Nick Isherwood, Dave Powell and Jason Miles all took part in the ‘Ride With Brad’ cyclosportive on the 19th August, which raises money for Bradley Wiggins’ own charitable foundation.Taking part in the event was Bradley Wiggins himself, who rode the whole 160 kilometre route while chatting to other riders.
The route was ‘a bit of a brute’ and climbed a number of major hills in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Here’s Nick’s account of a particularly testing day out in the saddle:
“Off the back of recent challenges, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the route profile so had opted for the longer of the two distances available with confidence of taking it all in my stride. Knowing some of the assumed route, I expected the odd climb but someone had spent a long time thinking this one through….
As I was about to find out, someone had picked out the toughest hills available from 2 counties and joined them up like a dot-to-dot. 10 miles in and I was in high spirits already thinking about a 6 hour finish but my objectives were to become gradually woollier throughout the ride, until I eventually decided on an goal of “don’t turn off when you see the shorter route sign and don’t ring your mum for a lift home”.
At the last feed station (68 miles in), I was unfortunate enough to hear a couple of blokes discussing the last 30 miles of “vertical climbs” and had thought to myself they were talking about another event, surely we had done enough already?!
I was of course ecstatic to find myself cycling towards the moon within 5 minutes of that stop, and after plenty of swearing, a tricky mechanical with my mate’s not-so-trusty steed at 90 miles and plenty of rain to cheer us up – we rolled across the finish line with a top 50% finish and made our way to the pasta tent (and then to KFC) before going home for some tea.
All in all, a good time was had by all, apart from the last 90 miles! A tough little ride.”

Jason and Dave set off a little earlier and rolled back across the finish line in 26th and 27th place overall, Dave also taking 3rd place in the ‘King of the Mountains’ competition – three of the major climbs on the route were timed and the total time for all three were added together. Well done Dave!

You can read Jason’s personal account of the event here.