Highclere 2007 - sunny day

A return to Highclere following successful ride last August. Starting to feel like an old timer at sportives now (somewhat prematurely given this is only my fourth event...).

Still first time for something as was riding as part of a team, a novel experience. Accordingly I steered clear of any specific individual target as not sure how others would be riding.

In contrast to Wessex the forecast for the weekend was for sun and it delivered. Day before event I kept off the bike but did do a fairly intense 30 minutes on indoor bike (15 mins Speed 18, 15 mins Speed 16). This seemed to have no adverse effect and I felt very fresh as Sunday dawned. I left early to pick up a fellow rider and we rode to the event together. When there he wanted to speak with bike-shop re his bike so I thought I would tag along and see if I could get a diagnosis as to the rattles coming from my Roubaix.

Chap found the cause, the bolts on my chainring were loose. Something I would never have thought of. He tried to tighten but one snapped. Clearly they were amiss. Happy that at least I knew to get some more I went off to join rest of team.

Course 2007 was reverse from 2006. This meant hard climb up Coombe to start but after then most of first half downhill. Return quite lumpy but no mega climbs.

Recognising this I thought it would be worth pushing hard from the start. So we led the way for our group up to the climb. There I changed down and started the tricky bit of ascent. After a short while my chain slipped off. I cursed, stopped and put it on again. With some difficulty I restarted only to go a few yards before it came off again. I swore harder and looked at the chain ring, discovering that the broken bolt had slipped out and this was causing the chain to come off. So I had to put the chain back on the middle ring. Restarting was especially tricky but managed and got to the top, rather upset. Met up with one team member and we hared downhill to join up with the others. We then hurtled down the Test Valley at a rate of knots, keeping up a 20mph average for nearly 90km. During this time we lost touch with one of our four. We thought he was in a group behind but later it turned out he was having a hard time and called it a day.

At this stage though things started to get a bit harder as south of Winchester we started to head east. The road started to get lumpy and it was difficult to keep together as a group. After a while it was decided best to split, one of us going ahead with me staying with the remaining team member who was doing his first 100mile+ event.

This proved a wise decision as from then on there was no group that we caught and those that passed were going too fast for us both to comfortably keep up. It was a hot day and I knew from experience it would be no fun to go solo, especially on a first big ride. Eventually the two of us made it to the top of White Hill which we knew was the last big climb. With one last push we made it back to Highclere and welcome beefburger/ice cream.

As it turned out the three of us who completed all hit gold standard and we ended up thoroughly enjoying the day. On a personal level it was a very good training ride, I had taken it comparatively easy (170W) and not had much assistance from riding in a group. Even so we averaged 28kph for the ride as a whole. This made a goal of riding an event at a 20mph average seem realistic given the right circumstances.