Thanks to everyone who turned up this weekend, we had well over 500 riders make the trip to ride with us at Cliddesden.
Unfortunately the rain on Saturday meant less than ideal conditions for the mountain bikers as riders faced some pretty muddy conditions. Most of you still seemed to come back smiling, I don't think the jet wash at the finish has ever been so busy :-)
Sunday brought dry and sunny weather which I think along with the extra hour gained due to the clocks going back encouraged a good turnout including a number of riders new to road cycling. We are aware that a couple of problems with course signs meant some riders missed their relevant route splits so we'll be looking into how we can make some more improvements for future events. ( This will also explain some of the fast ride times in each category, as people did various, shorter distances. Dean )
Remember the Ride It! events continue throughout the winter months including night mountain bike rides at selected venues.
Riders times are below -
Saturday Off Road Rider Times
Sunday Road Rider Times
Sunday 25 October 2009
Cliddesden Rider Times
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7 comments:
Hi,
As someone who has been doing Sportives for a few years and stumbled across the Ride-It series by chance, I thought it worth writing to say how much I enjoyed this event. Sure there were a few problems with the signage but in some ways that added a bit to the mystery tour element. It certainly got riders chatting at junctions and for me it was good fun
I've mentioned this in another posting on bikeradar but thought it worth repeating here, but I think Evans should be praised for putting so much effort into these events and charging so little. To me a tenner for waymarked routes around quiet country lanes, drinks stations and village hall facilities at the start and end is fantastic. Also, the fact that they seem to be the only people in the south organising sportives through the winter is superb
The only point I would make is that it may be worth submitting your events to cyclosport.org as that seems to be the main site to find out about sportives
Paul
Hi Paul.
Thanks for the support. We had seen your post on the Bikeradar forum but Evans policy is that, as individuals within the company, we are not allowed to comment on forums, blogs etc. A bit frustrating sometimes, but these things can get a bit messy so I see their reasoning.
The issue we had with the signage was twofold. The easiest one to explain was a slightly hard to see sign sign turning riders left. Normally this would mean riders would soon lose signage, look at their maps and find their way back. Unfortunately, in this case it happened where the route was fairly narrow, which meant that the next jubction riders came to was also on the route and signed, so they had no idea they had missed a portion of the route until they came back to base.
Secondly, we had some issues with the split signs. This is a niggle that we have been trying to sort out from the start of the series. The first split signs were the colour of the route your were riding, Green for Fun, Blue for Short etc. Riders were programmed to look for pink signs so missed them. Next we tried coloured signs with pink boarders, but still riders missed them as they were different from the usual signs. For this event we used bigger signs than every other sign, made them pink and wrote the ride split on them. All that happened (and I witnessed this) was that riders ignored the 4 smaller signs turning everyone left and followed the 2 big signs with "Fun Ride Split" pointing right.
Back to the design board I think!!!
As for comments about the state of the roads, the weather the day before didn't help, but I have taken this on board for next years route.
We have just been given the go ahead to purchase electronic timing, so you'll get this in your £10 as well.
We do try and get onto Cyclosport.org, but this is apparently not as easy as it sounds!! We are going to pay one of the guys to make sure we're on the popular events calendars, so hopefully that issue will be sorted as well!
Oh and the other comment from that forum I'd like to address is the locations of our events. Yes Cliddesden is not the most high profile/glamorous venue, but we do go to the Peaks, Lakes, North Downs, Scotland, Yorkshire etc. So I think that comment was a bit unjustified!
Anyway, off to Cannock Chase tomorrow morning, so thanks again for your comments and we'll see you soon .
Dean and the team
Hi Dean,
Thanks for explaining the signage issues. The first one just sounds like really bad luck. The second, I can't remember if you had this but from the other sportives you tend to get a bit of warning - typically "Route Splits Ahead" probably 500 metres before it happens. I think you did have that but then when the split does occur you see pretty massive signs indicating "long route" "short route" etc. Again, I think I remember seeing largish signs.
Maybe the answer is this sort of signage:-
500m "Route Splits Ahead"
300m "Read the signs coming up"
200m "No really, read them!"
100m "Here it is ..."
50m "coming up"
25m "NOW
0m "ROUTE SPLITS"
Paul
Hi, again using this medium as I can't find an email address for the ride-it team. Just wanted to pass on my thanks for todays ride at Cliddesden. It was a really nice day out for both myself and my 8 year old son who completed the 30 mile ride. (we had a couple of hills that he struggled with but he got a little help from me running up them pushing him on his bike and my bike in the other hand!)
Anyway thanks very much from Callum and Leigh Pateman
Paul.
If I had the staff I'd put one at each split, perhaps with big foam pointy fingers!!!
Cheers
Dean
Paul.
If I had the staff I'd put one at each split, perhaps with big foam pointy fingers!!!
Cheers
Dean
Hi Leigh
Thanks.
I remember seeing you two, and there were other riders commenting on the small boy on the small racing bike, so I think you two made an impression out there.
My mail address is Dean.stacey@evanscycles.com
But if you're going to post nice things about us, I'm quite happy for you to do so like this :-)
Ta
Dean
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