Towards the beginning of 2023 a few of us decided we were going to take part in the Le Mans 24 hour circuit skate in France. It involves forming a team between 6-12 people or a duo team (2 people) or doing it solo. The aim is to cover as many miles as you can in a 24 hour period. Obviously doing it as a team makes life a little easier and you can take turns as it is like a relay race where you have to pass the baton onto the skater in your team er so they can do their laps around the race track.
None of us had ever done anything like that before so it was all new to us, none of us really trained for it and we left a lot of things till the last second to make sure everything was organized for it but that the fun of it right.
Unfortunately our team of 6 became a team of 4 as 2 people had to drop out so this was going to make things a little more tough but we were all still keen to do it. There was myself , Sara, Dan and Luis who were coming from Madrid and we formed the team – Sara’s skater boys!
We left Bristol around 8pm on Thursday 6th July in my van and headed towards Birchington-on-sea which was a good 3 1/2 hour drive. We were able to stay at Dan’s parents place for the evening before getting the early Ferry from Dover the next morning.
This made the drive a bit easier for the Friday as we were driving down to Le Mans from Dover on the Friday.
Friday came, we got on the ferry and made our way to Le mans. It was around 35 degrees so it was a hot long drive down to Le Mans which took us about 5/6 hours, we met Luis in Le Mans as he had caught a train from Paris to come meet us. So now the team was all together in the van!
We checked in at Le Mans, set up camp for the weekend and enjoyed some food, some thunder and lightning and a good night’s rest as we had a big day ahead of us on Saturday!
Saturday came and the weather was banging. It was still super hot in the 30’s so we knew it was going to be a long hot day to begin the 24 hour skate at 4pm. We had registration at 11am along with a parade around the racetrack so you could become familiar with the track. After this there was a qualifying round to determine where your team would start in the race. It was simply a 300m skate which was done in groups of 8 people and you were timed to see where you would place.
I took part in the qualifying round but I’m not sure where I was actually placed but it didn’t really matter too much! So as time grew closer to the 4pm start of the 24 hours skate everyone was allowed to set up camp in the pit lanes, every team had their own pit lane which had shelter , electricity, water and a place to lie down.
4pm arrived and it was time to start the 24 hour skate, everyone was excited and our original plan was to do 5 laps at a time and the order would go to Luis, Dan, Sara and myself. At this point it was around 36 degrees and super humid. The track heat was recorded at 40 degrees which made things a little harder. Luis was starting off the race, everyone got into their qualifying positions and you had to place your skates on the other side of the race track and when the whistle went everyone had to run across , put their skates on and then start the race. Luis was quick off the mark, skates were on and he was off on his first 5 laps.
Each lap is 4.2km long, it had a massive uphill section right at the start of the lap which was a ball ache in that heat but that then meant you had a nice long downhill part to cruise down. Luis got 3 laps in and told us that doing 5 laps in that heat was going to be too much for us so we decided 3 laps each would be enough unless you wanted to do more. Each lap on average took about 10-12 minutes.
We were now a few hours into the race, I was doing a few 5 lap runs as I wanted to get some good distance in. We were all smashing it and as the hours went on the temperature was slowly going down with the sun. Before we knew it, it was like 10pm already so time was flying by already! On average we had about 1-2 hours break between each time we needed to do our laps. So this time we would eat, rest and stretch, lots of stretching!
We got to about 2am and we were all starting to get pretty tired and sleepy. So as a team we decided that Sara and Dan could rest for 4 hours which meant they could sleep . Luis did a solid hour of laps then I would take over and do a solid hour and then we both did that again. It was much easier doing laps in the early hours of the morning as it was much cooler and less wind. ME and Luis smashed out the 4 hours between us so Sara and Dan could sleep. I finished my Laps at 4am so I now had 4 hours till I had to skate again. I went back to my van and slept for 3 hours which felt great. Luis finished skating at 5 am and he did the same and then Sara and Dan were back skating to cover me and Luis whilst we slept.
I got up around 7am , had some breakfast and a shower and got myself back to the pit lane at 8 am to start skating again. Sara and Dan were on their second wind and their energy levels were high and now also me and Luis have fresh energy from sleeping so the whole team were feeling good.
The only downside was that about 7.30am it started to heavily rain with thunder. So Dan had a few laps of getting wet and so did I but it made it a little more refreshing as it was slightly cooler than the day before and more cloud cover. The sun eventually came out and it dried up.
We got to about 2pm on Sunday and we knew we only had 2 hours left of the 24 hour race. We all had some personal goals we wanted to achieve. Luis wanted to complete 30 laps, Sara wanted to do 20 laps and Dan wanted to complete 25 laps and I wanted to reach 39 laps which equals 100 miles so I really wanted to accomplish that.
We figured out how many laps each we needed to do within that 2 1/2 hour time frame. Luis needed another 5 laps, Sara needed 2 and so did Dan and I needed 5 laps also we figured that 5 laps takes roughly about an hour. Luis smashed out his 5 laps in just under an hour and Sara and Dan also smashed out their 2 laps each. This left me with just over an hour to complete 5 laps to reach my 100 mile goal. The thing was though that at 15:45pm you had to cross the finish line which would be your last lap. So I had to smash out those 4 laps before 15:45pm so I could get that last 5th lap in. Everyone else had completed their goals so I was motivated to do mine and with the help from the rest of the team they gave me the boost to get it done.
I managed to secure 6 laps in the end which took me to 104 miles in total, it was a hard final push from us all at the end but we completed all that we set out to do which was amazing! Our team goal was to reach 500km between us all but we just fell short and we did 477km over 24 hours which is 296 miles. Not bad at all!
Well done to the whole team ,we all smashed it and can’t wait to go again next year but as a team of 6 just so things are a little easier haha.
After Le mans we went to Paris to skate for the day before the long drive back to England on the Tuesday!