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Red Bull Timelaps: 500+ riders take on 25-hour race around Windsor Great Park

Inaugural edition of world's "longest one-day race" proves a hit...

The weekend saw more than 500 cyclists compete in the first edition of the Red Bull Timelaps at Windsor Great Park in Berkshire, billed as the world’s longest one-day bike race.

By design rather than coincidence, the event started at noon on Saturday on a 6.6-kilometre circuit and, with the clocks going back overnight, spanned 25 hours before it finished at midday on Sunday.

Competing in teams of four, with only one rider per team on the course at the time, the idea was to complete as many laps as possible – with a ‘Power Hour’ on a shortened section at the time the clocks stopped counting double.

The event was won by Northamptonshire-based Wellingborough Cycles Team, which completed 138 laps.

Team leader Jack Patmore said: “We are ecstatic. We ended up entering as a bit of fun at the end of our season, so it's really great that we ended up winning the whole event.

“We didn't really have a game plan apart from just letting one of the guys hit it really hard! We will definitely be back next year to defend our title!”

The women’s category was won by Team 5th Floor, with one of its riders, Sophie Edmondson: , saying: “There were some highs and some lows. The middle of the night was pretty hard but it was really fun!

“In the beginning, our tactics were short stints at the beginning, then after lap four, we realised we needed to extend this.

“For the Power Hour we did six lap stints, in the night we did eight and then we did three each for the last ones.”

She added: “There are a lot of female teams here. It’s amazing to see so many women taking part. It’s so cool for the sport.

Here at road.cc, we had two teams running – one comprising staff from the office in Bath, the other made up of four readers of the site who had won their places through a competition we ran.

One of the members of the road.cc office team was site co-founder, Dave Atkinson, who said: “It was great to be there for the inaugural Red Bull Timelaps event, and save for one shower and more wind than was strictly necessary, conditions were fantastic given the time of year.

“The undulating course around Windsor Great Park was both interesting and challenging, and fortunately the pheasants and deer kept their distance.

“Unfortunately, the race had to be re-started after an incident in the first few laps, and even more unfortunately it was one of our team road.cc riders who had to be carted off to hospital with a broken shoulder and collarbone.

“If you’re reading this, Jim, heal up soon and we’ll send you a bunch of kit to replace the stuff they had to cut off you …”

Dave continued: “The standard of riding was pretty high, and we were happy enough with our 83rd overall given that most of our pre-race prep was concerned with buying skeleton outfits. More dressing up next time, please. Maybe a fancy-dress category?

“Overall, the race was really well organised and marshalled, with the ‘Power Hour’ as the clocks went back adding an extra dimension to the racing as those laps counted double.

“It’s definitely one to look out for next year, although if the weather conditions are more typical for the end of October it might be tough dragging yourself out of your sleeping bag at 3am ...”

You can find the full results here.

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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5 comments

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beezus fufoon | 6 years ago
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so this is how you treat your readership?

better be a bit more careful what I say in future!

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Stu Kerton replied to beezus fufoon | 6 years ago
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beezus fufoon wrote:

so this is how you treat your readership?

better be a bit more careful what I say in future!

Yeah, I feel really bad for forgetting to take my giant bundle of cotton wool with me to wrap each of our team mates in!

I feel crap enough that a rider on my watch ended up in hospital but on the flipside, stuff happens that we can't control, this is bike racing after all and we'll do our best to look after Jim in the long term.

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cdamian | 6 years ago
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This looks like a lot of fun. 

I still have Rad am Ring https://www.radamring.de/en/ on my personal bucket list. 

Avatar
Goldfever4 | 6 years ago
2 likes

Thanks again guys for the random number generator falling on my name. I had a great time and really enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to meet the team behind the website too. Special mention for Stu for looking after us and stepping in to give us a hand when we were a man down. 

The crash was the definite low point that makes the cold and wet and headwindy bits pale into insignificance, really sorry for Jim and hoping he makes a swift and full recovery, just glad his hip turned out not to be broken as we were told might be the case. It was so chilling to have his bike carried back to our pit without knowing what his injuries were.

There was a great mix of people there, the course and village were well organised and the marshalling was generally really good. I'd fully recommend this for next year but anyone who considers it ought to be aware that registration was expected at 7am for us which made the overnight element even more difficult! I'm hoping that some of the billion photographers will put their photos online at some point so I can study my gurn and bike position...

After my legs got back to normal today I have even started considering next year, although maybe a summer equivalent instead, we can't be that lucky with the weather twice in a row...

Avatar
ChrisB200SX replied to Goldfever4 | 6 years ago
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Goldfever4 wrote:

Thanks again guys for the random number generator falling on my name. I had a great time and really enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to meet the team behind the website too. Special mention for Stu for looking after us and stepping in to give us a hand when we were a man down. 

The crash was the definite low point that makes the cold and wet and headwindy bits pale into insignificance, really sorry for Jim and hoping he makes a swift and full recovery, just glad his hip turned out not to be broken as we were told might be the case. It was so chilling to have his bike carried back to our pit without knowing what his injuries were.

There was a great mix of people there, the course and village were well organised and the marshalling was generally really good. I'd fully recommend this for next year but anyone who considers it ought to be aware that registration was expected at 7am for us which made the overnight element even more difficult! I'm hoping that some of the billion photographers will put their photos online at some point so I can study my gurn and bike position...

After my legs got back to normal today I have even started considering next year, although maybe a summer equivalent instead, we can't be that lucky with the weather twice in a row...

Exactly this ^
It was yesterday afternoon when the adrenaline wore off and I started to realise just how much I had enjoyed it, despite Jim's crash and serious injuries, waiting to hear how bad his injuries were was quite sobering.

This was my first ever bike race (excluding non-drafting duathlons), and the whole experience was simply awesome.
Thanks for the opportunity, I would love to do it all over again, or anything similar. I'm now totally up for Revolve24. I'll happily share what I've learnt to be more prepared for this type of event.

I sneaked into photo 23 (yellow sleeves), just about to finish the last lap of our race  1

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