Ride the Route - this sunday

johnbirkby46213

Haven't looked at the weather forcast yet. Fingers and legs crossed that it's fairly good. Think I'll give the optional hill a miss (coming as I do from flatshire and being useless on hills anyway) BUT I am really really hoping that "biscuit bottom" decides to do the ride again. She certainly upped my average for several kilometres last year and when I was inevitably dropped, she left a very nice impression on my mind that helped me thru' some fairly awful stretches. I seem to remember that i wasn't the only one that thought that way - if comments on here were to be believed.
Have booked a BnB in worcester this year so i don't have an horrendously early start like last year.
Anyone else going?

JB

worcswhite

The optional hill that wasn't ,unless i went up it for no reason.It was horrendous my back wheel just kept spinning on the wet mud/leaves and eventually fell off.On the whole though impressed with event,shame the farmers round Tenbury decided to shift all the fields on to the roads though!!!

johnbirkby46213

worcswhite wrote:

The optional hill that wasn't ,unless i went up it for no reason.It was horrendous my back wheel just kept spinning on the wet mud/leaves and eventually fell off.On the whole though impressed with event/quote]

I emailed the organiser on sunday night and rec'd a reply back today
"We appreciate your comment on the “killer option hill”. We considered the obvious routing arrow and sign as you mentioned, but with experience we opted to leave this out as we thought the confusion it could of caused may have meant that more riders would have missed the climb instead of attempting it. We thought perhaps in hind sight that most riders would want to ride Wynniattes Way, which proved the case and those who wanted to miss it would refer to the map and avoid it, we listed the option in the ride details and thought this would be enough information for those riders not attempting the climb perhaps we were wrong.

We will next year take on your comment and issue clear information about this climb and the way of avoiding it.

We hope this didn’t detract too much from your ride and on the whole you enjoyed the event."
I mailed back that being shown a place on a map and remembering where it was 60 odd miles later in an area I don't know was asking a bit too much. I suggested just putting a skull and cross bones on the turn sign to the killer option so that wimps like me could carry on and ignore the turn.
This is their immediate reply:
"Thanks and we do appreciate your comments and if you don’t mind we will use your skull and cross bones idea and pass on the credit, see you again next year "

Fantasic service I might say. Were we the only ones from this forum that went on the ride??? Shirley not.
And if anyone reading this wonders what the ride was like...most excellent and well worth (for me) the journey from flatshire and a BnB overnight. Fabby scenery (ignore this years farmers mud - yeah difficult) and some excellent climbs. There was an amazing number of "local" riders doing it. I rather thought there'd be more "incomers" such as myself. feel chuffed to bits to have finished inside the time I set for myself, especially after all that climbing.
Worcswhite do you happen to know what the final tally was for climbing ascent?

JB

aracer

I was there too. Those downhills on the mud were interesting - on one of the worst bits I got a tractor pull out in front of me when madly doing ~25mph, and wondered whether I could stop in time without coming off. I just cramped horribly on Wynniattes Way, having got really unfit since I rode it easily with a higher bottom gear a month or so ago!

My altimeter made it a total climb of 2187m. Probably accurate to within 50m I'd guess.