Ferries and Fun

I’m a bit late doing this sorry but I’m sure you’ll forgive me given the long day I had yesterday.  I’m not complaining though as I had a lot of fun yesterday.  The Wight Ferry Sportive as it is known was one of the first things to get the challenge for this rolling.  I stumbled upon it by mistake a while back and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to give it a go.  The organisers sold it as being an adventure rather than a bike ride and with 2 ferry crossing involved, it certainly was!

Before I took to the start line though I had a bit of a challenge on my hands to get there.  You might have seen in my last post the picture of my race number burnt on my arm.  What I didn’t realise as the time and what I didn’t find out until Monday evening was just how badly burnt my shoulders were, to the point where they had actually blistered.  Now, I’m not looking for sympathy because it was my own stupid fault that I burnt in the first place.  As you can imagine though it was extremely painful but thankfully after lots of after sun, sudocrem and a fair slice of luck my shoulders were, just about, recovered enough for me to start.

The sportive itself was a lot of fun.  It started with a mad dash to the ferry port to make the first crossing of the day.  I felt like I was in a proper bike race as we all hurtled along at 7 in the morning!  Thankfully I managed to make it and knew this would give me the time I needed to get around the Isle of Wight without any fear of missing cut off times which is what happened back at the Wye Valley ride.  On the Isle of Wight the roads were up and down but nothing too severe and even the two big hills of the day just before we got back to the ferry port weren’t anything I wouldn’t be happy to tackle again.  To be honest, the hardest part was getting back on the bike after ferry crossing back to the mainland because in the hour or so that I was off the bike I’d cooled down and my legs had stiffened up so getting them working again was a bit of a task but I got there after a couple of miles.

Overall the whole day really was good and has definitely been the best of the three sportives that I’ve done so far this year.  I know the weather was a factor in this because riding the bike is defiantly easier when the sun is shining!  I would happily do it again though and if next week’s ride in Tenby is half as fun, I’ll be very happy!  Hopefully they’ll be giving out ice creams at the finish as well like they did yesterday.  You can see form the photo that mine definitely put a smile on my face!