Subtitle: never ride a sportive without training for it.
Today I rode the Tour de Dengie sportive. A 71-mile ride pretty much flat all the way. The ride comprised a five-mile out from the start and two 30-mile loops before the five miles back to the finish. I hadn’t trained for the event due to various commitments, including work and COVID. In fact, I hadn’t ridden that much since the London Essex 100. But having ridden the London Essex 100, surely I would still be fit enough to ride this sportive well. How wrong I was.
I met up with a great group of guys from the South Essex Velo Facebook group. We started at a fair old pace, well for me anyway, and rode at an average of 18 mph for the first five miles. But then I started to get dropped and decided to give in to the inevitable and ride my own ride. All then went well until about 10 miles from the end. Then I just blew up and started pedalling squares. This was not down to bonking as I had fuelled well. But just lack of training, pure and simple. At one point, my quads started to cramp, and I really wasn’t sure how I would get to the finish line. And so, inevitably, I finished 5th in my category. Oh and there were only five people in my category! And last overall, apart from the three people who did not finish.
I am not too gutted as there were only 32 people who took part, and I have never entered a sportive with that low number of riders before. Furthermore, my overall average speed was 14.2mph which is not too bad (for me).
So yes, another great ride, but lesson learned.