Just got back home after finishing this ride. Perfect day for it given all the bad weather we've had recently. Fairly cloudy, but reasonably mild temperatures and just a steady wind rather than the gusts over the last week.
Set off from Delve's Cafe just off the M18 on the road to Thorne. I'd guess there were around 100ish riders out on the ride. This was the perfect event for me for starting 2012. Its very flat country around there and most of the roads were in reasonably good condition. The route takes you through a lot of open countryside, through some nice villages and follows a river for quite a lot of the way round. All the roads were pretty quite, with on a very small amount of riding on main roads.
I noticed a really big difference when riding on my own and when riding within a group. When you are on your own and the wind is in your face, it really tires you, but when I was tagging along with a few other riders, its a lot more efficient and you can ride a fair bit faster! After the first cafe stop at 35 km, I made the mistake of tagging onto a faster group of riders. It was fairly steady for the first mile or so, but then the pace upped to around 35km/h. This was great fun to ride in and we covered some great distance in a short time. The pace was too much for me though and I knew that if I'd kept going with them, I'd exhaust myself. The 10km after that were tough going. The faster riding had taken it out of me, and I was now riding on my own and into the wind. My pace had dropped right down to around 20km/h and I was quite weary.
After going steady for some time, I felt more refreshed and managed to ride a bit faster again. I tagged along with a few other groups - everyone was really friendly.
Best part of the day - the final control was get a receipt from a garage or MacDonalds. No brainer - into Macdonalds I went. Large chicken burger with fries and Fanta Orange. Forgot to get a receipt though so had to go back for an Apple Pie!
The final 20km seemed to fly by, and back I was at Delve's Cafe. All in - it was a time of just under 5 hours, which I was pretty pleased with.
Glad I entered this event at the beginning of the year. I needed a goal of somekind to get me out of the door this early in the year. Can't wait to do the next one - Mini North West Passage on the 18th Feb. Will be a bit more challenging with a few hills thrown in!
