Anyone want an etape caledonia entry for nowt?

I have a mate who forgot to enter, he would love to do it but he’s on holiday untill the 12th of this month so can’t confirm that.

bernard just got a text back from my mate, he’s still really wants to do the event. Could you e-mail me the details please contact(dot)us(at)city-holdings.co.uk. Thanks very much.

did one for free last year as someone on here puled out.

best bit compared to a club run was the fact you cant get dropped on a sportive. I started about 2 hours behind the mai bunch and opted to miss out a 20 mile loop so cought up with the main buch about 2 hours in after riding my ass off. Could then take it easy and just cruise allong socialy. Overtake a few groups, get droped by a few, just seemd like a cotinuous line of riders extending 20 miles in front and behind. Which means when you get a mechanical (my cleat fel off!) you can take your time fixing it, then draught/overtake with faster groups till you catch up with the group you were riding with.

Worst bit was i forgot to reset my computer. Then with about 25(unknown)miles to go i saw a sign for the finishing village. Got my sprinting legs on. And attacked, passed about 100 riders and found that a fair number had picke up my wheel. So there i am, busting my gut and with a HR the wrong side of 185 (had been cruising at 140-160 since the morning catchup effort) wondering when the hils will end and the village appear. Then it dawns that we’re doing a big loop arround the village! 25 miles and about an hour later i’m on the grass collapsed over a cup of tea and a mahoooooooosive chocolate brownie 🙂

Wuld i do one again?
probably, still costs less than a good night out and the memory lasts longer.
would probably look for audax rides first though as th cost is very much cheeper.

would i not do one again?
Riding on the road alone doesnt bother me, i’l happily set out on 7 hour rides allone, or even chuck a backpack on and bivy out at the end before riding back at first light. So might just get a GPS and download some 100+mile routes of t’internet.

I’ve done a few and they’re generally pretty good – kind of a road version of a Merida 100. It’s an opportunity to ride somewhere different.
You do get wildly varying levels of ability though and ‘bunch riding etiquette’ is often fairly poor, people with no idea of how to share the workload or do through-and-off etc which can be mildly annoying.

The price of “sportives” seems excessive when compared to audaxes and reliability rides which are usually less than £5 and still have feed stops.

Having said that, on the couple of reliability rides I’ve been on, I’ve had lots of grief from others about not riding close enough to the rider in front, being too far from the kerb, riding in the “wrong” gear, not pointing out bits of gravel etc. Probably from people like crazy-legs! 🙂

They were pretty unsociable affairs, maybe because my roadie etiquette is no good, but I don’t think I’ll be going back. I’ll stick to riding my road bike with friends and on my own.

Ironically, one of our local road clubs is really friendly and doesn’t go in for all the competitive stuff, apart form when they’re actually racing.