It is slightly scary to think that in exactly five months time I should be in Bath having cycled from Oakhampton during the day. Next weekend I have a training day with other riders taking part the in the event. It will be a great opportunity to meet some of the riders and compare how we are getting on with the training. The day starts at Princes Risborough which is six miles from where my Mother lives which makes it very convenient. It is also her birthday weekend so a good opportunity for a visit. One of the rides near Princes Risborough is Whiteleaf Hill, a climb of about a mile and a half but with an incline in parts of 16% – hopefully the training ride organisers will not be that cruel to take us up it !
Today I took part in the KOM Sportive organised by Lawrence Cronk, my trainer at Enduraprep. It was dry (great) and slightly cool (even better with the amount of climbing we had to do). I chose to do the “short” ride of 98 km which still involved 1,883m of climbing. I couldn’t face the 130 km ride with something like 2,800m of climbing. I was slightly faster than last year even though this years route was longer and involved more hills – hopefully this is a good sign. I’ll be going over the other statistics from the ride later (it’s the geek in me).
The ride started out from Treforest and almost immediately we had a 11% climb through Pontypridd and up towards Llanwonno.
The downhhill into Ferndale was pretty good but not as good as the road from the top pf the Rhigos into Treherbert – fantastic smooth tarmac and a top speed of 67 kph!
The second feed station was reached up what can only be described as a cart track – narrow, stones and rocks in the middle and seriously steep. The worst point was meeting a 4×4 which was coming down the track and I had to stop – getting going and clipping back into the pedals was not fun.
The last major hill of the day for me was the Church Road climb into Pentyrch, a ride I had done a couple of times before. Rather than turning left at the top which I had done on the previous rides, we had to turn right and continued climbing – not at all what I was expecting. The final incline was a short sharp hill up to the finishing line in the University of South Wales campus – all the riders ended up being in their best climbing gear and seriously out of breath !
All in all a good 4 and a bit hours of cycling so a big thank you to the organisers. I just need to see where I came on the timed climb up the Rhigos. I also have a nice new KOM polka dot buff, although I’m not sure how long it will stay white…
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Riding from Pasties to Haggis 