The Twenty Four.

The race started off quite well, mainly because there wasn’t any weather: it wasn’t wet, neither was it windy, not hot – nor cold, and the sun wasn’t shining. But, like Cinderella, my luck ran out at midnight after 145 miles; the indigestion that’s been plaguing me this year struck and, since you can’t keep spending energy that isn’t being replaced, I had to give up. Whether I’ll be able to ride any more of these events depends on whether I or my doctor can devise some sort of remedy. Thus it was, that having had a sleep, a wash and some breakfast, I was able to venture onto the finishing circuit and take some photographs of  riders of particular interest to me.
 
Pride of place has to go to Hugh Culverhouse, pictured just twenty minutes before he finished; he ended up thirty fourth out of eighty two starters and achieved a provisional mileage of 375 miles with only one functional leg, that’s a distance of which I can only dream. His previous best was 394 done just over thirty years ago. The extra is an enlarged detail of the same picture as it just about shows the curiosity that is his left hand crank and pedal: the crank is split with a bearing in the middle so that his left foot rises and falls by about six inches on each pedal revolution. I was a bit bemused the first time he overtook me but later realised that the weight of his left leg assists his pedalling action  by helping to lift his good leg over the top dead centre; a nice simple piece of ingenious design.
 
Footnote: the red box on his handlebar contains his play piece.