source: Gosivity, wikimedia commons |
Marathon Monument. Source: Maros Mraz, wikimedia commons |
I enjoy long cycle rides, and last year I found myself looking for a challenge combining technology (route planning and bike tech), sport and local culture. I am a keen traveller and was attracted by the thought of demonstrating what is possible with lower-impact transport, plus my love of languages and geography made crossing natural and national borders very appealing. So, I thought, why not set a cycling record in this context?
When browsing cycle-touring records in the Guinness World Records database, I found that at the time the record for the number of countries visited by bike in one day, held by Glen Burmeister from Leicester, stood at four. A look at the map of Europe indicated that it would not be impossible to cycle through five countries in a day. But that would be more than just a record that, the challenge would also be a test of the virtual and physical cycling infrastructure, such as cycle-paths, maps, and route-planning applications.
I decided to make my attempt on 22nd April 2016, which would also be Earth Day, the annual global day of support for environmental protection, and would also be the day of the signing of the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emission limitation.
Since the tour would only take one day, it would be possible to travel light. I would ride my lightweight hybrid bike, which over the last ten years had been used for commuting, shopping, distributing Camcycle newsletters and pulling bike trailers. It had been tested previously in the Cambridge Touring Club Cambridge 200 km Audax. It was fitted with a luggage carrier, mudguards, and puncture-proof tyres. It also had a triathlon bar, something that I had learnt to appreciate on my longer commutes outside Cambridge, and which would protect against 'pinky numbing' (or Guyon’s Canal Syndrome). Generations of parts that had nearly worn out (or been damaged when a minicab crossed my path in London) were replaced, wheels, brakes, chains, gears and saddle. My front derailleur had been faulty for years, reducing the powertrain to a seven speed and preventing the option of shifting between the three front sprockets with the fingers. With regard to tools and replacement parts, I took only those necessary for very basic repairs/adjustments, such as fixing a flat tyre.
To track the route, I planned to use a GPS receiver, and a tri-bar mounted camera for photos (and occasionally films) of the road. Originally I had planned to produce a time-lapse of the whole tour, but this was far beyond capacity of the camera’s battery life, so instead I decided that I would take photos manually every few minutes.
During my planning stage I also tested Cycle Tracks GPS, a free Strava-like tracking app for my smartphone, but this wasn’t suitable as it drained the phone’s battery within three hours. I also took with me a small portable power bank and a hand-cranked charger to recharge my gadgets if necessary.
The starting point of the journey was clear from the beginning, it would be the 'Three Countries Point' on the Vaalserberg near Vaals, where the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet. After a few optimisation steps with Google Maps, I selected Évrange as my finishing point, somewhere not too far from Vaals, with overnight accommodation available and acceptable railway connections close to the French/Luxembourg border. I then added the local centres of Vaals, Aachen, Eupen, St Vith and Luxembourg City onto the map for food, shops, bike repair (if necessary), and people to witness my tour, e.g. in town halls and tourist information. All of these places are more or less connected with the motorway called European Route E421.
The detailed planning of my cycling route used the web-based applications Cyclestreets.net and the cycling mode of Google Maps. On Cyclestreets.net, the ‘fastest route’ included roads designated as ‘hostile’ to cyclists. Both the ‘quietest’ and ‘balanced’ routes, as well as Google Maps, favoured unpaved forest tracks over quieter roads, but these would add too much time to the overall ride: over 15 hours versus 11-12 hours for the fast route. Fortunately both apps were also able to find the car-free paths of the RAVeL network. The RAVel (Réseau Autonome de Voies Lentes) is a Wallonian long-distance path network similar to Sustrans that converts disused railway lines to car-free travel paths. It connects with other cycling networks, such as the LF(Landelijke Fietsroutes) in the Netherlands and Flanders, and EuroVelo (especially routes 3 and 5). My planned route was about 180 km long and would lead over Belgium’s highest point, but I also planned a second, less exposed but slightly longer route through the Ruhr valley in case of bad weather. Altogether, I used a combination of Google maps and, for the most part, the ‘fastest route’ of Cyclestreets as a guideline, since I would be using the ‘hostile’ roads out of peak hours.
Getting out of bed the next morning was easier than I had anticipated! Through the drizzle, which thankfully had held off the day before, I cycled back to Luxembourg railway station. I dutifully sourced the local drinks and confectionaries that I had promised to export and then caught a train to Brussels, from where I took the Eurostar to London. The Eurostar also transports bikes, but for a price of £25, and they need to be checked in at the station (if you wish to cycle this route then follow the EuroVelo 5 Route). During my challenge I had travelled through regions that had changed hands several times and seen many bloody battles, reminders of which can be found throughout the area. Watching Calais whizzing past made clear that borders can still be a deadly reality.
Back in Cambridge, I overloaded the Guinness World Records website with hundreds of photos, videos and GPS tracks (I used the free GPiSync software to geo-tag photos via their timestamp). When I was checking for updates in June, I found out that my record had already been broken by the audacious Michael Moll who had cycled through six countries in a day, crossing the Alps, which I would not have considered possible – at least not with that powertrain. Not that this mattered when my Guinness World Record Certificate arrived in the post in September, and anyway, what is a record compared to the experience of a day when rider and bike had worked so well together in relation to their environment, so well in fact that despite all the physical effort I really had felt no exhaustion whatsoever.
Therefore I
decided to come up with the Multi Endurance International Award (MEIA). It can
be awarded to everybody who has (proven) completed international challenges in three or more of the different endurance sports disciplines listed below. As this list of international challenges here is by
no means comprehensive, I would be excited to learn more.
1.
Road Running (Marathon Country Club, Marathon Globetrotters, World
Marathon Majors Six-Star)
For the different para-sports disciplines, the challenge, if it doesn't exist officially (there is a World Marathon Majors Wheelchair
Series for example), can be
defined by comparable criteria to the non-para challenge.
The events should be at least as
long as a standard long-distance for the respective discipline (e.g. 42.2 km
run=Marathon, 200 km cycle=Randonnée).
Cross-training
not only benefits the well-rounded sportsperson, but different means of movement
help to see the world from different perspectives. It is even more interesting
if the course and the mode of transport are determined by the environment,
instead of a given distance imposed on the terrain. It is the social being that
determines consciousness, not to mention that international challenges should
promote international friendship and cooperation.
Over the christmas holidays, I was sorting my race medal
collection, neatly stored in a wooden box. To my mild horror, I found that some
of my bronze-coloured medals were decaying, being covered with a greenish-white
crumbly salt, for which the term patina would be more than flattering.
Moreover, something was chewing away tiny pieces from the edges of my tin
medals! It’s not only the body that gets older.
So I sat down to think and research what might have
happened. Many of my medals were made from bronze, a mixture or alloy of mostly
copper (around 90%) with a few percent tin and often small amounts of other
metals, mainly zinc. Other medals are made from brass, which is a mixture of
copper with zinc only. Anyway, both alloys are mostly made up from copper. Copper
is a noble metal, which means that it should normally not rust in air or water
like for example iron does. However, when an alloy containing
copper comes into contact with chloride (present in common salt) in a wet
environment, corrosion will inevitably occur. This is also called bronze
disease, and this is what happens:
Cu → Cu++ e−
2) The cuprous ion (Cu+) reacts with the chloride ion to form an insoluble white salt, which is called cuprous chloride:
Cu+ + Cl− → CuCl
3) The cuprous chloride reacts with atmospheric moisture and another oxygen molecule to form a green salt (cupric chloride). The fuzzy white/green salt is a mixture of the white cuprous chloride and the green cupric chloride. And some hydrochloric acid is also produced (HCl):
4 CuCl + 4 H2O + O2 → CuCl2·3 Cu(OH)2 (green salt) + 2 HCl
4) Another copper atom is oxidised by air to the cuprous ion, which reacts with the chloride ion from hydrochloric acid to form even more of the white cuprous chloride.
Cu+ + Cl− → CuCl + e−
… and the circle of copper oxidation continues repeats
from here! We have a chain reaction, helped about or catalysed by the chloride
ions, that speeds up the corrosion of copper.
But where does the nasty chloride come from? Now, a medal
is what someone hangs around your neck after you have produced quite a bit of
sweat. When you exercise and sweat, your body loses salt (mostly sodium
chloride) in your sweat, in which there are ample of chloride Ions around.
Cu2+ +2 e− → Cu
Sn → Sn2+ +2 e−
This process is called bimetallic corrosion and can
happen wherever there are two different metals in direct contact which each
other. So basically what I had built involuntarily was a copper-tin battery
(though a very expensive one)! If you put together a pint of sweat, a copper
and a tin medal, you can easily build your own and generate electricity.
But what could be done next to rescue my medals from
decay? Firstly, remove the chlorides (the green-white-fuzzy salt), by giving
medals a thorough clean. The same goes for after wearing them. Secondly, take
care to keep the metals in a dry environment. My storage in wooden boxes was
probably not optimal in the moist North-Western European climate, so now they
are in a metal box. Thirdly, take care not to put copper and tin in direct
contact. Or in general, don't store treasures where moths eat them and rust
destroys them.
Bronze disease of the bronze medal on the right, and corrosion on the tin medal on the left.
Sorry Tegla!