TOUR OF WESSEX 2014

Nath’s report

After finding my ride to Brighton and back so draining, I was a bit nervous about three days worth of similar riding, but having some club mates to ride with made it much easier. Also the regular feed stops were great, as was the scenery and what I counted as a grand total of 4 sets of traffic lights, three of which were on the last day.

The first day was a cold and wet start, which persisted for most of the day. The highlight for me was Cheddar Gorge, which was really beautiful and a really satisfying climb. King Alfred’s Tower came later which was one of the hardest climbs of the whole three days and was good to get out of the way early. The lowlight was as Denny mentioned earlier, the chap getting CPR on one one of the hills. I haven’t heard, but I hope he is ok.

The second day I felt a bit tired but ok. The sun was out, which made it my favourite day out of the three. This ride took us to the Dorset coast and back, so there were some decent climbs at about the half way mark. The best I thought was a slow climb up through a military testing ground, with rusty tanks down below and big neon numbers on the hill side, with the road curving around the edge of the hill. The last 20k or so was fairly flat, so I managed a healthy pace to the finish.

As we were queueing to start on the final day, Kate said that we looked very unhappy. I don’t know about the others, but I felt it hard to drum up enthusiasm! I planned to do the longer route so head off with a peloton of riders soon after the start and stuck with them for most of the way until the first feed stop which came after the biggest climb of the tour so far over the Quantocks. At that point, average speed was 32kph. However, at that point my right knee also decided to stop working. I tried the full route anyway and then decided to turn back and head down the short route. I caught up with a few riders from Clapham Chasers, stuck with them, took a wrong turn, then rode with them until the last climb into Somerton. At this point, my knee was properly fucked. I was really gutted, as I felt relatively fit apart from my knee. I feel a bike fit coming on.

TL;DR: Nice scenery, 459km, 4,362m climbing, one buggered knee, lots of eating. Not tempted to do it again.

Denny’s [slightly shorter] report

That was a lot of fun. Rained for the first five hours. Matt crashed. He also stung his cock on a stinging nettle. Beautiful route. Loved riding up Cheddar Gorge, but not much as Nathan, he LOVES cheddar. 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2014 at 12:05 pm. It is filed under CLUB NEWS and tagged with CS Grupetto, tour of wessex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.