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With temperatures topping 35 degrees on the Saturday, and a torrential downpour in the 23rd hour of the 24-hour Shimano-sponsored Sleepless in the Saddle, this year’s event at Trentham Gardens, Stoke, was a toughie.
Team members with time on their hands, and a need to get out of the sun – or, eventually, the rain – could peruse Madison’s new business-to-consumer website.
Dominic Langan, the brains behind Ultimatepursuits, was at Sleepless and was pleased the site could be browsed live. As there’s no Broadband connection for miles – Trentham Gardens is not really the sort of place to have a WiFi transmitter – Madison hired a DSL satellite van for the weekend.
"This worked really well," said Langan
"We explored a number of connection solutions but this was by far the best choice. We are able to do live webcasts of the event as well as have fast connections on the PCs. We’ll be doing it this way at other events we attend from now on."
SLEEPLESS CAPTIONS:
Top: Dominic Langan.
Base, top: The DSL dish
Base, lower: Science in Sport sell water bottles for £2 each and then fill and refill them with their go-longer liquids for the duration of the race. But the heat at this year’s event meant SiS ran out of barrels of water and powder. At last year’s race, SiS dispensed 130 gallons of PS2 of energy drink. This year SiS thought 200 gallons would see them through the 24-hours, but the heat led to a rush for liquids and the pumps dried up just after midnight…
