White Rose Challenge

Booboocp

Time Standards, Route Directions (download) Fundraising details and lot's of other information has now been added to the website.

www.whiterosechallenge.co.uk

andy_from_embsay

Cheers Derek - I'm mediuming again this year and as a bit fitter I think silver might be achievable...

Booboocp

Hi peeps,

Unfortunately due to the heavy rain in this area over the last few days, the field we were using for parking has been refused to us today. In a blind panic I have managed to secure another one, but it is 0.8 mile from HQ. Not perfect, but my thanks go out to Ashlands Primary School for helping us out and a generous donation will be made to them.

Please see: http://www.whiterosechallenge.co.uk/The-HQ.php

for the new layout.

giner1961

Nice to know, however i can not see myself walking 300yds in a pair of £170 cycling shoes to the start.

avoidingmyphd

EDIT this was a mean dig at giner1961 and I've now seen I was wrong!

sorry!

Booboocp

giner, at that time in a morning it may well be possible to 'scoot' (if you're not familiar with that term, it is placing one foot in a pedal and scooting along) to the start, but we cannot be seen to be promoting people riding on footpaths.

Alternatively if it is a big issue then how about a Taxi?

giner

Have you seen the price of taxi's, no sorry i have to say will not be scooting either i will just have to be carful and ride on the road to the start, should be quiet that time of morning.
You may find a few other people do the same, as to walk in carbon soled shoes with plates on is difficult.

giner

Sorry forgot to say, im looking forward to riding the event and thanks for taking the time and effort to orgonize despite the BC hopefully stay dry, coming up from Gloucester where the sun is shining. its us that usually get the floods.

Steve GT

Hi Derek.
I am doing the long route and was wondering what food will be on offer at the feed stations?

nolf

Oh no the incredible inconvenience of it all!

Really looking forward to it. Got absolutely destroyed last year, so really looking forward to it this year. Even changed from a 27 to 25 bottom gear, thats how confident I am!

nolf

I've just seen the time standards, doesn't look too harsh, but shows how tough the route is.

At Northern rock it was 12 miles shorter, and you had 2 HOURS less for gold standard.

Gold at 7hrs 30ish seems acheivable tho!

Booboocp

Steve, All feed stations will have:

Bananas, Flapjack, Tracker/Muesli Bars, Power Gels, Energy Drink Powder Sachets, along with free energy drink in large tubs and 750 ml (the most useful size!) bottles of water.

I'm also looking at adding fruit malt loaf slices if I can afford it.

Ref timings, I think anyone averaging 15 mph round these courses deserves Gold standard, so that's what I've done. It will be very interesting to see the percentage that acheive this!

Captain Fagor

Booboo

Thanks for organising this: I'm very much looking forward to it, having ridden the WRC in 2007. I have a couple of questions:

1) Will it be possible to register at any stage on the saturday?
2) Will car parking be limited in the primary school?

Thanks in advance.

hugo15

nolf wrote:

I've just seen the time standards, doesn't look too harsh, but shows how tough the route is.

At Northern rock it was 12 miles shorter, and you had 2 HOURS less for gold standard.

Gold at 7hrs 30ish seems acheivable tho!

Having done them both, the NR Cyclone is like a spin round the local park in comparison to the WRC.

Booboocp

Captain Fagor wrote:

I have a couple of questions:

1) Will it be possible to register at any stage on the saturday?

Sorry no. This is something I'm looking to introduce next year as a whole weekend of activities.

2) Will car parking be limited in the primary school?

No, there is plenty of room.

Steve GT

Booboocp wrote:

Steve, All feed stations will have:

Bananas, Flapjack, Tracker/Muesli Bars, Power Gels, Energy Drink Powder Sachets, along with free energy drink in large tubs and 750 ml (the most useful size!) bottles of water.

I'm also looking at adding fruit malt loaf slices if I can afford it.

Ref timings, I think anyone averaging 15 mph round these courses deserves Gold standard, so that's what I've done. It will be very interesting to see the percentage that acheive this!

Thanks for the info about the feed stations Derek.

Steve GT

"Please could riders use the footpath to walk to this location and not ride out onto the main road."

Sorry, but I dont understand why you would request people to walk along the footpath to the HQ from the parking area and not just cycle down a public road. Does it have something to do with insurance?
It does not affect me as I am cycling to the start down the A65 from the opposite direction.

BruceyboyNotts

It looks like the weather could be "interesting" for Sunday. Hopefully the weather forecasters have got it wrong

bledington

I think tt means from the HQ to the start to avoid crossing the A65 twice, not from the school to the HQ

Captain Fagor

Thanks for the update, Booboo.

Booboocp

bledington wrote:

I think tt means from the HQ to the start to avoid crossing the A65 twice, not from the school to the HQ

That's correct. Thanks...

MatthewBulmer

Just got home after finishing the 130km route.

What a brilliant day. The weather stayed kind and the organisation was spot on, I thought. The temporary paint markings on the route certainly avoided some of the sign sabotage issues that have blighted some other sportives. A really friendly event.

The route was pretty tough as well. That last climb (Langbar?) was a real sickener. Fantastic scenery as well.

Thanks to the organisers for putting on such a great event.

andy_from_embsay

I had a cracking day out too - had designs on silver in the 133km and an unspoken hope that I might give gold a scare, but after a puncture between Fewston and the A59 that was out of the window. Caught my mate by Greenhow and we pressed on through Grassington and up Littondale, at which point I realised the software update on my Garmin had turned auto-pause off - meaning that the average speed of 14.7mph we were showing included my puncture stop. Gold shimmered again in the distance...

Brief stop at Halton Gill for my mate to stretch his back out which was giving him some gyp, then gave it some over to Malham, at which point we got separated. Average speed was up to 15.3mph (ie inside Gold) by this time, so I watched it drop to 15 and decided he'd understand and buggered off!

Tired a bit towards the end and Langbar was a lot harder than when we rode up it yesterday after only 7 miles, but went over the top with 20 minutes to get Gold. Shot down the hill, legs screaming with every little uphill, thankful for the new road surface near Middleton, and turned left onto the Denton road, only for my Garmin 705 to fly off my bike! Screeched to a halt, recovered the errant device and hammered it to the finish to dib in at 5:21, gold by 4 minutes including a puncture - and a solid 1hr 20mins faster than last year. 2 of the other lads with us also got gold, but unfortunately my mate who I left behind suffered from not paying attention and missed the turn to Thorpe after Cracoe. Due to not really thinking, he then carried on to Grassington, scouted round for signs, then went north for another mile or two before coming all the way back to Cracoe and finishing the route. Daft sod.

So - a brilliant day, very chuffed with the time, and another well organised, brilliant value sportive.

Many thanks to all involved.

nolf

Was enjoying it, we at York Uni turned out with a good 6 man and 1 woman squad, all shiny in our newly delivered team kit.

Things were going well, keeping a good average that was well within gold for the full route.

Hills broke us apart a bit and it ended up a very individual race. I was holding my own well on the front and keeping a steady pace up the climbs.

Descent down to the second feed was excellent, clocking 56ish on the way down.

Bit later and some more climbs and things were going well for me when with 16 miles to the third feed I missed a turn and carried on straight. Went up a shortish climb and powered down the descent, unfortunately on the way down I didn;t notice a rock in the road, front wheel hit it and immediately washed out.

Before I knew it I was skidding down the road closely followed by my bike.
It felt fairly spectacular and I was doing 25-30 at the time so was very glad to see I only had a whole load of road rash and bent handlebars, with nothing broken.

I kept going along this road to Ingleton, in a fair bit of pain, mostly in my shoulder. I realised I couldn't carry on so popped into the tourist information centre and asked if they could get me in contact with the race organisers. Nope. hmmm.

I headed back the way I came looking for someone with a phone to lend me so I could call the broom wagon. Ended up zig zagging around for about 12 miles (ingleton and back with bad directions) before I rejoined the route. Got lucky and some guys stopped and said they'd call the broom wagon as soon as they had signal.
Can't thank these guys enough. I was really suffering and there was no way I could make it to the next feed to finish there.

Got some much needed food down me and after a couple of hours the broom wagon had turned up. At the last feed I got myself stitched up by some paramedics and my friends picked me up.

Totally gutted though. Was definitely heading for gold, with 3+ hours in hand to do the last 40 miles. Felt strong and this has been my main target of the year so completely gutted. Race organisation was excellent btw, and there wasn't really anything that could be done better except for more mobile network coverage (not sure the organisers can do anything about this!).

Thanks go to everyone who helped, the guy I chatted to outside the van for an hour, the organisers for doing a great job, and especially those guys who went so far out of their way to get me aid. Would still be there without their help!

Will definitely be back next year.

genki

Thanks Booboo and team for another great day out. Good signs and helpful people manning the food tents.

My ride of the 182km route was going really well until the descent of the Coal Road into Cowgill. Too much braking and my rim overheated, blowing out my back tyre and by the time I'd managed to stop the tyre and wheel rim were shredded. A very kind local offered to lend me her small ladies mountain bike and I'd started on the 50 miles back to Ilkley when a few miles up the road I came across a rider and his personal suppport vehicle. He was also fantastically generous and lent me a back wheel which meant I could pedal back and fix my bike. I ended up carrying my broken wheel for 20 miles and missed gold by about 25mins. It's a stunning but brutal course giving you a day you'll not forget in a hurry 8)

slowprogress

Well done Derek for pulling this off and making it such a fantastic and enjoyable event for everyone!

A friend and I came up from North Wales to help out after Derek had been let down at the last minute on various counts. Consequently, I'm in the fortunate position of seeing this event from within the crew itself and can confirm that it was a Herculean effort by everyone of the event organisers.

On Saturday we helped prep the food wagons followed by mountain biking (is that a dirty word in this thread?) at Stainburn forest & climbing at Rlystones ('Dental Slab' is wonderful). On the Sunday we ran the Hawes food station.

It was my first experience of a Sportive and I have to say the atmosphere amongst the riders and around the event as a whole was wonderful. So much so that I've been inspired to definitely ride this next year for sure (but not on my 6" travel MTB!). The only downer was the sabotage of the event signs but that was where the road markings really came into their own.

On the way back from Hawes to HQ we squeezed injured riders and broken bikes into a van that was already full. "I'm not leaving anyone" was Derek's comment each time we stopped and somehow managed to fit more riders in!

In summary - BRILLIANT!

Booboocp

Well I have to say I was on a real downer last night as I thought so many things had gone wrong, you guys would rip me apart in the forums.

How wrong can I be!!! Thanks for all your support!!!

Just to give you an idea of what we had to contend with, we had two transits to get the food to the stations and one broke down in Hawes (it's still there) so we had to hurriedly try to swap everything into the second van and get to Malham before riders came through. Think we made it with only a small few having missed out.

Then I had to contend with missing signs (the grassington locals took them all down!), so I went back out and painted the road in places and put up new ones. Next was picking up the debris from the closing feed stations, picking up riders (I supported as many as I could - sorry if you were missed but with just one van it was hard getting round) and in total I transported nine riders back to HQ.

A long hard day, but now I'm feeling much better about it and I do agree with Matt, a herculean effort by everyone involved and we raised a good amount for the charity too!!

Which reminds me, if you haven't given me your fundraising details please email me.

andy_from_embsay

Thanks again, Derek - wouldn't have known of those problems as it all seemed to go fine!

Re the charity money - I didn't get sponsored (3 London marathons in a row has left all my mates a bit charity fatigued) but I'd like to donate a few quid of my own - can I do that through the event justgiving page?

slojo

At the top of Langbar, just as I was dibbing in my timing chip, my whole left leg suddenly cramped up. It was still clipped in so I ended up hopping about on my right leg while desperately trying to straighten out my left, which was still attached to the bike.
The bloke holding the timing gizmo looked on horrified.
I think he thought he'd electrocuted me.

Tough, tough course, but a great day and superb organisation.

andy_from_embsay

Oh, and by the way - will the results be on the event website or sportident? Cheers.

suze

Thanks for a good day out Derek. Weather was just right, we'd expected really high temps but once again you even fixed this.

Managed to beat the silver time on the middle ride. However faulty timing at Malham (it wasn't working), seems to have messed this up on my certificate with, showing that I took just over 6 hours to complete the short ride :roll: technology hey...

Mr Suze tells me that signs and marking suddenly disappeared after Grassington on the short route and didn't reappear till it rejoined the other routes (I'm only the messenger here, don't shoot).

Thanks again, see you next year.