The local paper sponsored ride picture game

samoff

Open your local paper any week in summer and your eye is always drawn to a picture of cyclists about toundertake some sponsored ride.
If you're anything like me you look at the picture and try to guess what they're going to do. Then you read the caption and, be honest, judge them critically.

This week, we have group of thirtysomethings. All in matching shirts. A mixture of road and mtbs. Hmm, lets have a look..... 50km. 50km?? I don't want to judge but yes i do, i want to judge and I judge that as just rubbish. They all look fairly fit. I wouldn't give 'em a penny for less than 100km.

volvicspar

Its the thought that counts Some people have more sense than to torture themselves over 60 - 100 miles, unfortunately I'm not one of them!

geoff_ss

I know what you mean.

However, a few years ago the local Round Table organised a sponsored ride to Skegness (about 90 miles) with a fish and chip supper at the end and a ride back for bikes and riders in a bus/lorry combo. Not many of the riders were experienced cyclist as you'll appreciate when I mention (with due modesty) that my wife and I arrived about an hour before anyone else on our tandem.

Our effort was put into the shade by a young woman arriving several hours after we did on a shopper with a basket on the front. We were regular cyclists, she wasn't. I thought she was fantastic ... and probably needed a week off work to recover

Geoff

Woodchip

The only reason I'm back riding is because of a sponsored ride. A close friend died about 3 years ago and had been raising money for a local charity before he died. After 2 bottles of wine me and a friend decided to do the SDW (100 miles off road split over 3 days). Ended up being 5 of us doing it. 2 had to buy bikes and 1 borrowed his brother's. None of us had ridden a bike in about a year so it was a bit of a challenge with only 3 months to get fit. We done it though, and it gave me the cycling bug again.

Just 'coz you think it's a short ride it may be a different story for them. Oh, and we were in the local rag with matching t-shirts as well. Raised in excess of £7,000 for the local Special Care Baby Unit. Oh, and we done it in October, so hardly the height of summer.

freehub

volvicspar wrote:

Its the thought that counts Some people have more sense than to torture themselves over 60 - 100 miles, unfortunately I'm not one of them!

60 miles is not torture..., 30miles is just nothing especially for someone who is fairly fit, my first club run was 72 miles, it's simple, take it slowly, like on my first club run I averaged about 14.2mph on fairly flat roads, it's not a race is it?

samoff

I want to make it clear that I'm not taking the rise out of charity riders or people who're not that fit (I'm on adonis myself). I just think it's funny that some people make a big fuss and get themselves in the paper when they're doing something that isn't really much of challenge. Literally anyone who can ride a bike can do thirty miles in a day. The same same paper has a picture of a bunch of school kids who were coincidentally doing the same distance - it must have made the group of thirtysomethings feel a bit rubbish.