Category: Sportive

First sportive in ages – until recently didn’t have many free Sundays.

Not really sure what’s Insane about it – my son regularly rides much longer than that and I was riding 150 miles occasionally in 2021 in training for the 12 hour TT that never happened. That year I had felt pretty confident that I wouldn’t disgrace myself at more than that distance – but with the cancellation of the event, my training lacked motivation and I felt I had nowhere near enough miles on the saddle for this event.

But Pedal Revolution events are well organised and with proper food at food stops (not just snacks, other sportive organisers take note) – sandwich, crisps, flapjack, fruit – and pasta at the second food stop. Had been dreaming about the latter as I approached the 120 mile stop – for me, food becomes more difficult as the miles mount up. Flapjack/granola/cereal bars work ok to start with but most energy foods/drinks are sweet (or very sweet) and they just get too much after a bit so I really appreciate something  savoury. Riding without enough food is a certain recipe for a very hard ride or even abandoning it. 

While I knew many of the roads, it was often a delightful surprise to come onto a familiar road from a different direction. Most of the roads were small/very small and pretty empty of any vehicles apart from our bikes – well it was a Sunday, which obviously helped. Even crossing some bigger roads was comparatively easy.

Some riding in company but I’m also quite happy on my own – though when my bike computer and the event sign posts seemed to disagree, it was reassuring when others came by.

Weather crisp but sunny to start with mostly sunny intervals  but very pleasant the rest of the day  – but with enough wind to make riding a little harder at times. Many cyclists insist that tailwinds are just a myth – certainly with twisty roads in Norfolk that can seem very true.

The event covered 100, 125 and 150 miles – and the choice can sometimes be a bit difficult when coming up for a route split. When the 100 mile route split off, it was no big deal but I knew that the choice between taking the shorter 125 mile route and the longer 150 mile would be a challenge, but I had signed up for the full 150 and my granddaughter had given me a handlebar stem cap:

 Well, I saw this every time I looked down at my handlebars and, in the end, there was never really a question when I got to the route split – on I went for the full 150 miles – an extra 2.5 hours, knowing there were a couple of quite steep hills to look forward to.

If I include the two miles each way to the start and back home, this makes my second longest ride ever – though some way behind my 232 mile TT 51 years ago. Having done it once, I’m not thinking of repeating it in the near future – the bike was faultless, but the legs showed their age at the end!

A new take on sportives! Sportives are mass-participation events where riders gather together, start together, ride together etc – in both small and larger groups – and therefore not acceptable under coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

Instead these Rallyé events mean riders choose their own routes and distances but book a time slot to arrive at the event village (for food stop and photographs and socially distant chatting). Only limited numbers are able to be in the village at any one time so there will still be the sense of riding in a big event – but without riders actually congregating at any one time.

There are 3 events planned:

26 July  – the event village for this one is about 12 miles from home so I plan to head into Suffolk first and aim to ride about 120 or so miles that day

UPDATE:

Saturday 15th August: This was to have been the Tour de Broads double weekend (2 x 100 miles) – and – for me – it still will be though I’ll be entirely on my own  today – I plan to ride to Walberswick and Southwold using a different route to the one I used for the July Rallyé event. Riding to the seaside is a new exploit for me (the swim not so likely) :

Sunday 16 August This is the proper Tour de Broads Rallyé – the event village is in now in Filby ( a village near Great Yarmouth); I had been hoping to ride to Great Yarmouth and include some of the Broads as well, but in view of the hot weather being forecast – and therefore the crowds expected at the seaside, the event village has moved inland and I’ll be exploring some smaller roads to avoid the coast road:

Oops – got that wrong! Sportives are almost invariably on Sundays and I assumed that the Sunday was the big TdeB day – nope, that was the Saturday when I was doing my own thing. Went to the event village on the Sunday and was puzzled to find no activity. Eventually went my own way and realised my date mistake when I got home.

Happy that I did manage 2 x 100 mile rides over the weekend though. Deliberately kept the pace down but was surprised to find a very similar average moving speed on both days (15mph is a fairly good speed for me over 100 miles) and it was only after about 80 miles on the second day when I also lost the tailwind I had been enjoying that the tiredness kicked in.

Sunday 6 September – the event village is in Norwich – again about 12 miles away away so I plan to do my own round Norfolk ride first before heading to Norwich and then home:

Well, the day was largely cloudy, but fine and I enjoyed meandering around Norfolk – some pleasant lanes, an unexpected but dry bridleway (which avoided a busy road). Kept the heart rate and therefore speed down and this worked well. Got a bit lost in the Northern Distributor road series of cycle paths (couldn’t understand what my bike computer wanted me to do), then got lost again in the Broadland Business park until I came to roads I recognised.

At around 90 miles I was steeling myself for a short, sharp and busy hill when I got overtaken by a young lady on a sit-up bike who just sailed past me, closely followed by another young lady on a regular road bike. I caught up with them on the flat and, yes, the first was on an electric bike. I had another 30 miles or more to go so the motor was an interesting idea!

I had wanted to do more than the 120+ miles, but I’d already been out more than 8 hours so kept to plan and didn’t extend the ride.

A brilliant day – and this type of sportive suits me quite well. I chose my route to go down to the seaside (Southwold), then over a footbridge to Walberswick to the Black Dog Deli (well worth it). Saw some other Rallye riders on the way – they must have thought I was going the wrong way!

Then headed back towards the Event Village where I met some friends. Everyone here suitably keeping a safe distance. Wanted to make this a 200Km ride so rode on rather than take the quicker route home.

First big challenge of the year (not the first event though- see other posts)! This is a two day event, 100 miles each day – I’ve no idea if I can do it, but I’m going to try – it’s been a dream (hopefully not a nightmare) for some time. It’s around 50 years since I’ve ridden multi day events and even then they were fairly leisurely touring events, laden with luggage and not aiming at 100 miles a day – I can’t remember ever racing two days in a row. Not that sportives are races – but they are challenges to complete in a reasonable time (7 – 71/2  hours is now about right for me).

Tour de Broads is organised by my favourite sportive organiser – Pedal Revolution in Norwich – I ride their events whenever I can and am particularly pleased when I come across young children riding with their parents on shorter, carefully chosen routes. They also organise ParkRide events each week in Norwich, especially for those just learning to ride or coming back to a bike later in life.

This starts in Great Yarmouth and approaches the Broads from the South – route has not yet been published but I will update when it is. I normally plan emergency cut-outs so I’d shorten the route if things aren’t going well  but the Broads (plenty of water, not that many roads!)  might make that a little challenging and may simply mean I have to ride it all!

This is an interesting sportive – it can include several off-road elements that mimic the Paris-Roubaix professional race which will take place the next day – with cobbled roads, often poor weather – very challenging,  exhausted mud-caked riders, numerous accidents and broken bikes! I rode this sportive last year with one off road section (sandy, deeply rutted lane – not really my scene) but this year am opting to stay on tarmac. We did have some poor weather with a little rain, wind, hail/snow  – no way to avoid those! – some sun but still cold.

The roads are quite good, quiet but I well remember seeing what looked like a very tall cyclist way ahead of me coming into Framlingham – he was riding a Penny Farthing with considerable grace. I managed to take a wrong turning last year, so will try to get it right this year.

This will be the fifth year I’ve ridden this event. It starts in Newmarket and meanders around the Suffolk countryside, along some quiet roads, through some delightful villages – but it’s quite a tough start to the year. There are no major hills, but lots of small hills which take their toll on my legs by the end. One year it was 100 miles (and I was really quite glad to finish that one), but normally the distances have been 75-85 miles.

Very near to the finish, just when I could be thinking it’s nearly over, there is a nasty little hill that looks a bit like a vertical wall – it’s partly the effect of coming downhill towards it and then suddenly having to climb it with very little left in the tank!

(Writing this is a reminder to me!)

A really good day. The weather was quite good, a very brief shower around midday, some wind (inevitably) as we headed south but never too hot or cold. I’d have liked to have gone faster but I finished without any cramp and with enough energy to ride home so can’t really complain.
I was able to ride to the start (Whitlingham Broad) from home, then we set off through a little bit of Norwich and up towards Wroxham then to the coast. We then headed south through Great Yarmouth (not as picturesque as the villages) and then headed back to Norwich and the finish.
Some very pleasant riding along both familiar and unfamiliar roads, a few small Norfolk hills, well behaved traffic, not sure I could have asked for anything more!
This is the only photo I could find with me in it, at the start – look carefully, on the very left of the photo there’s a chap with an orange jersey and I’m just to the right of him (the only way I can be quickly sure is the red cuff of my jersey sleeve with “2017” (Ride London – still my favourite jersey for organised events).

(Click to enlarge, then again)

Most sportives come with a medal for finishing – the Tour de Broads medals (one for the Spring and another for the summer event) are quite interesting if you ride both events they join together (and the windmill sails do go round!):

This ride was an antidote to last year’s Tour de Yorkshire where I found the hills often reduced me to walking up them. Cambridgeshire is pretty flat – but can get very windy instead!

There were to be 12,000 other riders on this event which started from the East of England Showground in Peterborough, alongside a number of races and other events over the weekend. I wondered how they would manage to get all 12,000 riders away in a good time – I don’t think I need have worried too much but I made sure I was near the start from about an hour and a half before we were actually due to start. In order to reduce the impact of heavy traffic parking charges were free until 7am then went up to £20 for those arriving after 9. I went for the free option though this meant getting up at 4 am but also gave me the luxury of parking very near the start and all the facilities. I really didn’t want to be stuck waiting for an hour to start riding – and then not finish until well into the evening.

The ride itself started with all the riders needing to walk or scoot or ride very slowly for half a mile or so when we were finally able to start riding properly.

This was a completely closed road event, sometimes on quite narrow lanes but often went through small villages where people were cheering us on – real encouragement, especially as these folk were effectively “marooned” – unable to get out in their cars, but they seemed ready to enjoy the day instead.

No hills to speak of but some long stretches of straight and level roads through the fens, occasionally into the teeth of the wind.

One surprise was coming to the former RAF base of Alconbury where we had a pit stop amidst hundreds or even thousands of brand new Audi and Skoda cars, probably also VW and Mercedes, some with late 2018 number plates, others with 2019 or unregistered. The base must have been huge in its day with miles and miles of concrete runways and taxiways.

I suffered with mechanical problems as my gears had developed an intermittent fault – I was really annoyed to think that I had accidentally cut through part of an electrical cable, but subsequently (back home) found it to have been a loose connection underneath handlebar tape. For quite a few miles I was stuck in a single gear – not so bad when it was a middle gear, but bad news when it was a low gear. With about 25 miles to go, it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to go faster then 12 mph without spinning my legs frantically – but fortunately something seemed to reconnect in time for the last 15-20 miles.

A little sprinkle of rain quite welcome as I arrived at the finish. A good day, though I wasn’t best pleased with my 7 hours plus time, the mechanical problems did have quite an impact with frequent stops to try to resolve the issue.

Wow – that was hard! Norfolk is a poor training ground for Yorkshire hills. There were 6 major hills, all but one of which I walked up – too steep for me  when in company of others who were also finding them challenging and, like me, weaving over the road so there wasn’t always a clear path to ride in. I opted for the easy way out and walked.

But Yorkshire was amazing: roads in the towns and villages decorated with official light blue Tour de Yorkshire flags etc and with a delightful assortment of bunting, flags, miniature jerseys, painted bikes – and people cheering us on from their front gardens, laybys, outside the pubs etc.

Yorkshire has a great reputation among cyclists for its welcome and I can now attest to that. Yes, there was also a professional race coming through – but several hours after us. I saw one mum setting up with two young children and chairs and picnic. Bridge Church in Otley with jugs of orange squash to refill our bottles (very welcome in the heat – it was a really nice day).

The sound of people drumming on the finish barriers both very welcome and highly memorable.

Knowing the hills, I deliberately set out with no target time, planning only to finish in one piece, frequent stops plus a mile or two walking (only way to admire the view – the descents obviously also very steep!).