Westerley CC Reliability Ride
Reliability rides were the forerunner of Sportives. They take place before the cycle racing season starts. Club Captain Paul Hone travelled to the Chilterns with three other ACC members to take on the challenge of the Westerly Reliability Ride. Here is Paul’s report!
George, Marek, Matt & I attended the above on Sunday 15 Jan. In case you don’t know, a reliability ride is similar to a sportive except without the support, trendy name and expensive entry fee. This event started in Chalfont St Giles, was 65 miles, went over numerous hills in the Chilterns with 200 riders signing up.
This was Marek’s first ride outside since fracturing his arm riding home after the AGM. A tram line got the blame but I don’t think the beer goggles helped. The rest of us like everybody in the country had just recovered from illnesses over xmas.
We decided to be late starters and set off straight up a climb at a healthy pace with all of us taking turns at the front and then rotating to the back. The weather was dry for a change but cold and windy. For what seemed like 75% of the ride we were battling a head or cross headwind. This was fine for Marek, Matt & I but for the lighter riders (like George) where power/weight ratio isn’t helping much, they end up a bit like a punch bag when they take a turn at the front. The ride continued like this with windy sections followed by another hill to climb and constantly over taking riders who started before us.
Some of the roads were single lanes full of mud and gravel making some of the descents very sketchy. Marek was very nervous citing his recent accident but I did remind him that there are no tram lines in the Chilterns plus he didn’t drink numerous pints of real ale before we started so should be ok. What also didn’t help was while the rest of us had the route on our Garmin’s, Marek was using something else which he thinks is far better – the only issue with it though was that he couldn’t download the route making it as useful as the inflatable dart board he bought recently.
Approaching the end of the ride, punch bag George was struggling to keep up with the earlier efforts taking their toll and he was running out of energy. Contrary to what some people think, we do care about each other so with a few miles to go we put George out of his misery by mercifully dropping him and letting him ride back to the HQ on his own in limp mode.
Approaching the end of the ride, punch bag George was struggling to keep up with the earlier efforts taking their toll and he was running out of energy. Contrary to what some people think, we do care about each other so with a few miles to go we put George out of his misery by mercifully dropping him and letting him ride back to the HQ on his own in limp mode.
Back at the HQ they had a fine spread of sandwiches, homemade cakes, drinks etc which was included in the entry fee which we enjoyed while waiting for George to get back. We were getting mildly concerned for him when he came staggering in looking like he was on deaths door. When he went to the bar the lady serving him was really worried but fortunately a bit of cake and tea restored a bit of life into him.
All in all a very enjoyable ride over some very nice countryside and can well recommend doing reliability rides. The next one we will be doing is a local one – the Old Ports 5 February. Thank you Westerley CC & Matt for suggesting it. I think we were the fastest group however that’s not the point of the ride and doesn’t matter at all (maybe)!
