Rouvy route used: San Bartolome de Tirajana | Gran Canaria | 25.69 miles | 2824 ft of climbing

Route 4 from the Ready for SEASON??? | MEDIUM challenge on Rouvy that ends in 7 days

28 registered | 11 finishers | 1 dsq | 16 dns

Mothers day in the UK meant the start time for this couldn’t be the usual Morning time for my Sunday ride and I’m guessing this is why we had quite a lot signed up for it but 16 no shows. People probably registered when I sent the invites out weeks ago and possible didn’t see the odd start time. Anyway, 11/12 of us were on the start line for this, So all but 1 had a chance of top 10!

So off we go into a short-ish climb first and the pack is quite nicely bunched on what turned out to be quite a stunning route. You basically do the short climb first, then a nice downhill into the monster climb! by the time you’ve done that, you’ve done just under half distance but you’ve also done 2500 ft of the climb and now only have 260 ft to climb in the last 13 miles. A definite route of 2 halves!

The top 3 in this race came over the line within 8 seconds of each other! after 1 hour and 21 minutes of riding, it came down to a race over the line! The American “Coffeehi” claimed the gold, “Gael64990” the silver and “Loki1972” the bronze then a 3 minute gap to “audax” in 4th who was closely followed in by Muckers Worldwide rider “Shrek-1970-Challenger” for a very strong 5th. Slightly colder weather out in Florida must have helped the ogre stay cool for this race!

Only around 30 seconds later came team mate “Chak” in 6th, just over 4 minutes behind the winner. Fellow Canadian rider “RoyZ” in 7th came next, though he was about 8 minutes down to the road from Chak, and a few minutes up the road from “petercook67” who finished 8th.

9th came “OliveH” who was swapping places with Peter all the way along this route but eventually beaten, then finally “Mucker1974” came over in 10th, a good 22 minutes behind the winners time, and just in front of “BeeDee” who kept the pressure on and finished under a minute behind Mucker.

Rouvy seem to take an age to classify the results so the chart below doesn’t have all the usual information on it that it will have eventually, but I wanted to get the race report done tonight while i had the chance rather than the usual next day. Well done to everyone who joined the race, I hope you enjoyed it and please let us know in the comments how it was for you, its always great to read your take on the race, and I’d love to know what the story was with the top 3 as well.

cheers.