Re: The Wales Sportive

[swancvs]

Lovely description of your ride.

I had a blinder of a ride, managed to hook up with a group way above my ability and somehow rode the first 3 hours at 20mph average! (don’t know where that came from) anyway made a rookie mistake at the ridgeway, I stopped to reload my drink bottles even though I had enough and as a consequence lost the group I was with. Worse, with the red mist down I tried to rejoin as I had at one point before ( I also noticed their hill climbing wasn’t so hot)

Yeah that went well, I chased a tail end charlie who’d dropped off the back and never caught him. Ended up, blown, empty and dropping pace. Decided to sit up for a bit on that hellish second time from Carew to Crosshands and hope I could recover. Managed to latch on to a guy in the end then another and we reformed a chase group. I left them on wisemans hill and kept on riding.

All in all I came in at a creditable 6 hrs 36 mins.

However, I feel awful now as I have been classed as DNF!

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/36556758

I followed my group through tenby but did not stop at the feed station and now I’m wondering if we were supposed to have gone under the railway bridge and round Tenby like last year. However, the map was different to last year and I followed all marshall instructions. Just gutted now, thanks to a missed turn I feel as if I have been branded a cheat.

The worst thing is it was probably my best performance to date. Did the whole ride sans the little ring around Tenby at an average of 16.4 mph! But it is all for nothing according to the official timing.

I know in my heart I played with a straight bat but it still has left me with a sour feeling, so…

Tour of Pembs here we go!

The TOP was always my target event, some silly colleagues wanted to go for a gold standard 16.5 mph, I think I’ll have a go and see how things go.

I shall report accordingly!