Awesome Toast

5.30am, an early start and immediately a problem, my new bike won’t fit on the bike rack on the car roof. Damn. It is just too streamlined and there isn’t enough room between the rear wheel and the frame to get the clamp on. Oh well, the front wheel comes off and thankfully with it being smaller than my other bike, it fits in the back of the car alongside MD, who’s in his box. Then we head up to misty Ilkley.

The White Rose Challenge is a new cyclo-sportive event in aid of Cancer Research UK and a local Yorkshire charity supporting kids with cancer called Little Heroes. There are three routes, 182km, 130km and for the wimps, 80km. All of which ‘showcase the best the beautiful Yorkshire Dales has to offer’, what they mean is they go up some bloody big hills. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage that acknowledges that ‘this is one of the toughest sportives on the circuit and we would ask that you do not underestimate it’. So naturally I thought, bring it on. Then I look at the map of the route, thought a bit harder and then decided, yep, bring it on but only the wimps route please.

It’s not a race, well not officially but there are Gold, Silver and Bronze awards depending on your finish time. We are all kitted out with a SPORT ident SI card that is fastened around the wrist; this is then ‘dibbed’ into an electronic box at the start, finish and at each control point. Just like orienteering. There’s also a free breakfast but regretfully it’s not a full English but there’s cereal, porridge, toast and hot drinks.

At the start I’m just about to roll out with a large group of other cyclists when I see L and the ‘boys’, so I go over and say hi before I start. The group promptly rolls off without me. Damn but you have to say a tearful farewell to your loved ones just in case you end up going head first down a Yorkshire crevasse or whatever they have up here. Anyhow, another guy and I decide to give chase. He goes off like a rocket, I don’t. I end up a bit isolated and because the signposting wasn’t too hot, I promptly get lost. Damn and I was hoping for a silver award too.

Once back on track, I waited for another group and rode with them for a while but once we hit the hills, I had plenty of company, there were bodies everywhere. People who were obviously regretting not saying a proper goodbye to their collies. As I thread my way across the battlefield, I also notice that I wasn’t the only one getting lost. There were signs and a lot of chalking on the road but they were easy to miss. All of which caused an awful lot of scratching of heads. I discovered one old chap climbing back up a hill having missed an un-signposted sharp right on a hidden bend and he’d descended down the other side before realising he had gone wrong. There were enough hills already without having to do extra ones.

Luckily, he saved me the same fate. True, there was a sign, half way round the corner, only useful if you have eyes in the back of your head. I would have stopped to thank him but I had just dropped almost the entire Harrogate cycling club on the climb, in revenge for them all passing me on the flat and they (I assume) were now all out to get me, so I needed to get a head start before they all out descended me on the other side of the hill. I do hills rather well but everybody else seems a lot quicker on the flats and the descents.

There were a lot of hills, as expected, and you start to get blasé about them after a while. Oh, he’s another hill you think and just get on with it. I was glad I had my new bike, which rode very well, but there were plenty of people on dead basic bikes. I even passed a tandem going up one of the hills, slowly. That looked hard work. I’m sure that couple won’t be speaking to each other tonight.

The feed station at Grassington eventually arrived about two hours in at 47km, so over half way. I take on lots of refreshment, drink, flapjacks, tracker bars, gels. It was well stocked. Although the drink was SIS stuff which tastes a bit like toilet cleaner and isn’t anywhere near as nice as my High Five.

I take a ten minute break or something like that, I wasn’t counting but it was putting my silver in jeopardy for which I had to break three hours forty-two minutes. Gold was out of my league at three hours twelve minutes, at least this year. Although I did 40km at the Ashbourne Duathlon, which is hilly and half this distance in one hour twenty-five minutes and that was after a 12km run. So in theory a gold award is possible, one day.

As I roll out in a group and we come to the point where the three routes divide, they all go off on the longer routes leaving me looking a bit lonesome as I alone head down the wimps route. Once again I don’t have anyone to offer me any useful advice, such as how to properly sneer at the people on the aluminium bikes.

Most of the remaining distance is fairly easy going, undulating but not too demanding, even on tired legs until we turn off the main road, away from the comforting signs telling us how close we are to lovely Ilkley with its finish line. That is if we took the direct route, instead we head up, and I mean up, to somewhere called Langbar. I will never forget Langbar. It was evil personified, perhaps not as hard as what came before but I had two relatively fresh legs then. Halfway up this monster, my legs shouted up at me, something along the lines of, ‘FFS we are not going up that’. So I stopped for a few seconds to talk them round. There was no way I was walking and pushing my bike as some people were doing but I allowed them a brief stop to calm down. Now legs, are you with me? They were, at least temporarily. We had another brief stop just before the top and then we crawled over the summit to be met by two marshals with control boxes for you to dib into. Sneaky, this checkpoint was to make sure you didn’t follow those comforting signs and take the shortcut down the main road.

Finally I arrive back in Ilkley in one piece and my time is three hours forty-one, under the time limit for silver by, ooh nearly a minute. Cut that a bit fine but never mind. Awesome toast as Daughter would say.

There’s a free pasta meal and plenty of hot tea and coffee but oddly not really any thirst quenching drinks. In fact the entire area seems to all out of appropriate thirst quenching drinks and I end up in a pub on the outskirts of Leeds, supping a bloody Kronenburg, to go with my Sunday lunch.

This event was possibly the hardness thing I’ve ever done. It was also excellent. Now, what next?