'I just nipped in': rider smashes London-Edinburgh record – with a pub stop along the way

If you're a Bicycle Mayor, you may as well walk it like you talk it, and that's exactly what Pete Dyson – Bicycle Mayor of Bath – did yesterday when he broke the record for the London to Edinburgh place to place ride.

He set a new provisional time of 16 hrs 56 min 51sec for the 388 mile (624km) Road Record Association record between the two capitals. Dyson became the first rider to break the 17-hour mark, beating the previous time, set by Michael Broadwith, by just over 45 minutes.

Dyson, a doctoral researcher in transport and travel behaviour at the University of Bath, left St Paul's Cathedral at 5am, accompanied by a useful tailwind. It was "a stellar day of weather" he said, although it didn't go entirely without a hitch.

After losing contact with his support crew near Newcastle, for example, he ended up popping into a pub for supplies.

"We got detached in Newcastle. I wasn't sure where they were, and I thought there was enough traffic that I might not see [them again]," he told Cycling Weekly. "So I was at some lights in Ponteland and I was like, 'there's a pub there'. So I just nipped in and got two J2Os and a Pepsi, poured them into my bottle and said thanks very much.

Even before that, at York, he was forced to change to a spare bike that he'd put together especially for the ride, after the aero bars broke on his main machine.

"I think it was the cobbles," he said. "I'd built up a spare bike that was almost identical – that was a fair amount of work – because I thought that something like that might happen. But it didn't take much longer than swapping the bottles to be honest, I just pulled the Garmin over."

He was also forced to make a six-kilometre detour after finding that the final climb of the A68 road was closed.

At the end, Dyson said he was significantly more tired than after his comparable record ride from Land's End to London in 2021.

"I properly had to put the bike aside and lie down," he said. "I felt terrible for quite a few hours, but better now."

"This wasn't a beer and pizza event," he added. "I know other races you can finish and go 'right, let's have a bit of a mini-party'. But this was more like… as I was going to sleep I said, 'I feel like I should be in hospital right now', I was shivering a bit, pretty messed up."

Broadwith, holder of the record that Dyson beat as well as the Land's End to John o' Groats record, said, "He banged it basically, it's fantastic. It's great to see this interest in the RRA records and I feel proud to be part of this current movement – it's helping reinvigorate this historical element of the cycling community."

Broadwith added that he hoped more women would begin to see place-to-place record breaking as a viable consideration, saying: "I did the record, and then Pete did the record, but the women's London-Edinburgh record has stood for over 50 years, still held by Eileen Sheridan.

"It'd be so nice to see one of the top women who, for example, was competing in the National 12-hour, which was just at the weekend, step up from 12 hours to probably around 18 hours and have a go at the record, it would be a really cool thing to see."

For his part, Dyson also offered thanks to his support crew – Ian and Bridget Boon, who are familiar names in the RRA world, saying: "A lot of the cycling world relies on passionate pensioners – with three days of their time to hand to donate at a moment's notice… they made this possible."

As well as establishing a new record, the ride raised £2,600 for the Milestones Trust charity, supporting people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and dementia.

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