Climbing – Page 2 – Riding from Pasties to Haggis

South Wales delivers over May Bank Holiday

What a difference a week makes – from chilly pretty miserable cycling weather to “wall to wall” sunshine and almost too hot for cycling !

On Saturday I completed my first cycling Century – 100 miles in a ride with 2,160 m of climbing.

It is a bit scary to think that I’ll have to do a slightly longer distance each day for nine days in September in order to complete the Deloitte Ride Across Britain.

I’ve just joined the Deloitte RAB Facebook group (a closed group for participants of the 2018 ride). It is interesting to read some of the comments about lack of training and the hope that they’ll be “pulled along” by the rest of the riders – I have to admit I’d be concerned about a bit of wishful thinking considering how hard I found the Saturday ride. Here is a 3D view of the ride Relive Link

I ended up climbing two of the Top UK 100 climbs – the Rhigos (from both sides) followed by the Bwlch from the Treorchy side. There was then a long ride home via Bridgend and the coastal road through the Vale of Glamorgan.

I worn the cycle top sent to me by Dementia UK as shown by the photo at the top of the Rhigos.

I did a light spin indoors on Sunday as I didn’t fancy the heat of the afternoon after sailing at Sully in the morning, although it was a bit of a drift fighting the tides due to lack of wind.

As Bank Holiday Monday was due to be even hotter I decided to get up fairly early and got out for a ride shortly after 7.30 and took out my Specialized Venge for a spin over 100 km or so. This is a very different bike from the Cannondale SuperSix that I intend to ride on the Deloitte RAB. The Venge is an “aero” bike designed to go fast. The ride is fairly unforgiving as the bike is very stiff. The Cannondale is also a race bike and very stiff but is designed with some clever tech to dampen some of the road buzz – I have also converted to tubeless tyres which can reduce punctures. This was brought home to me when I got a puncture after less than 12 miles! The rest of the ride was uneventful – lots of cyclists out, probably training for the Carten (Cardiff to Tenby) ride next weekend by the look of lots of cycle tops.

The Vale of Glamorgan was looking at its best – not a cloud to be seen and new surprises for me just west of Bridgend when I came across the Merthyr Mawr Warren National Nature Reserve after riding down a dead end – quite unintentional ! The smell of freshly cooked bacon from the campsite wasn’t fair…

It is now four weeks until my next sportive – the Etape Wales and the Dragon Ride. Lots more training to get through before then including a few more climbs.

If you’d like to help me raise money for Dementia UK please visit my Virgin Money Giving page here I’m a third of the way to my target if you include the Gift Aid !

Ridgeway Rouleur Sportive – more training

On Saturday I took part in the Brewin Dolphin Ridgeway Rouleur, a 93 mile sportive in south Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. I was lucky enough to be invite by Brewin Dolphin’s Cardiff office as my firm has mutual clients who receive wealth management advice from Brewin Dolphin.

The sportive started off from the Wormsley Estate, located just outside Stockenchurch and owned by the Getty family.

The estate is huge – we had three miles of riding on private roads before joining the main roads! It is also “hidden” in a valley and was very quiet despite being less than a mile from the M40. I think it will be a while before I see a nicer place to start a sportive.

The sportive was organised by UK Cycling Events and I have to say it was superb (other than a 20 minute queue to get into the Estate which probably proves how popular the event was !). As guest of the sponsor I had the option of riding with a bike guide, Tom, to aim for a “Gold standard” finish of under six hours (including feed stops). Last year on the same sportive I sneaked in under the time limit with less than two minutes to spare. Once we got on to the main roads and dealt with the first main climb out of the valley the pace shot up. A group formed and proceeded to ride my fastest ever 50 miles in 2.5 hours! I have to admit I hid in the pack apart from a very short turn at the front – there were some very strong riders who seemed happy to do all the work keeping the pace high.

The main hills kicked in at around 55 miles and and it turned into a bit of every rider for themselves. Much smaller groups formed as we went at our own pace up the hills – at times it was a bit like being attached to riders with a bungee cord. A rider would disappear up the hill and you would catch them up going down.

I caught up with the leading group at the second feed station, tried to keep up and then got dropped on the first slight incline ! I only had 20 or so miles to go – the same distance as a coffee ride from Penarth to Llantwit Major. My speed now dropped and I was glad of the traffic lights and cars in Goring and Watlington as recovery time.

fullsizeoutput_421 — View to the west with 15 miles to go!

The last main effort was Hill Road out of Watlington up to Christmas Common at a gradient of just over 6%, just three miles from the end. All riders in the event had to do this hill and I managed to keep going rather than getting off and walking; a real grind of an effort.

The event finished with a brief but very welcome sports massage on my weary legs from Six Physio (thanks Harriet) as part of the Velo Club package and a delicious chicken curry plus brownies to start refuelling. All in all it was a great day and a good test of what it will be like to cycle over 100 miles a day in September albeit at a slower pace. The second part of the route was over the same roads as last year and I managed quicker times in most cases which is a good sign for my fitness. After a great nights sleep – my answer to “Did you hear the thunder last night?” was “What thunder!”, I felt remarkably fresh today. A short 30 minute easy cycle and then cleaning the bike ready for the next training ride.

Oh, my time for the 93 miles, 5 hours 24 minutes. Well within the Gold finish time and according to Strava, 22nd out of 225 participants – I’m absolutely delighted!

I’m doing the Deloitte Ride Across Britain to raise money for Dementia UK. If you would like to sponsor me, please visit my Virgin Money Giving page here

Five months to go !

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.

Key question : What to eat at the feed stations !

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…

If you would like to sponsor me to help the work of Dementia UK please visit my Virgin Money Giving page here