Cycle Sportives

Another legendary leg breaker..
http://www.evanscycles.com/ride-it/king-of-the-downs-2011-22nd-may-
it was hot last year, and got a tee-shirt tan as a souvenir..

1 Attachment

That link's not working for me. This looks like the right one: http://www.evanscycles.com/ride-it/king-of-the-downs-2011-22nd-may-

Sold out already. Christ!

There are others whose entry sales drag on for a bit longer.

Just putting this one out there.

http://cheamandmordenhilly50.blogspot.com/

Des flagged this one up last year, I rode it, and hope to ride it again this year. As he put it, it's kind of like the TNRC Surrey 5 Hills route, but in reverse.

Local (albeit very short) local Sportive just open

http://www.lfgss.com/thread58124.html

www.surreyrumble.co.uk

Anyone doing the Spring Onion on march 13th?

Anyone doing the Spring Onion on march 13th?

Yep - just signed up ..... bit confused tho as it said max 500 field, but it was up to 680 when I last checked....

Also signed up for Hell of the Ashdown and Puncheur...it'll be a busy few weeks!

Yup, just signed up for Spring Onion. And Pearson 150 in May.

Less than 50 places left in the WWW.THESPRINGONION.CO.UK

I'll probably be doing Surrey Rumble again but probably riding out this time and doing it a bit slower to meet my training prog.

Just signed up for the Spring Onion. Anyone done it before? Says its down to 40 places but overall no. of entrants has jumped to 710 so might be a sales tactic...

Should be good though I'm not expecting much of a performance after really sporadic winter training :/

I'm signed up for the Dartmoor classic as well. It gets very busy, so expect queues, some of those roads are narrow and winding so passing is very tricky

I live in Plymouth and ride my Langster fixed all over Dartmoor 42-16 is fine for the moors. Pork hill from Princetown to Merryvale is a killer coming up, but going down :) 42mph and legs going like a cartoon! theres not many climbs that can beat me. have fun

About to sign up for the full 320 miles on the Tour of Wessex.

Does anyone know of any promotional / discount codes I can enter?

Little Lumpy entry is open. It's a rather punishing course that some of the odd types on here will enjoy. It also has a hugely unpleasant kick in the last 5 miles that almost killed me last time. Fun!

^ have you entered ?

doing so right this second :) 10 mins off Gold last year, this time it's not going to escape me.

Just remembered I came off once on gravel, and had to stop twice to re-attach a bottle cage that was falling into the cranks, so it should be reasonably doable if nothing goes wrong...

looks ace but already signed up for the etape caledonia , pity as it looks like a good course !

Seriously, you follow the signs round and your little mile-counter says you're on 103, and you get to a roundabout, and there's a roadsign saying "<<< Haslemere" and a hand-scrawled sign saying "Little Lumpy - Epic >>>" and you're already hurting bad and you just want to make it stop, and there's no-one around, and you could head in to Haslemere and nobody would know, nobody would know and your legs will stop hurting and it'll be all over, but instead you follow the signs, because you lack the mental capacity to disobey after so long in the heat and so much climbing, and then things get so much worse and a whole new world of suffering is revealed to you, and then there's a photographer at the top of the hill, grinning like a loon standing next to his moped that he used to hop from site to site, and despite lacking the energy to get each foot over the top of the pedal-stroke, there's still enough spare to despise him.
All good fun.

There's also proper good cake at the feed stop :)

In.

Also, I just saw this: The Long One. 3600m over 130 miles? Not sure what to make of it.

I have skewed standards, I'll admit, but even I think that sounds a little unpleasant :P
That said, I'll hopefully be quite fit by June. So hmmm.

Little Lumpy entry is open. It's a rather punishing course that some of the odd types on here will enjoy. It also has a hugely unpleasant kick in the last 5 miles that almost killed me last time. Fun!

Tom, please tell me that you're not doing this on 84 gi?

A few more gears for this one :)

got my entry, accommodation and flights sorted but unfortunately body is not even a quarter of the way there. only done three long rides so far this year (mildly hilly 300kms). last one wouldve been about 6wks ago.

just had a baby so im sleep deprived, cant go out and dont even have time for an hr turbo session. hope in the horizon tho. ill be allowed to ride starting this weekend (starting off with a couple of hrs) and from early april i can ride as much as i like as wife+kids will be away for a few mths. ill have to pack my training in less than three months! by my quick (optimistic) estimate, i can do almost 3000kms during that time.

have a history of last minute training...busted collar bone in jan '08 meant i lost some riding time for london2paris. had almost zero mileage before taking on last year's tour of flanders (140kms). and only got to properly train for 3mths for quebrantahuesos. but marmotte's a bit harder than any of those.

so, is it all too late? will i die even before i make it to the foot of alp d'huez?

You've booked it all. You have no choice. Do it Do it. Just try not to over do it.
Better to go in with juice left in the tank, than trashed from rushed training.