Bourne Wheelers is a local cycling group, based in Bourne, South Kesteven. Their members compete in time trials, road races, mountain biking, cyclocross, track, grass track and sportive. They also run regular social rides throughout the year, as well as guided rides for those who haven’t cycled for some time.
In this blog, group member Stuart Handley writes about the group’s recent Longest Day charity ride.
“The Longest Day ride went ahead on the 1st of July. The day consists of two distances, a long day out with a 150 mile ride and slower group 100 mile ride. The day is basically four club rides in a day with coffee, cake and lunch stops! This annual event is a charity ride in aid of cancer research -this year we raised a total of £625 for Prostate Cancer research.
The camaraderie on the ride is fantastic, enabling everyone to get around the routes and achieve an objective. Each rider can do as much of the day as they want to or have time for.
The numbers of riders was down on last year, but we had a couple of riders join us from the TCOS club in Stamford and riders from Spalding CC. It was good to see some new faces and see the effort that each and everyone put into the day.
With a set off time of 8 o’clock it was a steady start to get the legs warmed up. The weather was perfect, except for the wind which was quite strong and a short period of drizzle near Spalding for the longer loop riders. Fortunately there were no punctures on the longer routes this year, however, the 100 mile group had two on the first loop. Last year we virtually ran out of tubes due to the very wet conditions. After each loop it was back to base for coffee and cake to fuel up for the next segment.
This year the longer route was quicker than previous years by 25 minutes in 8 hours
and 26 minutes of moving time. By the end of the day 5 riders had completed 150 miles and 6 riders had completed 100 miles.”
Find out more about Bourne Wheelers Cycling Club and their rides on their website or facebook page.