MUCKERS ‘TOP ROUTES’ SUNDAY RACE. 01/10/23
ROUVY Route Used: Tour of Provence | France | 54.84 miles | 3868 ft climbing
29 Registered | 13 Finishers (1 disqualified for no heart rate data) | 5 DNF | 11 DNS |
As we await patiently for new challenges still to appear on ROUVY, we set out on another one of our ‘top routes’ and as its a Sunday, we use a long and hard favorite.
18 on the start line for a brute of a route, we all got going at 8am(UK) Well, 17 of us did as one rider didn’t seem to get going at all. Maybe they clicked on by accident….maybe they saw the route profile in front of them and decided to go back to bed!? who knows.
Looks Like the Finns were not for going back to bed though! “Kaihu” absolutely smashed this this route with a time just over 2 hours and 15 minutes and over 5 minutes in front of the strong British rider “MARK_J” with another Finish rider “jyrkip” rounding out the last position on the podium!
4th comes “albepigo” who finishes under 10 minutes behind the winner. New regular racer “Grochang” claims a nice 5th place but only 30 seconds in front of returning “PatrykS_gdynia_PL” who claims 6th in his return to the muckers races after being out there in the real world for a while now!
“El_Tractor” gets 7th for Belgium then a bit of a gap to the ever-strong “MatthiasHeil” in 8th. “Slyfly” gets a bump up to 9th and the surprise last mention on this muckers worlldwide report goes to “Andy_UP” who not only gets 10th place, he even beat his 3 hour target!
Well done to the top 10! remember, we do have a T-Shirt in various languages celebrating this achievement and please let us know if your language isn’t featured as we reached out to as many Muckers as possible to get as many different languages printed, but we don’t cover all nationalities. Yet 🤞
Please also have a look around the site for blogs on report rules, product reviews, team bios etc etc. and please leave a comment if you can. (please, please please include your rider name if its nothing like your details you pop in to leave the comment)
| # | Cat. | User | Age | Team | Racetime | GAP | AV.MPH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Men |  Kaihu | 50-59 | Team Ponsse | 2:15:54.1 | 24.21 | |
| 2 | Men |  MARK_J | 40-49 | Wrexham Roads Club | 2:21:45.7 | 0:05:51.5 | 23.21 |
| 3 | Men | jyrkip | 40-49 | 2:23:43.2 | 0:07:49.7 | 22.89 | |
| 4 | Men |  albepigo | 40-49 | 2:25:06.2 | 0:09:12.7 | 22.67 | |
| 5 | Men |  Grochang | 40-49 | BareCykling.dk | 2:29:44.4 | 0:13:50.2 | 21.97 |
| 6 | Men |  PatrykS_Gdynia_PL | 50-59 | Dream Tri Team | 2:30:14.7 | 0:14:20.6 | 21.9 |
| 7 | Men |  El_Tractor | 40-49 | 2:37:19.1 | 0:21:25.8 | 20.91 | |
| 8 | Men |  MatthiasHeil | 50-59 | www.matthias-heil.co.uk/rvy_racing | 2:46:08.3 | 0:30:14.1 | 19.8 |
| DSQ | Men | nocccon | 50-59 | 2:47:12.3 | 0:31:18.2 | 19.68 | |
| 9 | Men |  Slyfly | 50-59 | 2:50:46.7 | 0:34:52.6 | 19.27 | |
| 10 | Men | Andy_UP | 40-49 | Muckers Worldwide | 2:57:23.4 | 0:41:29.3 | 18.55 |
| 11 | Men | niftynelly | 60+ | 3:00:28.8 | 0:44:34.7 | 18.23 | |
| 12 | Men | Mucker1974 | 40-49 | Muckers Worldwide | 3:07:34.7 | 0:51:40.6 | 17.54 |
| dnf | Men | DolphWader | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | dnf | – | |
| dnf | Men |  PFHM | 40-49 | dnf | – | ||
| dnf | Men |  kyokucyo | 40-49 | NFC | dnf | – | |
| dnf | Men | ale.mine | 40-49 | Nessuno | dnf | – | |
| dnf | Men |  Peio47 | 40-49 | SUA cyclisme | dnf | – |
A night at my neighbors drinking beer and catching up was probably not the best preparation for this race, but as i tore myself away at 11:15pm just as it was getting into full swing, I felt quite proud of myself! Fast forward to 5 miles left on this route and I am dead last and struggling to keep up any kind of decent pace and I definitely started to wonder why I didn’t hang around for shots after all ! 😂
This was a tough race. Started off quite nice and in a group of 6 riders and although the pace was a little above the zone I wanted to be in, it was worth it for the draft savings. But as we hit the first proper hill, I was dropped and even when I went zone 7hr to close back up, the next little kicker hill was just too much so had to drop back and try and recover. spent the rest of the race just riding solo and picking off the odd rider who quitted, but no real racing. I did start to catch up to niftynelly and was hoping we could help each other to the finish, but every time I got a few hundred feet behind, they’d put the hammer down and pull away again. That was such a shame as we could have worked together to get this finished. the last climb totally killed me off and it was all i could do to get to the finish line, spinning like mad just to keep some kind of momentum going as i had no strength left at all. Shots anyone??
Thank you Neil, a great route and a suitable challenge. I wanted a hard performance today and I did well. It’s a shame that I can’t compete on weekdays, but on weekends whenever possible, great competitions.
hi, thank you so much for commenting. it really is a shame you can’t get on the week days ones as well as you’d have such a good time up there with the other strong riders!! take care!
One word, brutal! But satisfied with the result
2 words. Well Done!
the race profile created in my mind the illusion of the fight on the main hills but the fast start of the race turned me to real life. some gaps in the flat first part dropped me being unable to close the gap. hard race despite a normal elevation. thank you
great riding! thanks for taking the time to comment.
Well I was not even ready to race, but as a Muckers with time on your hand – why not.
Started really good with a group but due to painfull achillies I droped out of the group and did my own ride. After 30 km I was done since I rode on completely empty stomach (just to try and see how it would lead me)
Neil texted me twice when I was about to quite (I just had to push the button on the controller) there was this and this guy dropped out and I had to pass him. 57 km and I was so done. I took me many hours to recover from that ride but I’ll be ready again on Thuesday race night
I was just trying to push you on a little and give you little goals mucker…… it was revenge for telling me not to slow down and wait for you when i actually wasn’t 😂😂. good effort anyway!
As a triathlete these races are my favourites for training my endurance capacity, so much applies for these long races😊
My strategy for today was simple, stay with the front group as long as possible. But too early in the race, I didn’t notice a small gap between the rider just in front of me and the leading group. I tried to fight back after some minutes but realised it would make me too fatigued to keep up with these guys if I did catch up with them.
Soon after I caught up with El Tractor but had to leave him behind although he did make it difficult to leave my rear wheel – well fought El Tractor🚵♂️
Short after PatrykS caught up with me and we did a great teamwork together🚴🏼♂️🚴🏼♂️👍 Thanks PatrykS for waiting on me when I got N/A – I owe you one😉 Looking forward to next Sunday race.
Thanks for the detailed comment Mads, really appreciate it! we have some different riders on Sundays compared to the week nights so its good to compare against them all over the week. Patryk is a strong rider and has only just started back on the online stuff but he was a constant threat to the top 3 over the past winter and is a really good rider! Thanks again and really appreciate how you are getting involved and supporting muckersworldwide!
Mads (Grochang? I presume reading your comment), I wanted to work together, especially on the flats to save energy… but is was clear you only wanted to drop me :D. Strong effort
I was a bit behind on schedule in my routine, and the download went really slow (and it was a big download) so I waited until 15sec before start to connect. Then I got an error, so had to reconnect. Apparently while I was connecting the first time and I was spinning the legs, he did registered it and so I was already a bit up the road when I reconnected. Still I had a gap of 350m to close to a nice looking group. Lucky me it was a hard and long route so they didn’t went to hard, but it was an effort I rather did not have to make.
So on the first real hill the racing started. I tried to stay calm, I know this route is too long and too hard for me. Still I ended up following the strongest rider of the group I was in. It would have been smarter to follow Slyfly and work together with him, instead of trying to hold on for too long on nocccon. Ended up too tired to follow Slyfly when he passed me. A lesson re-learned for the 200th time. Still happy getting under 3h, and a top 10 mention!