Completed my first 'sportive'

47p2

Senior Retro Guru
...although I'm not sure why they call them sportive :shock: they should call them grumpives or dour face races as almost everyone I met had faces longer than the route.
I can't pretend to know the protocol of such events as I've never participated in one before but if I pass someone or they pass me I always give a friendly hello...only today I was scowled upon for such merriment :cry:

The reason I entered this event was because my daughter had her name down for it, she had been given a new bike from Santa at Christmas and she thought it would be a great incentive to get her out training. We went on holiday in February and hired a couple of road bikes, we had a great time around the Canaries so much so that on my return home I was digging out the Peugeot and back on the road and the rest as they say is history. I'm not a long distance cyclist, it does nothing for me, my idea of a cycle is to go out and hammer a nice route for 25-30 miles and then go home so I held off putting my name forward for this sportive until a few weeks ago, I had noticed my daughter had not done any cycling since about June (house move, granddaughter and hubby working away all blamed) and I was secretly hoping she would drop the idea, but when I spoke to her a few weeks ago she was adamant she was going ahead with it, hence the longer routes I've been riding.

Today's sportive gave a couple of options, the 'standard' route which was 97 miles or the 'elite' route which was 111 miles which included a killer climb at 60 miles in, so with daughter doing the 'standard' route and me doing the 'elite' route we set out this morning. I finished hours ago and am sitting here waiting on my daughter's return, she's now been en-route for over 12 hours and it's dark, her hubby is out giving her some encouragement and she's determined to finish...tomorrow will be a tough day for her.

Once my son-in-law returns I can get my Garmin lead out of his car and will post an image of the route and the climbs.

Will I ever do another sportive, I won't say never but I doubt it very much, I prefer my 25-30 mile routes and have the rest of the day to myself
 
Daughter has arrived home, she gave up at 12 hours and covered 80 miles so she seems happy with that.

I covered a total of 111.75 miles with an elevation gain of 9388 feet and managed to burn of around 5500 calories
 

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:) its an acquired taste....lol

I know what you mean about the miseries though. some take it very seriously....and lacking in joy.
 
NeilM":2cnbuv8g said:
I love the phrase 'dour face races'.



Honestly, I've never seen so many dour cyclists before in my life, you would have thought there was a £100k prize for the first back to base.
 
Good afternoon,

How come the standard route was only 14 miles shorted than the elite. Both would kill me - flu or not!

Richard
 
That's the thing I don't quite understand with sportives. Who are they aimed at?

I know one or two serious cyclist who like to ride some of the more challenging routes, but for the mostpart it seems the typical competitor.. ooops sorry, participant is just your average person who happens to own a bike (much like your daughter 47p2). So what is with all the killer, lung busting, leg burning, cpr requiring climbs.

One of the local sportives around here runs up a climb called Burrington Combe. Go a look it up on strava or OS maps, it's a miserable thing that just goes up and up onto the Mendip Hills. You get to a point where you think you have beaten it, do one more kick around the corner and discover you are barely half way up and the second half is the steepest part.

Tough guys and pros (like JTL, Dan LLoyd and others) use this climb to train on, as it is so horrible, and yet the sportive organisers take a bunch of leisure cyclists up the damn thing. Why?

Maybe I'll have to try one next year, when my climbing ability has improved and my lightweight Rourke is built, then at least I'll be in a position to judge from experience, rather than from a distance.
 

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