When I bought my Giant Defy Advance all carbon sportive bike in March 2013, just over four years ago, I had no idea how little I would use it. For most of that year I was doing fairly short rides on my steel hybrid to get fit and the first sportive I entered was the Lincolnshire Arrow in May 2014. This didn’t happen as I was unexpectedly away and the following April, 2015, I had the mountain bike accident that required most of the summer to recover. So the first sportive I managed to do was April 2016, the Tadcaster event I reported on here, three years after buying the bike. As a result of my stay in hospital with a ruptured kidney I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had surgery in August 2016 which kept me off my bike for most of the rest of the year but I did manage to ride the 2017 Tadcaster sportive earlier this month. But as the route recorded below, I only did 22 miles.

I played in a racketball tournament the day before and had a fairly heavy evening so got up late on the Sunday morning and had to rush. I got to Tadcaster in time to sign on and get through the starting gate before it closed but I was on my own. The route for the 60k event, which I was doing, was common to both events, the 60k and the 100k. Those doing the longer event repeated the first 3 miles or so of the 60k route and then went off on another 40 k hilly loop to the north east of Leeds. The route was well signed but unfortunately I missed the right turn in Boston Spa for the initial 60k loop and when I picked up the next sign I was unknowingly on the 40k hilly finishing loop for the100k event. As soon as I got into the hills near Collingham I knew I’d gone wrong but didn’t feel I had the fitness to turn back. I carried on, walking on a couple of the steeper hills and eventually got back to Tadcaster when I recorded a time of 1 hour 51 minutes, an average speed of 12 mph which, in the circumstances, was quite creditable. But it was a lonely ride with none of the group riding I’d bee looking forward to, or being able to shelter in the wheels like I had last year. On the plus side it was lovely countryside, the East Leeds villages are very pretty, and it was a sunny and fairly windless day.

I shall do more sportives and also look out for suitable audax and reliability trial events. I’ve got a few days cycling with my friend Mike in Scotland in June and France again in July. There is also talk of doing the Sustrans route along the coast from Dover to Brighton. We shall see.