I'm pretty sure ～れに～れて is a grammar form that I have studied in my JLPT textbooks, but I came across it again in a text and I can't for the life of me find it again in my grammar dictionaries. I also looked on JGram, but couldn't find it there.
The particular case I came across was:
人間{にんげん}は昔{むかし}、遅{おく}れに遅{おく}れて自{みずか}らの年{とし}を自覚{じかく}する。
Without knowing what 遅{おく}れに遅{おく}れて is doing, I feel I'm missing an important nuance.
I think it's something like, "From long ago, people have been slow to be conscious of their own age." But how is the above sentence different from this one:
人間{にんげん}は昔{むかし}、遅{おそ}くて自{みずか}らの年{とし}を自覚{じかく}する。
...?
Answer
An attempt to answer your question about how the two sentences are different:
遅くて means something like "because it's late" and doesn't make much sense in the sentence.
遅く might make more sense semantically, but doesn't seem to put enough emphasis on the being late "Long ago, humans become conscious of their age late". The "late" doesn't quite know what it wants (Sorry, can't explain this much better).
遅れに遅れて tries to capture the sense of "finally" or "after much delay" and therefore implies that man should have become conscious about his age earlier. "Long ago, humans finally become conscious of their age".
It would be easier to be certain if I had more context for your sentence.
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