On sunday, myself and a couple of friends entered the Evans Ride It Chilterns Sportive, the medium 62.5 mile route.
The day dawned sunny with a beautiful blue sky, who would have thought October would have produced such a day?
We decided to meet at my house, and in the best tradition I served up a pre-ride breakfast of coffee and bacon rolls, how else would you start the day? After this we rode the 5 minutes to the start. Registration was simple and within a couple of minutes we had the timing sticker attached to our helmets.
We walked to the start funnel and then listened to the pre-ride briefing and then we were away. The early route was a bit of an oddity to me, as it was on roads I know well, but would never normally join them together in that order to get to the point, but there again I haven’t had to organise a route of certain distance either.
There were a couple of early hills and then we headed out into the small roads in the Chilterns, heading through Cholesbury towards Tring and onto Albury. At Albury we hit the first steep climb and after getting up here the we were treated to some great views.
There was a welcome drink and cake stop in Mentmore, some great free cake and both water and energy drink plus bananas and jelly babies!
Once we decided we had better go off we went again, more great views and out to the furtherest point of the loop. The return leg had several hills in it, including the climb up past Aston Hill, a long steep climb that makes you grovel your way up it, after this a good decent into the Hale.
Well it would have been a good decent, had I not got a front wheel puncture on the way down, this left me fighting to stay upright and also to stop the bike. I ended up using a combination of the back brake and the bank to slow me down enough to stop!
Once the repair was done it was just a climb into Dunsmore, followed by the return to the start.
All in all a really good ride, no a well thought out route on a simply lovely day, not sure there was a better way to spend a Sunday,
Three Times The Effort 