Monday 31 August 2009

Ride It Goes Racing

A rare free weekend from Ride It! events so me, Jon, Debs and Keith entered a Ride It team in the Torq 12:12 enduro. Here's what happened -

Keith got dirty -


Jon wore lycra (if you look fast you go fast) -


Deb's caught the racing bug after the first lap of her first ever race -


And we ended up 3rd :-)

Monday 24 August 2009

Dorking Road Ride Photos

If you're looking for the photos from Sunday, they should be available on the photographer's website shortly -

Sportive Photo

Dorking Rider Times

Saturday Off Road Rider Times

Sunday Road Rider Times

"Performance" by MC SpandX

I thought this was pretty funny -

Friday 21 August 2009

Dorking GPX routes

Are on the right in the GPX section.

Ta
Dean

Dorking Off road

The Off Road route is out. Running around Leith and Holmbury Hills and then over to Ranmore Common, it's a fun and demanding Ride!! The trails are in good condition and we're hoping for some good weather.

The Gpx routes should be appearing soon. Sorry for delay, Mark has been on holiday and has only just got back. Whip has been cracked and he should be on it soon!!

See you tomorrow.

Cheers
Dean

Thursday 20 August 2009

Dorking Road ride

We return to one of our favourite cycling areas this weekend. Dorking is on the edge of the North Downs and is blessed with great Road and Off road routes. We've been putting the road route out today in varying weather, small showers, wind and sun have all made an appearance. All routes leave Dorking and climb up on to Ranmore Common before descending to the bottom of one of the areas classic climbs, Box Hill. This is a popular bit of road, possibly something to do with the two hairpin and great views from the top. Perhaps a mini Alpine climb! This is a relatively easy ascent though and there'll be a Photographer somewhere along there to take a snap of you, so remember to keep smiling all the way to the top:-)

Soon after the Short route turns for home, leaving a flat section for the Medium and Long riders to have a breather on. One climb later and you'll be at Tony and the Manned SIS Drink station. Time for the Long riders to split off and head for some of the biggest climbs of the day. Traversing below Holmbury Hill and Pitch Hill the route undulates until the fantastic descent from Winterfold. A connecting section leads you to Combe Hill and then onto Effingham Forest, before descending and climbing back up to the Drink Station and the return home.

After the ride, if you've enjoyed the Long route you may want to think about next years King of the Downs. You've already done 4 of the first 5 climbs (out of 10)

Cheers
Dean

GPX routes should be appearing soon.

Monday 17 August 2009

Cotswolds Rider Times

We're still experimenting with googledocs to publish the rider times, here are the links below with times from this weekend's Cotswold rides -

Off Road Rider Times

Road Rider Times

Any problems accessing the results then please leave a comment below so we can look into it.

Friday 14 August 2009

Bristol Off road

Hi All.

Really sorry but time has overtaken me!

Still printing maps and the printer is feeding through random numbers of sheets at a time, jaming the plastic plaper against hot rollers inside £700s worth of machinery!!

Really need a beer right now.

The Long and Medium gpx's for the Off-road are up, not enough time to do the short, but the split is at the drink station, so not a big problem!

Cheers
Dean

Parking

Managed to get a field to park cars!!!!

If the Village hall is full, you'll be directed past and along to Chestnut Park Estate which is a Cul-de-sac. At the end is a gate and a field. Park here. Either walk through the conacting field and jump over the low fence, or walk back around the road ( we're lookikng at 150metres or so )

We'll have signs up directing you.

Ta
Dean

Thursday 13 August 2009

What a difference a name makes!

Road Ride, Sunday.

Last year was the first year of the Ride It! events run by Evans. We put together a list of venues and named the "Away" events according to the nearest Evans store. For this weekend we were near Bristol and in Kingswood, so called it Bristol - Kingswood. On the day, we discovered that there is actually an suburb of Bristol called Kingswood and this is 20miles from the event centre in the Cotswolds. We got about 140 riders total for that ride! This year we called it "The Cotswolds" and our Pre-entry alone is up to 240ish!!! I'm now panicking about car parking and am trawling local farmers for fields. So you may need to have a little walk to the event centre if you arrive late.....

As for the ride, well surprisingly, it's fairly flat. From Kingswood we head out West all the way to the River Severn and back to Wooton-under-Edge. Here the Short ride splits off and back to the centre whilst everyone else gets to attack the biggest hill of the day, Wooton Hill at 450ft in 2 miles. Once you're up, you stay up, and the rest of the route is generally flat, rolling countryside with the Long route reaching the Cotswolds Water Park before heading back to the Start. A couple of miles before you reach home is the final descent through Alderley, dropping 400ft in two miles.

We had some nice biking weather today, overcast, dry and still, let's cross fingers for Sunday ( and some parking!! )

GPX routes appearing soon.

Dean

Thursday 6 August 2009

Rider Times and Googledocs

This is just a bit of an experiment, we've been looking at using Googledocs for the rider times to make it easier for everyone to access them withour needing Microsoft Excel or Excel Viewer.

Here's the links for the Great Missenden results just to see how it works really, any thoughts, good or bad, then let us know...

Great Missenden Off Road Rider Times

Great Missenden Road Rider Times