I'd been targeting the Tour of Wessex (Somerset) for a couple of months now and most of my training has been focused on cycling. This has left my running and swimming fitness to drop away a little bit. So I was expecting to do well and the target was to feel strong through to the finish.
Having completed the 153km circuit in just under 6 hours (5:54:46) I was pretty pleased with how I felt and finished. That's an average speed of about 26kph, including 3 food/water stops totaling about 17 minutes. Excluding those stops the average speed was just over 27kph.
Along the way the route was blessed with a pretty bumpy profile - about 2000m in climbing - including Alfred's Tower, which was a Cat. 1 climb steep enough to cause most people to slip and slide on the wet surface on the way up. All that climbing should prepare me for the climbs on the Etape Tour.
Took on plenty of fluids (about 6 bottles - 4 energy, 2 water) and food (2 bars, 1 gel, 1 white roll, 2 bananas) but still found the last 20kms a stretch. Still this is an improvement from the last sportive I did when I bonked at about 90kms.
Weather on the day stayed fine with some cloud cover, but I still managed to burn my arms and exposed parts of my legs. Now I've got a lovely pro-cyclist t-shirt tan! The only element that we all had to contend with was the wind. A lot of the course was very exposed, especially the narrow lanes, lined by canals and fields, around Glastonbury - giving it a Tour of Flanders/Paris Roubaix feel. In that section I was working well with a group of 10 or so guys.
By far my favorite part of the course was the ascent and descent through Cheddar Gorge. Pretty spectacular! I only wish there was no tourist traffic around the bottom of the descent, which interrupted our free run down. Never the less, it felt like a mini-climb and descent in the alps.
Results should be posted in the week and photos will be up on Wednesday.
