Tell us about your weekend ride

Net result is a fair number of bruises and a bent brake lever

Kenda Corner?

8 boys, 3 days in Sweden in the Kristianstad/Ljungby area - 70% gravel, 280km - Amazing cycle routes.

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Still recovering after a twat in a van hit me at 70 (I was doing 30) in the Hemel Hempstead C.C. Ten on F11/10 on Saturday 13th, wanna see the state of my Colnago Flite T.T. Bike as well!!!!

Is anyone taking part in the Rapha Manchester to London training ride out of Highgate this Sunday?

Currently in Wellington NZ. Farking cold but managed a ride round the Bays yesterday with my brother then some picturesque tramp ciders.
Check out my 37.7 km Ride on Strava: http://app.strava.com/activities/332602528

Are there any decent roadie roads in the hills around Wellington? It's such a nice city but I'm clueless what to do with a bike there.

There are loads of decent road rides there. Let me know if you need any inspiration.

piss break on a 40 mile ride in Northants

47.4 miles in sunny country lanes as a DD warm up. A lovely end to a week off.
Did forget the factor 50 so the tan lines should be good!

You made quite the puddle

I had quite a good ride yesterday, all things considered. My phone stopped working, my Garmin stopped working (on its first outing) and my bike was against me (refusing to shift onto the big ring and the bottle cage mounts corroding off.)

I did get to cycle up some great hills and I even met Chris Boardman who was hosting a 'ride and dinner with Chris' type event for 30 wealthy Mamils.

Special shout out to the people doing the C2C in a day who managed to leave more litter (gel wrappers, energy bar wrappers and even bottles) than I've ever seen on that road.

Not so much a weekend ride as a week's ride, but I've just finished riding from Geneva to Nice with a group of friends. We were lucky enough to have a support van driving along with us, which could take all the luggage. We weren't able to do the original route due to the fact that the tunnel east of Bourg d'Oisans is shut on account of the fact that it's currently falling into the lake. This mean no Alpe d'Huez and no Col de Telegraphe or Galibier. It also meant we ended up having to take a train for 55km on day 4. It was still an excellent trip though. Brief details are:

Day 1: 94.4km, 2063m climbing, Cols de Colombiere and Aravis
Day 2: 91.3km, 2206m climbing, Col de la Madelaine
Day 3: 110.5km, 2616m climbing, Lacets de Montvernier, Col de Croix de Fer and a bit of Alpe d'Huez
Day 4: 111.9km, 2730m climbing, Cols de Ornon, Parquetout and Noyer
Day 5: 96.8km, 2768m climbing, Cols de Vars and Bonnette
Day 6: 140.4km, 2336m climbing, Cols de Ste Martin and Turini

Total riding 645.3km and 14,719m of climbing. Highlight for me was the Lacets de Montvernier. Everyone else rode straight past it to the bottom of the Croix de Fer, but I wasn't going to miss them so doubled back and rode it.

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My ride pales into insignificance compared to some of them climbs you lot do, but.... today I attempted to follow a route that 'proper-grown-up-cyclists' take across some Kent Hills. On RideWithGPS I found a ride described as 40 Miles via Yorks Hill which I loaded onto my Garmin Touring thingyumn and set off for the afternoon. It turns out this route is used by the grown-ups and is called (I believe) the 'Epic Hills Challenge' or some such, there were flyers tied to road signs and telegraph poles all along most of it, duh!

Kerrikey! I nearly died at least 23 (approx!) times today trying to climb some of these Hills, I've very little experience of Hill-climbing and maybe, just maybe, a SS bike wasn't the wisest choice also. Double duh!

I've got a PB for elevation gain according to the Garmin Connect programme but boy o boy did I suffer. I had to bail about 2/3's into the route and make tracks back to relatively flat roads back home because my short fat hairy legs felt like not legs anymore. At one point I actually got off and walked! Yorks Hill is mad, hats off to peeps that can cycle up that, I can't.

I dun this today...

I need to snooze now :-)

Chapeau for even attempting Yorks on a singlespeed. It's brutal.

Thanks Andy, I got about a 3rd of the way up, stopped for a breather and tried to carry on but its just too much for me. I felt like I was worn out before I even got to that Hill!

Simon Warren writes books, now translated into German about not making it with 700m to go.

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I can't read Jerrmaine but I can detect from that text some similarities to my experience today. Notably...
"War" (it was!)
"Die" (I nearly did!)
"Handtuch" (to my fevered brow and beating heart)
"Abfahrt" (yes, I tried this too but blowing off didn't help get me up that bluddy hill!).

Yep, Yorks is pure evil. Well done on the climbing.

Ta TTM, I'll try it again when I'm a bit more used to climbing Hill's and wake up one Morning feeling super-Human. Might happen!

That is a vertical wall @ 22miles. Lol

Club ride yesterday wet so very wet, have never had both numb feet and hands as I had yesterday. To the point I couldn't feel if I was using the brake or not and was unable to change gear.

After getting to bed at midnight, sleeping at 1 because of the heat and a 4am wake up call a 5am departure seemed like a bad start.

Still, with a free pair of grandstand tickets to the Grand Prix in my bag, it was almost worth it despite 3kgs of cameras and lenses weighing me down.

The route out was actually really great if you do it that early in the morning:

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/8819904

Heading west out of Dunstable we hit this sustrans route following an old railway track through a cutting. Downhill all the way!

followed by several miles on the River Ouze, by which time the morning dog walkers were out.

The towpath there is weird - tarmac'd but in a way that makes it uneven and ridged. Still, it was calm and quiet if not the most direct route.

The A roads were all near enough empty save for the final slog along the A421 towards Buckingham which had a fair bit of traffic heading to the race, including apparently JK with his Ferrari Enzo (number plate: ENZ0) and helicopter after helicopter overhead.

In the end it took the best part of 5h, but I'll put that down to my companion who was struggling to upgrade from a 4 mile commute to a 60 mile early morning slog across country.

The view from the grandstand (Woodcote A) was excellent (if we'd paid, the tickets would've been £300 each!) - here's someone else's video shot from pretty much where we were sat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkkRhty6P8

The straight coming towards you is the end of the DRS zone, so there were a few overtakes to be made there, followed by Luffield corner which got the first rain of the day to much excitement.

Once the race was done, the track was opened up and full of people so it would've just been rude not to unlock and head out for a lap. My phone's GPS has been atrocious lately (leading to comedy navigation all day from ridewithgps) so the strava trace isn't quite as impressive as it could have been:

https://www.strava.com/activities/339637786/embed/d4eb13a9a7b1a9c7e3e8c02b0bb4f2d1232d4b28

For the ride back my mate decided to bail and headed ~15miles towards Milton Keynes for the train but after the leisurely pace on the way out I decided it was time to get some miles in:

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/8837187

Bit disappointed with my pace really - 62 miles in 5 hours when I was hoping for more like 4, but I guess I probably had half an hour of breaks shouting at my phone and checking directions.

The ride back was pretty dull - I should plan it better next time - it was just A road after A road all the way pretty much. By the time I reached Hemel I was really wishing I owned some padded shorts but not much you can do besides stop off in Potters Bar for a shandy and solero recovery combo.

All in all, pretty good day - no punctures or mechanicals, no getting lost despite my phone's best attempts ('riding' the route using streetview beforehand so you recognise the turnings and landmarks is a great help) and at 120 miles I think the furthest I've done fixed in a day (44×15 w/172.5mm cranks).

Would accept free F1 tickets again.

Organised a 24 hour charity ride for local hospice around an 18km SPOCO loop, 3rd year running, started Sat noon. Overheated, didn't drink enough, went too hard up hills, bollocksed the whole thing up, lightweight. Packed at 5 am with the squits and throwing up. 369km plus 30km cycle to and from start. Felt the best I've ever felt on the bike on Monday, though - weird stuff. https://app.strava.com/activities/339737477

awesome

Wet, humid and generally nasty weather out today.

76kms, in just under 3 hours. Still on the plus side managed to draw a cock:

The lanes were pretty empty:

7/10 would ride again.