Trail Break Sunday Sportive 27th April

Bianchi Boy

Great ride. 400 booked it, with 350 or so turning up to ride it. Weather not too bad. We were booked in for the mid route, but decided to change to the short route at the devide due to thunder storm. Very hilly for an opener to the season, but well worth it. A great ride.

jhop

Apart from the ridiculously long queues to register, I too rated today quite highly. But why did we have to wait for 45 minutes to collect our chips?

The 'long' route is shorter than most sportives but the climbs whilst not particul;arly long and/or steep are fairly frequent so it is a good ride. If you want to ride the more challenging Chiltern climbs then the Chiltern 100 miler from Great Missenden offers quite a blt more.

I have just checked my time from last year 5.09 this year 5.06 considering I stopped to help a crashed rider and another punctured and treated the hills with caution restricting myself to 80% MHR to conserve energy I am fairly happy.

Roll on next weeks Forest of Dean Spring Challenge

SteveR_100Milers

jhop wrote:

Apart from the ridiculously long queues to register, I too rated today quite highly. But why did we have to wait for 45 minutes to collect our chips?

The 'long' route is shorter than most sportives but the climbs whilst not particul;arly long and/or steep are fairly frequent so it is a good ride. If you want to ride the more challenging Chiltern climbs then the Chiltern 100 miler from Great Missenden offers quite a blt more.

I have just checked my time from last year 5.09 this year 5.06 considering I stopped to help a crashed rider and another punctured and treated the hills with caution restricting myself to 80% MHR to conserve energy I am fairly happy.

Roll on next weeks Forest of Dean Spring Challenge

How the hell do you manage that!!?

Bronzie

Anyone for a puncture? Or 7?

Yes 7 punctures between 5 riders from CC Luton, and I didn't have any, and 3 others only had 1 each.

Someone is either:
a) very keen on pumping tyres up
b) using crap racing tyres on a day when bullet-proof was the requirement

Lucky he'd paid his subs

RichardFcp

Would be interested to know how those that did this ride feel it compares with other routes. I did the full route as part of my build up to the Vatternrundan and have to say that I found it very hard. Despite having a compact I was really grovelling on the hills and was one of the last back in. This morning I feel like I have been through the tumble drier, although that might be down to the road surfaces. No punctures though

Bronzie

Quite a tough route on heavy roads - very similar to the Chiltern 100 (although that is a bit tougher still and takes in more climbs).

Very difficult to compare sportives on different terrain - for instance the Dragon Ride has more climbing I think, but more on A roads so speed is kept higher as you can't descend as fast on twisty lanes strewn with flint.

jhop

Posted 27 Apr 2008 19:32
jhop wrote:

..... I treated the hills with caution restricting myself to 80% MHR to conserve energy I am fairly happy.

Roll on next weeks Forest of Dean Spring Challenge


How the hell do you manage that!!?

Going slowly, hence over 5 hours and twiddling low gears 50/34 compact and 12 - 26 and sometimes going up to 85% despite trying to restrict myself to 80%