Grizedale Challenge
Rode (half of) the Grizedale Challenge yesterday, what a nice and chilled event, over 500 folks lined up at the start for the rider briefing, which was thankfully brief !.The fast boys at the front and the rest of the pack behind meant that the start was the usual chaos of people yoyoing past each other until they realised that the first climb was going to be a long one and most settled into their natural pace, mine was slow and steady until the first crash, not sure what happened but from the back it was quite spectacular in a Tour de France style watching people plow into the melee, hopefully the poor guy on the deck was okay.
My race progressed steadily until I managed to crash into the guy who had just passed me on the descent and immediately fell off in front of me, standing up and slipping on a moss covered rock stretched some tendons in my ankle and knee and I knew that my race was done (bearing in mind the 3 peaks next weekend) so I limped back to race HQ to watch the leaders coming in not long after I arrived. It never ceases to amaze me how fast the fast boys really are, I think that the fisrt rider back was around the 2 and half hour mark, although I didnt take too much notice as I was busy queing for a sausage and marmalade butty.
4 and 5 hours after the start gun people were still coming home, all smiling, quite a lot were bloody ! and all happy to see both the finish line and the red bull girls, what was nice to see was that a lot of people hung around at the finish to cheer and clap everyone home.
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A nice day out and a great event, I’ll be signing up for next year and will finish the whole course.