I completed my second sportive this weekend in a British Cycling organised sojourn around the North Yorkshire countryside. I again went for the medium route, which was a very hilly 65 miles. Although the sun shone brightly and the sky was a clear blue, mother nature decided that it was a great day to turn the entire North of England into one large wind tunnel (I knew things were bad when I was forced to pedal on a moderate downhill to keep my speedo above 15 mph). In fact, it was so windy that to be quite honest I can only remember one climb of note, when to the contrary my Garmin told me we had climbed over 4,500 feet. As a side note, I wore my HR monitor for the first time on this ride, which showed my average HR was 177 bpm - I'm still unsure whether a) this reading is correct; b) I should be 'heartened' by the fact my body can work that hard for that long or; c) visit my GP - 5 hours of 177 bpm surely cannot be medically advisable!?
This was the first year the sportive had been run and unfortunately you could tell. Although the route was signed and the signs appeared tamper proof, to say they were confusing was a bit of an understatement. As a back up I thought the Garmin would save me in the instances when there was an orange sign pointing one way and a yellow one pointing the other (no idea which I was meant to follow) however it transpired they had made slight amendments to the course at the last minute, rendering the GPX download of the route a complete non-starter. Anyway, although wind-swept I managed to finish in slightly under 5 hours at an average speed of 14 mph. Not the fastest but given the conditions I am reasonably happy that things are progressing nicely. Details of the ride below (click on the "view details" tab if you're a stats nerd like me).
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