Tell us about your weekend ride

Today's ride.

A ride to the Malvern hills and back. Some nice long climbs and I filled my bottle from a freshwater spring!

Where is the club that's getting mentioned, and what are they called?

Name and shame. I'm thinking of joining a club (SW London-ish) and I don't want to go through that shit if I can avoid it.

Brickman does a lot of riding around the Lake District (I think?), so I'm guessing he's based up there, as are this infamous club.

not jackie

come and joint hounslow and district, west london

or perhaps pearsons for a south west club

^^^ yes, its in the lakes.
Problem with LFGSS is it comes up trumps in the google. so any mention of actual name would probably appear above their own website!
Might give them another chance some time. next ride will be with another group, who appeared to be more social in the first place, just more distance to drive to.

just to second the perseverence suggested by miro_o above.
i had a similar first experience which nearly put me off but found better crews to ride with.
hope you do too.

just to play devil's advocate (and i really don't include you in this observation) - couple of times with clubs i've ridden with I've seen/heard disappointed new riders but wondered if they've misunderstood what cycling clubs actually offer. there seemed to be an expectation of the club as a service provider.
perhaps the idea of clubs, in which members actively contribute, suffered with the decline of civil society during the attacks on trade unions etc.
anyway, there's my quasi-socialist analysis/bullshit.

Rode this last tuesday - (I've cleaned it up slightly to remove a couple of my demented navigational errors)

Top tip for the Mortirolo - don't frigging bother. If you must, pack a compact. It is the green hell.

Top tip for the Gavia - don't ride it in 35degree heat after the Mortirolo. Do rehydrate with beer once you get to the top.

[ame]http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Mortirolo-Gavia[/ame

With my fuckwitted mapreading, it ended up closer to 135k and 4000m up, most spent either communing with the butterflies or in full on death march mode. Ow.

The Mortirolo is definitely a once in a lifetime, never a-fucking-gain, experience. What a horrible climb!

The Gavia, on the other hand, is worth going back for.

Did you ride both sides of the Stelvio whilst you were there?

Sadly not. I was staying in Varenna (on lake Como) with the missus and she only let me have 1 day off. It was a 2hr+ drive just to get up to Bormio....the drive back after was a real pain in the arse.

I stopped about 2 hairpins before the Pantani monument on the Mortirolo and swore for a solid minute.

I'd definitely do Gavia again - it's a truly glorious climb.

Varenna is nice, that's where we stayed when I did the GF Marco Pantani, which was most of the route you've done but starts and finishes in Aprica. It does the Gavia first, then the Mortirolo which was horrible, but at least I did the Gavia feeling fresh. That said, I think I got a bit carried away and rode it too hard, meaning the Mortirolo was even harder than it might have been. I swore lots too.

Really?

not quite, Julian Hough our legendary lead out man.. aka the Hoff and occasionally known as the Hoffmeister :))

Nice little run out to Ascot and Windsor. 83 miles, much of it in the charming company of Prancer.

Yesterday was Swains reps with Chris "Two Tents" Ramaye and some other Rollas followed by some more steady miles.

Tomorrow is my last run before the off to Monte Carlo.

I really enjoyed the ride with Clive on Sunday.

[ame]http://connect.garmin.com/activity/110679011[/ame]

We met in Richmond park and had a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve. A moderate pace out to Windsor and back, relatively flat with one bump and a decent descent for Clive to test the handling of the new bike on descents.

Richmond park was entertaining, two guys decided to race past us and cut back in on the flat approaching Sawyers Hill, only to go into reverse the moment the gradient kicked in. Funnily later in the day I saw the same two guys riding back through central London (I had already been home, cleaned up and changed clothes and bike by this point). Clearly they were doing a long ride, so why the desire to act like Cat 6 commuters whilst in the park?

Most of our route out involved pushing against a headwind, nothing too strong but it did sap our legs a little bit. From the garmin stats its clear we both found it a little easier on our return leg, the pace upping by a couple of miles an hour.

Again this route was a bit of a history of Clive ride, taking in the maternity hospital where he entered the world and a couple of other points of interest. Additionally it actually covered a lot of the route he and I had done a couple of years ago with a bunch of people from the forum, so we twice went past the point where Clive had snapped the bolt on a seatpost.

It was fairly much a pancake route, so I was simply trying to keep my legs turning at a relatively constant pace, and quite enjoying leadout and shouting abuse at Clive on a couple of climbs to keep him attached to my wheel. After Saturday's Hell of the North it was nice to just clear the legs, and not have wheels spinning on muddy ascents.

The headwind stopped either of us breaking 40 mph on the drop back into Windsor. Clive had a look of glee from the descent, it really is the most simple, untechnical uncomplicated point the bike down the road and go. I have done it fixed before and would quite like to give it another go again.

The Magna Carta tea rooms are always a delight. Good sarnies, great cake (we both had a couple of bits of cakey goodness - pecan pie was great) and then had to set off home.

Somehow the rain cloud that was behind us managed to pass over head with barely a drop touching us, and we then spent the rest of the day chasing the rain, it was at times visibly raining further up the road from us (though only lightly) and we just had a little bit of roadspray to contend with.

There is something so moronically simplistic and pleasurable about few hours spent on a bike, not trying to prove oneself, just enjoying the scenery, the fresh air and the delightful company of a good friend.

I really hope Clive's jaunt next week goes well. He has put in the hours training and has such a healthy perspective and realistic aim of how to get there in his own good time. As was proven by the two numpties at the beginning of the day, going too fast too soon impresses no one. I have a feeling Clive's long term strategy will pay dividends next week.

I hope you are right James.

I think it's been two years since I was on a hard fought ride (although short) ride down to brighton with prancer and x, I couldn't make it back, my legs were noodles.

Although I'm much over weight now, my legs are stronger, I'd like a mid week century if anyone is available.

Tomorrow I'm going to Oxford for some distance!!!!

Also in 3-4 weeks some friends and myself are out to Stone Henge, drinks for the night and train back in the morning....

Not strictly a weekend ride, but Wednesday is the midweek weekend, but hyperbole and I did this ride today;

[ame]http://connect.garmin.com/activity/110796887[/ame]

It's the Three Pimples ride that John Mullineaux devised, mixing bridleways, byways and road sections and was my first proper ride on the cross bike since February. We had a decent ride with a couple of brake testing moments, including one when descending at speed down the hill from Downe towards Cudham and discovering a bin lorry blocking the entire road around a blind bend. The route featured a bit more road riding than I was expecting but the off road sections were technical in places and good practice for the cross season ahead.

Thursday is nearly the start of the weekend. I rode this loop anti clockwise with a mate today:

http://friendfit.com/routeview.php?rtnum=73996

It was a lovely day for a ride. Navigation was courtesy of a ripped out page of a road atlas. As such, there were some slight unintentional detours on the unmarked lanes that meant we rode about 70 miles. We rode Witham to Thaxted at a fair clip (for me) and arrived ravenous. A hasty lunch from the shop and onwards back to Witham.

#fuckyeahsundaymornings

left my parents' place at 08:10 this mornig, bit of mizzle in the air, soon turned to dry and bright but not hot - perfect. lovely scenic lanes, very little traffic except a few roadies, almost all downhill (i did the other direction yesterday so i earned it)

I did a Kentury. 120 miles of Kent in fact, largely following a Spybot route, apart from a diversion to Croydon where I spent a good hour being completely lost. Stupid Croydon.

I had family business to attend to in Kent, so the end of the return route was in the dark. Most exciting bit was when my Hope cut out while I was doing about 30mph down the (completely unlit) hill between Titsey and Croydon. Fun times.

I am going to start riding with a backup light on night rides.

left my parents' place at 08:10 this mornig, bit of mizzle in the air, soon turned to dry and bright but not hot - perfect. lovely scenic lanes, very little traffic except a few roadies, almost all downhill (i did the other direction yesterday so i earned it)

Whereas we mooched out at about 10.30 towards Box Hill and got absolutely soaked - made all the more miserable by the fact that bits of bike variously fell off, snapped and punctured.

Took tea, cake and blast under the hand driers at the top of Box Hill to raise spirits enough not bail at Epsom.

[ame]http://ridewithgps.com/routes/674123[/ame
[/ame]

6hrs 44 mins. I'm pooped.

The climbs were not as bad as I thought they were going to be (still tough though).

Headwind all the way down the west coast and a nice 19% climb at 78 miles.

Great day out.

I added five miles on at the end just to take me over the 100.

#trainingtrainingtraining

Peter Kennaugh was first.
http://www.manxtimingsolutions.com/Results/2011/20110904_Lighthouses/full.html

I got a free t-shirt.

I just did a loop from peckham to enfield lock. 32miles. It's a lovely ride once you get on the canal

I rode the Tour of the Cornfields, a 60 mile cyclocross sportive in Cambridgeshire. It was fantastic, a really interesting route with some fairly technical stuff, lots of rough green lanes and some fairly lengthy road sections. We were very lucky with the weather, as rain was forecast for most of the morning but we had a spell of 20 minutes of rain just after half distance and then some rain in the last mile or so, that turned into a torrential downpour that saw me drive home along very wet roads.

I punctured just before the feed station, but a quick change saw us lose no more than 5 minutes. I'm not sure of the time, as we didn't take note of when we actually started, but we must've done the ride in around 4 hours.

I bombed up to Burgate on four weetabix and two bottles of water. Only stopped once, for a puncture, at about mile 25. Could feel my body hating me by mile 70, with definitely nothing left/eating itself for the last 10 miles. It's good to know where the limits are.
[ame]http://connect.garmin.com/activity/111901275[/ame]

about 50% Dunwich route and 50% unknown. but gosh aren't the lanes lovely up there. pretty villages, interesting churches, non-stop whooshing tarmac. only stopped smiling because I was swallowing too many flies.
(started recording from lea bridge, but rode up from nunhead, honest, so more like 100 miles all in. fastest 'distance' ride I've done)