Paul Jones - End to End

Paul Jones, End to End (Little, Brown)

Running the 400 metres is a hard race because it's a bit too far to sprint, racing to beat the record for cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats is similarly, but vastly more, so because it's a bit too far even for those long distance riders who think 24 Hour races are perfectly normal and 12 Hours is not very gruelling at all. The last stretch up through the desolate outposts of northern Scotland are usually ridden in the early hours of the morning on a record-breaking schedule these days and riders hallucinate, lose all sense of what is what and perhaps are never quite the same afterwards. The current record is Michael Broadwith's 43 hours, 25 minutes and 13 seconds done in 2018. It's about 840 miles.

Paul Jones's book on the subject of these rides is not a comprehensive history of the record. He writes up his own ride, done in several sections, finding something out about what is involved and interviews those record-breakers still available to piece together a vivid montage of the discipline. He was a fast man at 25 miles, like Alf Engers, the subject of his previous book, but not inclined to big distances. He had been an English teacher until resigning that job at a time of personal crisis. He certainly fancies himself as a writer and is capable of some memorable descriptive passages but one wonders at times if part of the mental instability that he struggles with is a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome, his vocabulary fixating on the scatalogical rather more than my maiden aunt sensibility would like. There is some compensation for that to be had, though, in his references to the likes of Louis MacNeice and a footnote on Jacques Derrida which is not something one expects in a book on sport. He is also appreciative of his precursors in the 'beautiful' Coureur magazine of the 1950's and 60's.

Before meeting the living record-breakers, Jones picks out some heroics from the early years, notably G.P. Mills who had to be dosed unknowingly with cocaine, the great Marguerite Wilson who had never driven a car before driving back, unaware that cars ran on petrol and F.T. Bidlake who disapproved of lady riders, especially in attire he regarded as not 'contumelious', which was,

an archaism even then. It's a Jacob Rees-Mogg of a word,

which Paul's research shows reached peak usage in 1810, a hundred years before Bidlake's use of it.

Jones is laudibly inclusive, devoting as much space to the endeavours of female riders like Eileen Sheridan, Pauline Strong and Janet Tebbutt, as well as tandems, trikes and even tandem trikes which are,

like an articulated lorry and probably harder to maneouvre.

Paradoxically, it turns out, part of the secret of setting a new record is not going fast enough but knowing how to go slow enough and many attempts fail between Preston and Carlisle because a speed merchant murdered their schedule in the first half only for the schedule to get its revenge in the second. You can't win it in England but plenty have been beaten before arriving in Scotland.

More than once John Woodburn is found to be taciturn; Andy Wilkinson thinks he'll end his career with an End to End ride only for his success, beating the 847 mile record by 58 seconds, to lead him into a whole new phase of a career that led to him winning the 24 Hour Championship as a 'novice'; Gethin Butler has a resting heart rate of 30,

calm, unruffled, precise, seeing the world more quickly and in a more measured way

and Michael Broadwith first needed a neck brace before supporting his head himself and being tricked into continuing by his support team when he was insisting on packing. In the recent documentary series on Muhammed Ali, it was reported that he urinated blood for 2-3 weeks after his brutal third match with Joe Frazier. Reports of other physical side effects for weeks after an End to End record come as not much of a surprise, then. Lynne Taylor kept thinking she was approaching traffic lights but it was her bloodshot eyes deceiving her.

It is, of course, madness but any record by definition has to be at the furthest edge of possibility. Most people, of those that decide to ride from one extreme of the land mass to the other, take maybe 10 days over it, averaging 80 miles or so a day. Steve Abraham once rode 72388 miles in a year, 7014 in a month, or 236 miles a day for 30 days. But if that doesn't sound sensible or even good for you, Jones always remarks on how healthy and younger than their years these riders look when he meets them.

The overused cliché of the 'journey' is for once very fitting for this endeavour. Janet Tebbutt, in keeping with her modest demeanour, just says, 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' whereas others are hell-bent and delirious. John O'Groats is an anti-climax of a place for such monumental efforts to achieve their results in but, apart from a few fishing boats, it being the end of the road is the only point in it being there at all. Unless you turn round and do a few more hours in search of the 1000 mile record but many of the most intrepid have seen enough by then and decide not to.

End to End is a compelling book almost in spite of its author who has done a great job but could have done a better one, perhaps, if he had resisted the temptation to make it about himself and his own 'journey'. His writing draws attention to itself sometimes when the best writing is often that which one doesn't notice. But that does add another layer, a confessional account of a personal crisis that perhaps his fragmented ride and his investigation of those who did it under more exacting pressure helped to overcome but he fails to become the hero or central figure of his own ride which, it is to be hoped, was never his intention.