New Forest Sportive

[bakerstreet]

Anyone else here do the Wiggle/UK Cycling Events Sportive on Saturday?

Me and friend did it. It was his first ever sportive and I'll be surprised if he does another one after Saturday. Conditions were pretty horrible.

We left the start at approximately 9.30. We hadn't intended to be that late, but the que to get in the venue was several miles long and we were coming from London, so we didn't want to leave any earlier than 6am.

The course is relatively flat compared to the other two that I have done apart from one small hill that forced a lot of people off their bikes to walk up and that led to a lot of congestion on that short stretch. There are some lovely twisty downhill sections towards the end. I run 23s on my bike and they are great at tipping into the corner.

I did the standard in approximately 4hrs, which I wasn't happy with but it was raining and windy on the open areas and rained through out the entire ride. I only decided to put my rain jacket on at the first stop, but by that point I was soaked through. It was real challenge for any gear that had the 'waterproof' tag.

I saw people violently shivering and actually crying at one point.

There were two food stops. I stopped at both even though I didn't really need the second one. I didn't get my hydration right. I started to get a bit of a headache at one point and my urine wasn't clear. This is something that I'll have to work on for the Manchester to London ride on the 8th of June.

I think everyone was pretty grateful to get to the end. However, thats when the organisational element of the event then fell apart. The field being used as car park had turned into a mud bath and lots of people were basically stuck and they had one AA Land Rover and four blokes in hi-viz attempting to push cars out of the mud. I wasn't 100% convinced the AA LR man knew what he was doing. He was just spinning his wheels wildly. It probably didn't help that said AA van was probably laiden down with 500Kg of tools. You had people in Lycra running round in cold and wet conditions pushing cars out of the field.

I have since written to UK Cycling events telling them about 4x4 Response who can man events like that and deal with stuck cars ect ect.

Overall, I'm glad we did it and got out there. If we hadn't paid for it, we would have just sat on our backside and watched the qualifying for the China F1 round.

The nav on the Garmin was showing 'off course' for most of the ride and the Cinelli bar tape pulled from the bars. The stuff has only been on for 6 weeks. I spend most of my riding on the hoods and I'm a heavy chap, but I was still expecting it to last longer than that Other than those two points, the bike worked very well

I wanted to take some photos else where, but hands were so cold and my gloves were soaked too

[Rob_T]

Worth reading.

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/10355147.Dra...

Did you see any of this? Worth reading all the comments below the article!

[Dowks]

I did it, was my first sportive and my first outing in my PH shirt (although no photos as of yet!)

I enjoyed it, did the Epic course in 5 hrs 27 min which included stopping to help people with punctures. It was so wet tried to avoid stopping at the feed stations...

I missed a lot of the car park carnage as stayed near by and cycled to and from the start. Would have been lovely a day later but sadly it didn't happen due to the flooding

[bakerstreet]

Dowks said:

I did it, was my first sportive and my first outing in my PH shirt (although no photos as of yet!)

I enjoyed it, did the Epic course in 5 hrs 27 min which included stopping to help people with punctures. It was so wet tried to avoid stopping at the feed stations...

I missed a lot of the car park carnage as stayed near by and cycled to and from the start. Would have been lovely a day later but sadly it didn't happen due to the flooding

Did you do any stream crossings? I did one, but there a few other crossings which were about to turn into stream crossings!

Hopefully they will get the photos up by Wednesday of this week. I'm hoping there are some decent ones for me to buy. The last one wasn't been very good and I didn't even get my photo taken on my first one

[Silver940]

I was supposed to ride Sunday but you lot ripped the car park up! Know someone taht did the 86, said it was pretty tough by the end, and he passed a lot of folks with punctures at one spot.

[Dowks]

bakerstreet said:

Did you do any stream crossings? I did one, but there a few other crossings which were about to turn into stream crossings!

Yep a couple, the last loop of the Epic bit down by the coast was probably the low point!

[bakerstreet]

Silver940 said:

I was supposed to ride Sunday but you lot ripped the car park up! Know someone taht did the 86, said it was pretty tough by the end, and he passed a lot of folks with punctures at one spot.

Yup. Lots of people got punctures. I must have seen one every mile or so. I was preying I didn't get one as I'm crap at putting tyres on at the best of times and doing it with freezing cold hands would be hard work.

[Dowks]

swerni said:

What I learnt is, there is such thing as a bad day on the bike

+1 wet, cold but loved it

[Jimbo.]

Silver940 said:

I was supposed to ride Sunday but you lot ripped the car park up! Know someone taht did the 86, said it was pretty tough by the end, and he passed a lot of folks with punctures at one spot.

http://road.cc/content/news/81136-sabotage-hits-new-forest-sportive-drawing-pins-spread-road-signs-ripped-down-and

[Mr Gear]

I've done the October version of this event twice, and both times it was brilliantly organised and fantastic weather.

I did hear that there was some horse riding group that were objecting to the number of bikes "silently racing up behind riders" in advance of this event. Might explain the sabotage.

EDIT: I've read the newspaper article properly now, and I'm pretty outraged at the behavior. Absolutely ridiculous.

Edited by Mr Gear on Monday 15th April 19:04

[Silver940]

This was effectively the start of it

http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/10254953.Fe...

[Jim Mitch]

I was wet and cold, but knew beforehand that it would happen so treated it as part of the challenge. Didnt realise it was possible to combine the swimming and cycling elements of triathlon in one event, but it got quite close to that on Saturday.

I knew the car park would be bad (congestion and mud) so took the train instead. The event seemed well marshalled around the course and they looked like they were doing their best at the showground - most organisers would have struggled tbh.

Didnt see any evidence of tacks in the road and only saw about 5-10 bedraggled, sorry looking "protesters" with 1 small placard between them. No-one shouted abuse at me on the way round. Bit of a non-story (as usual).

Dowks - if it was you I chatted to, sorry I didnt see you again after talking to you. One minute you were there and the next you werent, so I carried on. Garmin said I did the epic in 4hrs 50mins - given the conditions, I was reasonably happy with that. Looking forward to seeing the photos.

[Agoogy]

My 1st one.
41 years old...14.5 stone
av 14mph for the standard.
Approaching THAT hill, I gained speed in a big gear, and a woman walks her horse out of her garden and waves me to slow down... I brake but when it came to changing gear it was too late...walked the hill
Annoying, pathetic protestors were very odd, never experienced that before...no punctures though so that was good...
Set off at 8am and finished by 12.30 ish....just managed to get out of the car park.
On the whole... enjoyed it.

[Dowks]

Jim Mitch said:

Dowks - if it was you I chatted to, sorry I didnt see you again after talking to you. One minute you were there and the next you werent, so I carried on. Garmin said I did the epic in 4hrs 50mins - given the conditions, I was reasonably happy with that. Looking forward to seeing the photos.

No worries, you were much quicker than me

[bakerstreet]

Agoogy said:

My 1st one.
41 years old...14.5 stone
av 14mph for the standard.
Approaching THAT hill, I gained speed in a big gear, and a woman walks her horse out of her garden and waves me to slow down... I brake but when it came to changing gear it was too late...walked the hill
Annoying, pathetic protestors were very odd, never experienced that before...no punctures though so that was good...
Set off at 8am and finished by 12.30 ish....just managed to get out of the car park.
On the whole... enjoyed it.

I was doing a reasonable pace at the bottom of the hill, but one of the walkers kind of waddled out in front of me, so it was a case of unclip very quickly. At that point, I decided it wasn't worth it and walked my way up.

I didn't know about the tacks and the removing the signs until I read the article posted earlier. I don't understand the mentality of people who do this. The though of hitting a tack at 30kmph whilst banking round a bend doesn't bare thinking about

I'm still going to do it next year

[bakerstreet]

Photos are up. I just look like what I am, which is a fat bloke in a rain jacket looking quite cold and a bit pissed off Not sure if I'm going to buy any this time round.

[Agoogy]

bakerstreet said:

Photos are up.

Just the one company?

[bakerstreet]

Agoogy said:

Just the one company?

Thats usually the case with events like this. The Londoin Triathlon is one company and various other events I've done including 10ks and open water swimming races have been one company.