Whether you're aiming for performance or just a great day on the bike, these tricks and techniques will help
Riding your first sportive or organised cycling event this year? Here are some top tips from the road.cc team to help you get through your first sportive smoothly and ensure you enjoy the ride.
Pace yourself
Don’t go off too fast at the start. It's very easy to get excited and set off too fast, we know we've been there and done it ourselves. Instead set yourself a realistic speed goal and stick to it, and try and find other people riding at a similar pace and ride with them.
This is especially important if it’s your first sportive. It’s better to finish with a smile on your face and feel you could have ridden faster, than push too hard and struggle to get round. Once you’ve successfully completed your first event you can start entering more and increasing your pace as your confidence and fitness improves.
Be prepared
This is the UK and, as if you need reminding, the weather and road conditions can be very unpredictable. Sportives usually start early in the morning so it can be a chilly few miles with cold legs so ensure you wrap up to stay warm at the beginning of the ride. It’s a sensible idea to wear clothing that allows you to adapt to changeable weather conditions, and packing a lightweight gilet or waterproof jacket might be a smart option if the forecast isn’t looking great. Hilly sportives can be difficult to dress for; you get hot on the way up, and cold on the way down, so an extra layer you can easily remove as needed might work for you.
As well as clothing, it pays to be mechanically prepared as well. While some sportives do offer mechanical assistance, it’s best to be prepared and able to carry out the basic repair jobs yourself. So carry at least two spare tubes, tyre levers if you need them and some repair patches, and a mini pump. Most of those bits will fit inside a small saddle pack and the pump can go in a jersey pocket or be attached to the frame with a bracket. A decent multitool with a chain tool is an essential as well.
Also, consider carrying some cash in case you need to buy some emergency supplies and have the phone number of the emergency contact stored on your mobile phone.
Eat and drink often
Most sportives have regular food and drink stops but it’s important to be prepared and take two full bottles of water or energy drink and put some food in your pockets, so you can ensure you keep your energy levels topped up during the ride.
Keep eating, you can easily burn thousands of calories riding a long sportive. The key is to eat little and often, you want to be drinking or eating something every 15 minutes, don’t wait until you’re hungry or thirsty as it’ll be too late then. If you’re not confident about eating while riding, there's nothing wrong with stopping, just pick the right moment. The top of the climb before a descent is preferable to scoffing some food at the foot of a climb.
As well as eating during the ride, ensure you get a good breakfast in before the start and preferably a few hours in advance of setting off so the body can digest the food. Porridge, muesli, toast, eggs and fruit are all good healthy choices but go with your personal preference, just be sure to lean towards as much carbohydrate as you can with a little protein.
And when you've successfully completed the event, don't forget to have some food soon after finishing. Anything from a recovery drink to a chocolate milk drink in the immediate aftermath of the event will start the recovery process and tide you over until you can get a proper meal.
Do I need to train?
That’s a question we hear often about people preparing for a sportive, and the answer is that it depends on the distance. It’s easy to be daunted by long distance sportives but most event organisers offer several route options so our advice is to start small and build up your confidence before going long, rather than getting yourself into the deep end.
When preparing for the sportive it’s not really necessary to have been able to ride the target distance in training. If you’ve entered a 75km sportive and you can ride 45km, you’ll be just fine with the extra distance, provided you pace yourself and remember to eat. If you’ve entered a very hilly sportive and you don’t normally ride some hills, then you might want to consider adding more hills to your regular rides for preparation.
If you do want to do some structured training then be sure to check out our six week training sessions right here.
Ride with friends or in a group
Riding a sportive with a group of friends can make for a much more enjoyable day out than riding on your own, and you’ll also be able to share the workload and help each other out when you hit a low point or struggle on the hills. If you’re riding regularly with the same people it can really help with your pacing on a sportive as well.
Groups will and do form in sportives, from several hundred cyclists to half a dozen. Sharing the workload can certainly up your average pace and many people do ride sportives faster than they would ride a similar distance on their own, thanks to the slipstream effect and generally the motivation for keeping up with other people.
Enjoy it
An easy one to forget this and some people seem to take riding sportives very seriously. Remember, it’s not a race, and the only person you’re competing against is yourself. road.cc
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