Tour of Berkshire – Day Three

The third day involved ringing some changes, but one thing that did not change was the great weather which continued to provide a great backdrop to the tour as we hit the streets of Slough.

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Today the tour team were joined by the guys from RollaPaluza, LiftShare, Walking Doctors and the team from Slough Borough Council; Danny & Ashley Butler from the Extreme Mountain Bike Team were also with us again.

Today had a degree of novelty as a new breed of bikes made their way into to Slough, the team all desperately keen to have a play on a new set of wheels.

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The Rides

The first ride of the day was prominent for the way in which it featured a range of different machines including a recumbent bike ridden by a local resident and some of Slough’s new cycle hire bikes including one ridden by Councillor Sohail Munawar.

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The looks of delight on the faces of the riders that went off when they returned clearly demonstrating that this ride, which took in many of the great paths around Eton Dorney lakes had been really worthwhile.

The afternoon ride, which took in some of the fantastic routes through Windsor Great Park was also really well received by cyclists who were pushing themselves in a variety of ways. The ride was further than most had previously managed and also provided an introduction to group riding for all.

Just to show the versatility of the team though, one of the highlights of the afternoon was when we were passing a lady clearly struggling with a mechanical failure on her bike. A couple of minutes later she was off and running again with a temporary fix an advice on where to go for the long term solution she needed.

Watt Bike

With the weather touching a scorching 30 degrees today, the people of Slough were still remarkably keen to have a go on our Watt Bike challenge. We had a huge number of people take part today, and the top of the board was utterly annihilated by Chris at 787 Watts. Only a single watt off the very top score of 788 set yesterday by one of our team.
Chris works at LA Fitness and has recently started on spinning classes, as well as only recently giving up smoking. He made sure he returned later in the day to make sure he had kept his place at the top of the board. For a performance that high, in temperatures like we experienced, we were all really impressed.

A special mention also goes out to Jake, who was only 11, but rode the same bike as one of our tour team members, he managed to top a higher score on the Watt Bike than a number of our adult participants.

Extreme Mountain Bike Show

Danny and Ash Butler gave another awesome performance today of their extreme mountain bike show, despite signs of the heat getting to them. They’re both incredibly talented with a huge number of championship medals between them at both a national and international level.

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They drew in a great crowd for each of their three shows throughout the day. Danny even managed to have a go on the one of the Slough hire bikes that were brought to the festival. Although they’re much heavier than the trials bikes that they’re used to, Danny still managed to make it work for him.

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Rollapaluza

Rollapaluza were a massive hit the last time we were in slough. Unlike our watt bike challenge, theirs sets two cyclists head to head to see who can cycle 500m in the quickest time. One on the red bike, and one on the blue, they’re both set up on a rolling road with no resistance, Meaning that you can spin at an incredible speed. So unlike ours which is all about power, theirs is about pure speed.
Due to the sheer heat, the draw wasn’t as vast today but those who did take part scored some incredible times. As a guide anything under 25 seconds is good, and the clear winner of today was Ash from the extreme mountain bike show team who did it in little over 23 seconds, so points to him.