Tour of Berkshire – Day Two

Day two of the Tour of Berkshire and another hot start to the day with the weather forecast to reach 28 degrees.

 

 Photo1

After a short ride into Wokingham from our HQ in Maidenhead the cycling team arrived in time to help set up the urban limits stand in Wokingham market square with our colleagues.  After speaking to some member of the public and checking out the other stands on show it was time to start our first led ride of the day.

Ride 1

The first ride of the day was a fairly flat 10 mile course. A mixture of novice and experienced riders set off from Wokingham town hall at 11am on a circuit that headed north along The Straight Mile before heading back along the A321 back in to Wokingham. It was another warm summer’s day so the pace was steady and plenty of water was taken on board by all.

Ride 1 Photo 2

Ride 2

Today’s afternoon ride set out at 1pm for 18 miles in the sunshine. The group was the largest so far on the tour with 18 riders, with a good mixture of road, mountain and hybrid bikes. The route headed out to Aborfield Cross and then down to Bramshill, before heading to Nine Mile Ride on the way back to Wokingham. The route was a combination of busier roads and quiet country lanes, including a lovely track through a wooded area (providing much appreciated shade in the heat!) There was also a little bridge over a ford for pedestrian and cycle access, although some of the riders were nearly tempted to take a dip to cool down!

Ride 2

Several of the riders are involved in Breeze rides for women, where Breeze champions organise fun, social, local bike rides for women. These rides have increased the confidence of many local women, who are now keen to take on longer, more challenging routes such as Ride 2.

WattBike Challenge

WattBike

Today we had 12 people take part in our Wattbike Challenge in Wokingham. The challenge is to ride as hard as possible for 30 seconds to see what the average power output the rider can produce and from experience, the last 5 seconds is the hardest followed by jelly-like legs when dismounting the bike! Top of the Leaderboard for today was Nick Settle with 788 Watts.

Extreme display team

Extreme 2

We had a real treat on day two of the Urban limits Tour of Berkshire. The Extreme Mountain Bike display team. Danny and Ash showed why they are the premier cycle trails display team. Between them they put on three near death defining displays of trials riding. The jumps, bike handling and the funny and informative verbal delivery kept the crowd of adults and kids entertained. The quality of display would be something that would have been worth paying money for. We have to thank Wokingham council for this welcome addition to the Tour of Berkshire.

TOB Team

We’d also like to thank the Doctor bike who attended the festival today, who was actually the busiest stand of them all. People brought their bikes, and he offered a full service and maintenance of them, which as we all know is an extremely important thing to do. Even two of our core team were caught out, as rather severe failures of their bikes were diagnosed, thus highlighting how important it is to keep your bike in full working order.

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