This Saturday Ride and Wiggled No Excuses

alec wrote:

geoffrey wrote:

Hi there GS I just wonder if this ridiculous "sportivo" type of event in the UK has gone too far..its mind boggling that organizers will gladly take £20 up to £100 or so (and that's stupid anyway )for cyclist to ride on public roads,,just what has happened to the jolly good "lets meet at freds pub" and go for a sporting 100 mile ride...with social media and internet on tap you do not need much of a brain to find out where these rides could be.I know I am "behind" the times but we did these runs 50 years ago, word of mouth 100 guys pitched up...still what do i know,,G..

I agree with Geoff. Our sportive at £15 is value for money considering the cost of signage, feed stations etc, but some of them are ridiculous (and made more ridiculous by the fact that the Audax community organises events with feed stations etc for a fraction of the cost). People want to be spoon fed with signs every 100 yards and broom wagons and mechanics and heaven's knows what else - maybe the next thing is that you'll be able to pay someone to ride the event in your name.

For example take the 250 mile Manchester to London or the 300 mile Newcastle to London events for which the organisers are looking for a ridiculous £295 fee (www.rideuk24.com/event2.php). When I was riding 600km audaxes the fee was less than £20 - ok here are differences in what is provided but £295 is just silly. The fact is, the commercial organisers will charge what they can get away with, and cyclists these days seem to have more money than sense. People should pitch up and ride the more extortionate ones without paying in protest.

alec wrote:

Not specifically about "No Excuses" but about more expensive commercial sportives where a profit making organisation is taking money for riding on the public road. (Many of the European sportives are on closed roads so that's different). I have no problem with events organised by cyclists for cyclists at a reasonable fee - reliability rides, audaxes, club sportives - but all this palaver about goodie bags and broom wagons and peripatetic mechanics and timing chips (if you want to race, then race) and signage every 100 yards is not in the spirit of what cycling used to be (and should be in my grumpy old man's view).

Chrisbpr wrote:

alec wrote:

Not specifically about "No Excuses" but about more expensive commercial sportives where a profit making organisation is taking money for riding on the public road. (Many of the European sportives are on closed roads so that's different). I have no problem with events organised by cyclists for cyclists at a reasonable fee - reliability rides, audaxes, club sportives - but all this palaver about goodie bags and broom wagons and peripatetic mechanics and timing chips (if you want to race, then race) and signage every 100 yards is not in the spirit of what cycling used to be (and should be in my grumpy old man's view).

Talking of Audax I stumbled across this ...www.aukweb.net/events/detail/13-555/ ....bargin !!!

What's the score with doing one of these as my interest is stirred ?