Clifton CC

Went out with the MTBers on Wednesday night - fantastic ride, one of the best evening jaunts I can remember - nice relaxed group, mellow sunset, varied terain, great views.

After a few epic road rides the last few weeks, I thought I'd join them again for the Sunday Clubrun. My last had been the mud-fest in Feb, this was rather different. Enormous group of 21 riders, most of whom I was meeting for the first time, so apologies that I've not memorised all your names. What I really liked about the leadership of the ride (take a bow Ian) was that each time we split the group, it was done deliberately and we didn't just let natural selection take its course! Mr RAF took up the reins of our group after the first big split and took Ian's baton well. Chapeau!

We split for the alst time where the route crossed the top of Clay Bank. Most taking the sensible option of the road back to Chop Gate, I followed Steve and SimonW on up and up onto the ridge. Fantatstic spot. Then onto the last big descent to the finish.

Now I only ride off road about half a dozen times a year, but I have been doing that since the late eighties so have enough experience to know where my own personal envelope is and to ride nicely inside it. Hence, I don't often (touch wood) have big wipe outs. Hmmm... Top bit was lots of boulders and Steve and Simon, literally, flew over them on their funny bouncy bikes and with their superior skill. I picked my way cautiously through with a couple of foot dabs, but was going OK. We then opened out onto some more grassy/heathery stuff and with the others 100m in front I pushed on to catch them. Big mistake. I was just thinking "not bad for a roadie, eh?", and they say "pride comes before a fall".... Moreover, if you don't respect a mountain it will bite you.... Not sure what happened, think I made the school-boy error of front wheel in one rut, back wheel in another, but I high-sided it like a super-charged Beloki and took the full force on my upper-back/ribs. As I was doing about 50kph at this stage this was no little force!

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I got away with it - it knocked the wind out of me, and I'm rather bruised - drugged up on Ibruprofen. Thanks to Steve and Simon for keeping me moving down the mountain afterwards before I stiffened up!

Its a funny thing this cycling lark - sometimes you have to fall off to remind yourself......

The Elmet 12 hour TT for me, starting in Melbourne. 222 miles is what I reckon I got, let's see what the timekeepers say. The last Clifton rider I can find for this event is Stacey in 2009 with 204 miles, but I think Tim R would enjoy it next year, eh Tim

At the finish I bumped into an ex-president of Clifton but I've forgotten her name! It began with an M - any ideas? Anyway, I'm completely knackered now. How on earth did I manage that 24? For one last funny story: after 12 hours racing, I punctured while riding back to the HQ from the finish. Thank goodness it wasn't any earlier.

Sorry to hear about your crash Rob.

Well done Greg.
There's a rather spectacular Clifton Trophy for best "12" of the year.....

Oh really? Get riding Rob, there are plenty of opportunities for you yet!

[EDIT: Here are the official results. I did 222.43, Joel Wainman won with 275.44]

G. wrote:Oh really? Get riding Rob, there are plenty of opportunities for you yet!

Unfortunately I'll be washing my hair...

Seriously though, 12hr TTs are great adventures. They're true endurance events where you can actually race all the way to the finish, whereas, for me at least, 24hr was just a well planned slog. Since you are actually racing in a 12, then you'll probably find that it took far more out of you than the 24. Make sure you give your body chance to recover now...

Intermediate ride for me. Big crowd at the square at 10 so an impromptu 3rd group decided to visit Dalby whilst 8 of us followed Kev's route over Jordans clockwise

Lovely day out, not too warm, not too windy, great company. An early p*****re for Steph, and a failed quick-link for Mark delayed us slightly but I think we made reasonable progress although the climb up seemed harder than I remember (the bathroom scales tell their tale too truly ). I think I must have been on a 'jour sans' - I was shattered by the time we got back with 100 miles door to door on the clock. Must get fitter!

Thanks to all for a really enjoyable day

Blimey Rob, I hope you are OK. I am not surprised you struggled keeping up downhill with those two boys on their massive bikes! The rest of us whimped out of the last section, we went back on the road and were having a sit down probably before you'd finished the climb!

In the last 5 days I did 4 rides in an attempt to train for the Trans Wales (75km per day and 50,000 ft climbing over 7 days) in a fortnights time. We only decided to do it last week so it's gonna be tough!

Wednesdays club MTB ride was my favourite route ever for an evening ride. 16 people out and we finished at dusk, really nice coming down a steep descent near the end using the force as we could not see! Fri I was out with a couple of the MTB people.

Saturday was the club intermediate road ride. Those rides have come on a bit since we used to do them in winter! 96 miles and there wasn't a time that I looked down and saw anything under 20 mph for the whole route! Apart from on the hills near Pately Bridge that is. I didn't think it was possible to keep that up but it turned out it was, although the boys weren't getting any help at all from us on the front!

Sunday was the club MTB ride. 21 people, which was a great turnout! The group split several times and everyone came back happy I think, apart from Rob maybe by the sounds of it It was a route out over the moors from Chop Gate near Helmsley. Quite hilly and the group I ended up in did 27 miles, other groups did different amounts but broadly the same route.

All the rides were so nice and sunny and all had nice friendly people, this nice weather certainly makes it all a whole lot more enjoyable A week of rest for my legs now as they are in shock!

It began with an M - any ideas?

Mickie Salter?

None of the heroic stuff for me - just the Saturday training ride, plenty already posted on the other bit of the forum, but a lot better for me than the previous week, not because I was going any better but because the gentle undulations out towards Boroughbridge don't play havoc with me like the more serious route to Malton. I felt ok and never contemplated missing a turn on the way to Boroughbridge or the Milby circuit. Though lack of fitness (or ability or mental toughness) began to tell and I found myself desperately following the wheels of the points on their licence brigade by Easingwold. I didn't relish turning myself inside out in a futile attempt to hang on up to Crayke and slipped off looking for some good wheels to follow. Luckily when I looked round, John, Jess and Michael were there so I got a nice tow over the drag.

Once over Crayke it was time to organise. I was thinking that if we rode together in good order back to York the stronger legs in the group a ahead would tear it to pieces and we'd pick up the odd casualty, heck we might even get the whole group back. The truth was though, whilst we rode back in excellent order we were riding at 20-22mph and I reckon the group ahead were doing a good couple mph more so we never saw them again.

Still I enjoyed it immensely and 78 miles door to door in under 4 hours aint bad.

We were doing 24-30mph on the way back and averaging around 25mph, in total including most of the chain gang after the pee stop it was around 38 miles @ 24mph, the fastest training ride I've done.