Maybe we just weren't elitist enough for the ride?

[smutchin]

Maybe I am just more independent

I did a 600km ride in Belgium this year, using a route I devised myself, on roads I've never ridden before, so I doubt a lack of independence is anything to do with why I like riding organised events.

Somehow I manage to find room in my life for many different kinds of cycling and see the merits in all of them.

 

[GilesM]

You're not paying to ride on public roads, you're paying for the support and organisation, and in some instances for the closure of those roads so you can enjoy riding on them without motor traffic for company.

'Being told where to go' is a bizarre way of looking at it too - the main purpose of entering any organised cycling event for me is the pleasure of riding a route that someone else has gone to the trouble of devising, usually in an area where I don't normally ride so wouldn't have the knowledge or experience to come up with a decent route myself.

I don't

Audaxes and sportives tend to provide a bit of focus, where you can arrange too meet up with people, where the planning has been done for you, where maybe some food is provided along the way, and where you get a prize at the end - be it a bit of cardboard with AUK on it or a box of "free" gels and a plastic medal.

So it's paying to ride on a public road where somebody else has planned the route, to me the route planning is as much fun as the ride, and the option of an ever changing route is always good. Sportives and audaxes get people out on their bikes, which is cool, but it really is difficult to see what you get for your money.

 

[smutchin]

So it's paying to ride on a public road...

No, it isn't. HTH.

 

[Andrew_P]

Well it's nice to have a choice. 90% of my riding is solo and self planned, but I like to do the odd audax to mix things up or a sportive to meet up with friends and so on, even if I am "paying to ride on public roads". As to "outright money making" I don't have a problem with it. I even do it myself.

Hell, even riding the Friday Night Ride to the Coast with the Fridays means paying to ride on public roads. A whole £2 per annum. Shameless money-makers that they are.

Not really sure why you are taking such umbrage as you keep pointing out the exact reasons I do not fancy a Sportive, I would say Fridays is more akin to a group ride almost deliberately not like a sportive all be it I have never been on Fridays but its how it looks. £2 kind of makes that point as well. The Wiggle Downs for a 17 year old who only fancies doing it with me and only wants the short course is £52! Not sure apart from a time chip and medal what else you get at the Feed station.

 

[Ajax Bay]

sportives and audaxes get people out on their bikes, which is cool, but it really is difficult to see what you get for your money.

Giles and @Andrew_P - as far as sportives are concerned, I absolutely agree with you - poor value for money and rarely worth doing.
However, like you and others who've posted, most of my riding is alone, on a self planned route. And believe me, I thoroughly enjoy the route planning aspects (hangover from orienteering inclinations). I assume you have enjoyed planning (your own route) and riding an end-to-end for example - I have.
Audaxes, though - as others have suggested above, it is a nice change to ride with others on a route that an organiser has taken trouble to design (probably with local knowledge and certainly with multiple recces). The cost of entering an audax is invariably low - and actually the act of entering generates a commitment: as opposed to 'I'll see what the weather's like and how I feel' approach. As an illustration, the Bryan Chapman Memorial 600 audax this year cost £57 to enter (iirc). Light breakfast at the start, three course meals (if you wanted) at the 200km point, the 300km point, the 375km point eat before sleep(optional sleep stop), the 375km point (breakfast), the 440km point (second breakfast/lunch) and either bunk or airbeds at the overnight (optional) stop (or at the 440km control). Food at the finish.
Good value? Well, I thought so. And the opportunity to ride with a few others, different riders for different sections but about half the distance alone (so a good balance for me YMMV). Would I have ridden the length of Wales and back that (or another) weekend if there was not an organised audax? Probably not. Was it fun? Most of the time: riding into drizzle, a headwind at dusk crossing Snowdonia was slightly Type 2, but buoyed by the 320km already ridden in good conditions. Was it a challenge? Certainly.

 

[mjr]

This is where I am stuck. A bunch of strangers who are more serious about cycling and much faster didn't hand around to wait for you?

I interpreted that as something which could have rescued the ride, rather than necessarily a flaw itself. It also suggests that making @Stevec047 and friend start in the last group wasn't any sort of attempt at grouping similar-speed riders together - possibly even the opposite, putting them in with a load of racing snakes on glam bikes to get them dropped near-immediately and isolated.

I wonder whether the organiser did indeed "make sure [they] got to the rest stop" and whether there was any attempt to find out what happened to the lost entrants. I'd expect a sportive not to abandon riders unless the riders abandon the sportive or it's been explicitly described as a no-prisoners or race-the-broom type event.

 

[Andrew_P]

I would pay to ride closed road event

Well, don't do one then.
Me, I don't much like raw tomatoes. So I don't eat them.

Trying to think of a way to respond including your analogy, struggling to be honest. If Tomatoes were free it would be easy :-)

 

[smutchin]

it is a nice change to ride with others on a route that an organiser has taken trouble to design (probably with local knowledge and certainly with multiple recces)

Indeed - no amount of poring over maps can replace local knowledge, and if you design your own routes, you're always taking a chance that you'll miss the best roads in an unfamiliar area.

Of course, you don't have to pay to enter organised events to take advantage of local knowledge, since Strava Heat Maps pretty much does the job for you, and people are often happy to share their routes for free, but that's not really route planning, so presumably if you enjoy route planning that much, you'll eschew such resources and wing it.

When you pay to enter a sportive or audax, you're paying for the whole package, and whether or not that package constitutes value for money is entirely up to you - I really couldn't care less if anyone thinks £52 to ride a Wiggle sportive is a rip-off. But what does irritate me is this oft-repeated trope that sportives are "paying to ride on public roads" which is just nonsense - as is much of the other guff that's regularly spouted in threads like this.

 

[mjr]

Indeed - no amount of poring over maps can replace local knowledge, and if you design your own routes, you're always taking a chance that you'll miss the best roads in an unfamiliar area.

Or worse. I can't be the only person to have ended up facing the wrong way on an A road, can I?

More usually, I sometimes end up on small roads with surprisingly much or surprisingly aggressive motor traffic. Less so since http://cycle.travel/map (which factors traffic levels into its calculations) but it still happens sometimes.

When you pay to enter a sportive or audax, you're paying for the whole package, and whether or not that package constitutes value for money is entirely up to you - I really couldn't care less if anyone thinks £52 to ride a Wiggle sportive is a rip-off. But what does irritate me is this oft-repeated trope that sportives are "paying to ride on public roads" which is just nonsense - as is much of the other guff that's regularly spouted in threads like this.

But to be fair, I've done at least one sportive where I'm not convinced the route planner had any more idea than I did (some of the roads used would have been very unpleasant if I hadn't been in a large group at that point) and the food and drink stations were understocked with I suspect whatever they could pick up cheap. If it's all open roads, you're paying for the route and support and finish, but then many sportives still seem a rip-off IMO - I think the OP should have named the club and event to warn others off, instead of suggesting they're all that bad, though.

 

[GilesM]

Giles and @Andrew_P - as far as sportives are concerned, I absolutely agree with you - poor value for money and rarely worth doing.
However, like you and others who've posted, most of my riding is alone, on a self planned route. And believe me, I thoroughly enjoy the route planning aspects (hangover from orienteering inclinations). I assume you have enjoyed planning (your own route) and riding an end-to-end for example - I have.
Audaxes, though - as others have suggested above, it is a nice change to ride with others on a route that an organiser has taken trouble to design (probably with local knowledge and certainly with multiple recces). The cost of entering an audax is invariably low - and actually the act of entering generates a commitment: as opposed to 'I'll see what the weather's like and how I feel' approach. As an illustration, the Bryan Chapman Memorial 600 audax this year cost £57 to enter (iirc). Light breakfast at the start, three course meals (if you wanted) at the 200km point, the 300km point, the 375km point eat before sleep(optional sleep stop), the 375km point (breakfast), the 440km point (second breakfast/lunch) and either bunk or airbeds at the overnight (optional) stop (or at the 440km control). Food at the finish.
Good value? Well, I thought so. And the opportunity to ride with a few others, different riders for different sections but about half the distance alone (so a good balance for me YMMV). Would I have ridden the length of Wales and back that (or another) weekend if there was not an organised audax? Probably not. Was it fun? Most of the time: riding into drizzle, a headwind at dusk crossing Snowdonia was slightly Type 2, but buoyed by the 320km already ridden in good conditions. Was it a challenge? Certainly.

I understand that Audaxes are very different and much better value for money than most Sportives, I have ridden a couple of Audaxes and quite enjoyed them, that was a long time ago and before anybody had ever thought about Sportives in the UK, although the mad long ones similar to the one you've referred to above have never excited me, but cool for those that enjoy them. These days I usually ride alone, with my better half, or in a small group, I'll probably join a club again later this year, the first one since I stopped racing in 1988, I may try another Audax, or even a Sportive, but if I do, I am sure at some point I will think, I could do this for free, and without a load of people on bikes around, who cannot ride bikes.

 

[GilesM]

When you pay to enter a sportive or audax, you're paying for the whole package, and whether or not that package constitutes value for money is entirely up to you - I really couldn't care less if anyone thinks £52 to ride a Wiggle sportive is a rip-off. But what does irritate me is this oft-repeated trope that sportives are "paying to ride on public roads" which is just nonsense - as is much of the other guff that's regularly spouted in threads like this.

The amount of money is not the point, and as long as people who enter are happy, then nobody should care, but whatever way you try to look at it, if it's not on closed roads, you are paying to ride on a public road, the main purpose of the Sportive must be the bike ride, which is on a public road, and you are paying for it.

 

[smutchin]

The amount of money is not the point, and as long as people who enter are happy, then nobody should care, but whatever way you try to look at it, if it's not on closed roads, you are paying to ride on a public road, the main purpose of the Sportive must be the bike ride, which is on a public road, and you are paying for it.

I've just consulted the spreadsheet for the event I ran earlier this month. Nope... however hard I look, I just can't see any entry that relates to a payment for riding on public roads.

I could give you fairly precise details of exactly what the entry fee did cover, but since the route was freely available online to download and I had no way of preventing anyone from riding it, there's absolutely no way you can claim that riders were paying to ride on public roads.

 

[GilesM]

I've just consulted the spreadsheet for the event I ran last month. Nope... however hard I look, I just can't see any entry that relates to a payment for riding on public roads.

Indeed, that's because you don't have to pay to ride a bike on the public roads, although if I did a sportive, and was the sort of person who did spreadsheets for their own cash, I would have to fill it in as £52 for bike ride on public roads.

 

[smutchin]

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Indeed, that's because you don't have to pay to ride a bike on the public roads, although if I did a sportive, and was the sort of person who did spreadsheets for their own cash, I would have to fill it in as £52 for bike ride on public roads.

Just turn up and ride. No need to enter.