Bobby Powers Carrick Wheelers Challenge Sportive 2011

michael196

Just saw this today on the Carrick wheelers website, posted 28 december ........

''Carrick Wheelers will promote the first annual Carrick Wheelers Challenge
Sportive in 2011 over the June Bank Holiday Weekend. This event, promoted
on Sunday 5th June, will be over the toughest ever course devised in Irish
cycling, and will be a serious challenge for even the fittest cyclists. It will
coincide with the popular Carrick-on-Suir Clancy Festival whose events will
provide cyclists and their families with its festive atmosphere as well as
musical and artistic entertainment! The sportive, which will be the hardest
of any on the Cycling Ireland Leisure Tour Calendar, will be over 160km and
will include famous climbs such as Seskin Hill in Carrick, Mahon Falls and
The Mountain Road, both in the Comeragh Mountains, and the climb to
Kilcash over Tipperary’s most famous mountain Slievenamon. This event
promises to be a challenging and very enjoyable sportive so Carrick
Wheelers encourages all cyclists interested in such a unique cycling
promotion to mark their diaries for Carrick-on-Suir, the home of Irish cycling,
for the June Bank Holiday Weekend.''

http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=547

Carrick wheelers did have a place setting in the CI Lesiure events calander for this date.
Some of the hills such as the Seskin and Mahon Falls, you will fondly
remember from the SKT tours. But looking at the details given so far, the
sportive appears to concentrate on the north side of the comeraghs taking
in the Suir valley, Clonmels' Mountain road ( featured in the Nissan Classics ),
and the further north Slivenamon mountain and Kilcash ( beautiful small
village, Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad...'' ), wheras the Sean Kelly
tours start at the southern parts of the comeraghs and return to the southern
parts of the comeraghs.

Question is, can the Carrick boys and girls, live up to the challange of creating the 'toughest ever course devised in Irish cycling' ,
and 'provide a serious challange', I am pretty sure they can. The Clancy festival on that weekend in carrick , should provide sufficient background buzz to proceedings and help in celebrating your achievements for the day .....

531

Is this limited to 300 riders?

michael196

Latests posting is saying limited to 300 people alright ,March 1 entries open

No route posted yet


http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=570#more-570

slow

Looks great. Can't wait...

marcofan

yes its limited to 300 enteries there will be no entry on the day. we will be putting up the link for the online entry very soon. keep an eye on the club website, there are a few details there already

michael196

From Martin O loughlin Carrick Wheelers::

''Congrats to Bobby Power for coming up with an epic route for the Carrick Wheelers Challenge Sportive. Stunning scenery, savage climbs, historic sights, it has it all. Carrick is the place to be on Sunday 5th of June''

intriguing.........

michael196

http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=631



looks like entries are opening ?

michael196

the Carrick wheelers Sportive route map and elevation data has been published on line at :

http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=570


Tickencor is included in this sportive. Tickencor is quite a hill, 16 - 17% gradient at the bottom, and a long drag to the top. Carrick Wheelers then turn you down hill on the mountain road back towards clonmel for a mile or so before turning you left onto a hair pin climb that ultimately reachs the the television mast on the comeraghs, before descending Powers the Pot.

What is so special about Tickencor is that it does not feature in the SKT. Few enough have therefore experienced the Tickencor climb.

Within a minute on Tickencor , as you look left over the Suir Vallay towards Slievenamon, ( that you just came off ), it appears that you are already 60% climbed up SLievenamon.

For me, Tickencor outshines Seskin, in length and gradient, elevation, and sheer difficulty. The way to think about tickencor is that the mountain road twists around a maybe 10 mile circuit, to reach the summit of the tcikencor climb, where as going straight up tickencor is about 1 mile.

The route around Kilcash and Tullahought is not that well known, so should prove to be an eye opener for most.

ENjoy this part of South Tipp.

Phil2me

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/302852

Mapped the route once I saw it on their website, not sure if I have it 100% but it's at least 90% correct, the climb from Ferryhouse to Mountain Road looks really tough(as stated in preceding post), have driven it, yet to cycle it.

michael196

Phil, I think you got most of it, but I think there is a left turn at rathgormack back to carrick on one of those grey roads on the map. If memory serves: thats all wooded I think, but it might be agricultural open fields, and again not well known. Expect a narrow twisting winding grass in the middle along there, i suspect, but beautiful countryside.

if the sunshines for this sportive, the scenary around the tickencor to rathgormack section will be spectacular with the comeragh s lit up in sunshine on ur right. And if u remember to , look over to the left while climbing the bottom section of tickencor to view over the suir vally and further up, u will look over clonmel golf club on the right. Ravens Rock on the left near the first part of the total hill climb. ( ur head will be swinging over and back anyhow during the climb so u just have to remember to open ur eyes, careful not to be blinded by stinging sweat !!!!:D. )

the grey road return to carrick seems to be there in order to ''visit'' seskin, before heading south down r676 towards Lemybrien and Mahon falls. yeah just checked the available info on the carrrick website and seskin comes before mahon, so at least seskin is not at the very end. or maybe they will bring us up seskin twice ??? :eek::eek::eek: oh god !!! thats very possible the way the route is layed out. those Feckers in carrick !!!!.

the two hills prior to tickencor have that straight up gradient on the map, the first one dosnt look so steep, but legs will not be warmed at that stage.

Given the amount of off road and off the R roads on the course, hopfully the club / organisers will make a .tcx availaible closer to the time, hwoever the map on the carrick site is good quality and fairly clear.

hhhhhmmmmmm....... the tickencor section is featuring on the elevation map on the carrick website.... they must know we are on to them !!! Go boards !!!

I did a lot of cycling around clonmel years ago but a fair bit of this route i would not know, like the kilcash and tullohaught , coolfin and portlaw sections.

hopefully bulmers will be brewing and letting off a few aromas to help waft us up onto the hills.

it dosnt say mass or rolling start, hopefully that will be clarified.

Phil2me

Well spotted Michael, missed that turn out of Rathgormack, thankfully not whilst on bike.Have corrected it now, fresher this morning.
A little awry around mile58-59 but too much hassle to change.
Have done most of the climbs bar the Tickenor one up to mountain road in Clonmel which I have driven and looked really tough.
8,000ft plus of climbing that'll be a tough day.To put that in perspective the SK tour is about 6,500ft of climbing.Yikes better get pedalling.
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/303220

Quigs Snr

I put the new version of the CarrickWheelers website up at the weekend and put the online entry for this event on it:

http://www.carrickwheelers.com

The route is absolute torture. I might be able to get a .tcx file for it Michael196. I took the map from a garmin device. I don't have a Garmin myself, but I pulled the map as a screengrab from mygarmin.com. I can't check till later on, but would I have an option to download the .tcx from there do you know offhand ?

By the way, with a limit of 300 entries I would expect that a mass start would be more likely.

michael196

Phil2me wrote: »

Well spotted Michael, missed that turn out of Rathgormack, thankfully not whilst on bike.Have corrected it now, fresher this morning.
A little awry around mile58-59 but too much hassle to change.
Have done most of the climbs bar the Tickenor one up to mountain road in Clonmel which I have driven and looked really tough.
8,000ft plus of climbing that'll be a tough day.To put that in perspective the SK tour is about 6,500ft of climbing.Yikes better get pedalling.
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/303220

Are u from around clonmel ? yep I am realy delighted to have tickencor in there . I love training on it, it kills me everytime !!!!

I used to cycle from wexford home to clonmel and then up tickencor at the 68 mile mark, and just freewheel back to clonmel on the mountain road. I did that wexford to clonmel trip last friday, but just could not face tickencor at the end . ( instead had to go up ardgaoithe on he cashel road !!! ).

michael196

Quigs Snr wrote: »

I put the new version of the CarrickWheelers website up at the weekend and put the online entry for this event on it:

http://www.carrickwheelers.com

The route is absolute torture. I might be able to get a .tcx file for it Michael196. I took the map from a garmin device. I don't have a Garmin myself, but I pulled the map as a screengrab from mygarmin.com. I can't check till later on, but would I have an option to download the .tcx from there do you know offhand ?

By the way, with a limit of 300 entries I would expect that a mass start would be more likely.

u can only get the .tcx from the device itself. but that does look like a mygarmin map which is good quality: however somtimes thats not enough : see below.

even driving the circuit with the garmin in the car will record the route and generate a .tcx. file. this has draw backs : see below:

A problem occurs when you go to map out a route like on mapmyride or bikeroutetoaster using a map like the one on the carrick website as a guide : those little grey roads around rathgormack may not feature on the map that you are mapping the route on, to upload to your own garmin unit. therefore on the day, the garmin wont know where to turn u left after rathgormack.

Neither will private estate roads , i.e. non public roads, do not appear on route generating maps . so you end with a route that is not what u will experience on the day, and the GPS will flash up ''off course'' and the concentration goes to getting back on course rather than cycling. Having a .tcx from the organisers avoids all route mapping , and route direction problems.


if u have the original device or access to it : this is how to retrieve the .tcx

if you connect ur garmin to ur pc as when u were uploading the data to the PC, u can browse ( search) the Garmin drive under 'my computer' and a Garmin folder appears (mine becomes F: Garmin)

click on Garmin : then Garmin (folder) the history and the files will be listed as per the date u recorded the route, copy the history file for the day, out to ur desktop , u can rename it as Carrick Challange or whatever and you can post that here on boards or some download section on the website. .tcx are only a few hundred kb so no worries on file sizes for uploading etc.


if u rename that file carrick challange and put it into the courses file, ( same for people who download the file) then users call up the course on their garmin edge, and it will direct just like GPS. U cannot then go wrong. Given that there are so many small roads in use on this sportive one wrong turn and ur lost . and as a said above , those grey roads would need to be mappable. , With a copy of the original .tcx in your garmin, u wont get lost.

u only need 1 lad in ( hopefully ) a bunch with Garmin to know the way.

P.S. Quigs, the personal data of the person who physically went around the route ( their speed , HR, cadence etc does not get copied over strictly only the route. !! ).

Phil2me

michael196 wrote: »

Are u from around clonmel ? yep I am realy delighted to have tickencor in there . I love training on it, it kills me everytime !!!!

I used to cycle from wexford home to clonmel and then up tickencor at the 68 mile mark, and just freewheel back to clonmel on the mountain road. I did that wexford to clonmel trip last friday, but just could not face tickencor at the end . ( instead had to go up ardgaoithe on he cashel road !!! ).

No not from Clonmel, but working there at the moment , albeit not this week and worked there before in 90's, so am very familiar with area.
Will try that hill next week hopefully.
Is Ardgaoithe the initial climb from by-pass towards Cashel ????

michael196

Phil2me wrote: »

No not from Clonmel, but working there at the moment , albeit not this week and worked there before in 90's, so am very familiar with area.
Will try that hill next week hopefully.
Is Ardgaoithe the initial climb from by-pass towards Cashel ????

yep, passes off Boston scientific at the top

calerbass

michael196 wrote: »

Phil, I think you got most of it, but I think there is a left turn at rathgormack back to carrick on one of those grey roads on the map. If memory serves: thats all wooded I think, but it might be agricultural open fields, and again not well known. Expect a narrow twisting winding grass in the middle along there, i suspect, but beautiful countryside.

if the sunshines for this sportive, the scenary around the tickencor to rathgormack section will be spectacular with the comeragh s lit up in sunshine on ur right. And if u remember to , look over to the left while climbing the bottom section of tickencor to view over the suir vally and further up, u will look over clonmel golf club on the right. Ravens Rock on the left near the first part of the total hill climb. ( ur head will be swinging over and back anyhow during the climb so u just have to remember to open ur eyes, careful not to be blinded by stinging sweat !!!!:D. )

the grey road return to carrick seems to be there in order to ''visit'' seskin, before heading south down r676 towards Lemybrien and Mahon falls. yeah just checked the available info on the carrrick website and seskin comes before mahon, so at least seskin is not at the very end. or maybe they will bring us up seskin twice ??? :eek::eek::eek: oh god !!! thats very possible the way the route is layed out. those Feckers in carrick !!!!.

the two hills prior to tickencor have that straight up gradient on the map, the first one dosnt look so steep, but legs will not be warmed at that stage.

Given the amount of off road and off the R roads on the course, hopfully the club / organisers will make a .tcx availaible closer to the time, hwoever the map on the carrick site is good quality and fairly clear.

hhhhhmmmmmm....... the tickencor section is featuring on the elevation map on the carrick website.... they must know we are on to them !!! Go boards !!!

I did a lot of cycling around clonmel years ago but a fair bit of this route i would not know, like the kilcash and tullohaught , coolfin and portlaw sections.

hopefully bulmers will be brewing and letting off a few aromas to help waft us up onto the hills.

it dosnt say mass or rolling start, hopefully that will be clarified.

I presume the portlaw section is down the chapel hill and up the scrouty?

If so, the chapel hill is absolutely destroyed with craters and could definitely do with a full resurface, would be brakes all the way down in its current state........

michael196

i have heard of scrouty but i dont know scrouty at all.

michael196

http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=570

TinyExplosions

40 quid's a bit steep for an event :eek:

-depending on the quality of the cake that is

Chips Lovell

Threads merged

AstraMonti

TinyExplosions wrote: »

40 quid's a bit steep for an event :eek:

-depending on the quality of the cake that is

It is indeed.. I put down the sportives I want to do.. almost 300 euros.. If I add the accommodation and the expenses to get there and everything it all probably going to cost around the 1000 maybe even more..

Lovely route though.

marcofan

lads and lassies

mass start or staggered start??? what is the preferred option?

marcofan

with regard to the entry fee of €40 we feel its good value for money especially as we are providing a top quality "dry flow" commerative t shirt that has a very nice design on it. A t -shirt of the quality we are providing would normally retail at €25.

and dont worry the quality of the cake will be top notch!!!

michael196

hhhmmmmmm ....... cake ....... for breakfast......



I count 11 ascents according to the profile posted.

three exceeding 400 meters ,

is that as high as Shay Elliott ? Sally gap ? (> 400 meters )

what about wicklow Gap ? is that > 400 meters ?

how high is the Conor Pass?


Must check out the heights .....


1 exceeds 200 meters. What would a comparable hill be ?

the remaining 7 exceed 100 and 150 to 200 meters.


Must do a comparison with W200 for ascents .....and gradients


Mass start is the business: so hopefully the organisers will go Mass start...



Helmet HD camera even !!!

531

Mass start, please, with the climbs involved we'll all soon be spread out. Let me have a little company at some stage along the way!

michael196

Going by ride with GPS , i make:

Sally gap to be about 440m elevation,

wicklow gap about 480 meters,

aughavannagh 455 meters,

Glenmalure ( shayelliott ) 380 meters,

Conor pass 481 meters



so there u go for comparison........

Phil2me

michael196 wrote: »

Going by ride with GPS , i make:

Sally gap to be about 440m elevation,

wicklow gap about 480 meters,

aughavannagh 455 meters,

Glenmalure ( shayelliott ) 380 meters,

Conor pass 481 meters



so there u go for comparison........

Going on memory I thought Sally Gap was higher than Conor Pass.....1700ft as compared to 1400ft(Please excuse Imperial Measurements).Conor Pass is a far tougher climb though.

cantalach

Guys, I plotted it on RideWithGPS earlier on. I wasn't sure where the GAA club was in Carrick so I've shown it starting/finishing in the town centre. Other than that though, it should be pretty faithful to the route.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/357546

I'm really looking forward to this 4.5km off road section (I think!). Do any of the Carrick Wheelers people have any photos? Google Streetview doesn't cover it, naturally, being a private estate.

michael196

the Gaa center is very close to where u put the start / end.

its actually west of where u are, on that stretch of n24, pretty much were it says Greenside on the map.

think u have mapped it fairly accuratly.

Clonmel is my home town so i am very much looking forward to struggling in and around the town on the hills of this circuit.


hhhmmmmm....... few potential short cuts......


strada bianca surface................what ever next....

seve65

cantalach wrote: »

Guys, I plotted it on RideWithGPS earlier on. I wasn't sure where the GAA club was in Carrick so I've shown it starting/finishing in the town centre. Other than that though, it should be pretty faithful to the route.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/357546

I'm really looking forward to this 4.5km off road section (I think!). Do any of the Carrick Wheelers people have any photos? Google Streetview doesn't cover it, naturally, being a private estate.

love the max 36.4% gradient ! I would love to do this one, but probably cant make it. Pls tell all the stories when u return.

michael196

i hope thats a little sofware bug somewhere ...


36 % WTF....

Phil2me

michael196 wrote: »

i hope thats a little sofware bug somewhere ...


36 % WTF....

I hope so too....

Toblerone1978

marcofan wrote: »

lads and lassies

mass start or staggered start??? what is the preferred option?

There's nothing like a lovely mass to start off a sportive, but tbh it all depends on the priest.

I'm fuming I'll be missing this one, the brother's stag is on that weekend in the other Carrick in a place called Leitrim (is this right, maybe I just didn't hear it right). And he's having the wedding on the day of Tour de Kilkenny. As you can guess, he doesn't cycle...

Best of luck with it lads.

DirkVoodoo

Toblerone1978 wrote: »

There's nothing like a lovely mass to start off a sportive, but tbh it all depends on the priest.

I'm fuming I'll be missing this one, the brother's stag is on that weekend in the other Carrick in a place called Leitrim (is this right, maybe I just didn't hear it right). And he's having the wedding on the day of Tour de Kilkenny. As you can guess, he doesn't cycle...

Best of luck with it lads.

Stag party? Strippers?

damo80

any idea on the numbers signed up yet, is it filling fast? waiting to hear back on a few yea or nay's but dont want to miss the boat on this one.
as for mass or staggered start; mass start is way more fun and sense of occasion

marcofan

there is 54 signed up through the website at the moment but we have a good few postal enteries that are not reflected on the website yet. The closing date for enteries is the 22nd of May. We wont be doing enteries on the day. The reason for the closing date being two weeks before the event is we want to ensure that everyone can get the correct size t-shirt and not end up with a guy who is 5ft 2 getting an XXXL shirt that is no good to him.

The t-shirts have a cool design with a pic of Coppi on the front riding over some strada biancha

I dont have any pics of the strada bianca i am afraid as i have never been on the road as its normally closed on the weekends but there is a small pic on the carrick wheelers website giving you an idea of the surface

michael196

DirkVoodoo wrote: »

Stag party? Strippers?

its a forrested area so should be a few stags about , and maybe more snipers than strippers !!!

damo80

marcofan wrote: »

there is 54 signed up through the website at the moment but we have a good few postal enteries that are not reflected on the website yet. The closing date for enteries is the 22nd of May. We wont be doing enteries on the day. The reason for the closing date being two weeks before the event is we want to ensure that everyone can get the correct size t-shirt and not end up with a guy who is 5ft 2 getting an XXXL shirt that is no good to him.

The t-shirts have a cool design with a pic of Coppi on the front riding over some strada biancha

I dont have any pics of the strada bianca i am afraid as i have never been on the road as its normally closed on the weekends but there is a small pic on the carrick wheelers website giving you an idea of the surface

thanks Marcofan, bit of time to commit then. cheers for the info. sounds like it could be the start of a new "classic"!!!!

marcofan

the first 2 challenges that await the riders on the day

both very steep climbs with the first one being relatively short with a super smooth surface the second climb is longer and the surface is a lot deader to make it feel even longer!!!

http://carrickwheelers.com/?p=912

michael196

hi Marco,

great to see pics up for such a route.

given that a lot of the routes would not be that well known , especially the tullahought sections,


anyone care to video a live ascent of Tickencor, I certainly hope to see that on video with garmin evidence that it was not filmed from a car !!

serioulsy, should the rider be watching where he was going ?


but fair dues, great video,


can we expect to see more sections video' ed ????

thebouldwhacker

OUCH!

michael196

yeah: ouch but WOW............ !!! this is where carrick trains.... huh

Morrisseeee

Yep I think it's Ireland's toughest sportive alright ! It's our version of that 'mad' one in the UK, the Fred Witton. I wouldn't mind giving it a lash, if I'm free (and fit ).

Deisetrek

As result of surgery , I am off the bike for a few months . I have an entry for the Carrick Wheelers Challenge on offer if anybody is interested . I have cleared it with the lads in Carrick and the transfer of entry is no problem . The entry cost was 40 euro for me , will let the sufferfest entry go for 25 euro if someone wants it ? PM me if you're interested in taking it up .

seve65

Morrisseeee wrote: »

Yep I think it's Ireland's toughest sportive alright ! It's our version of that 'mad' one in the UK, the Fred Witton. I wouldn't mind giving it a lash, if I'm free (and fit ).

carrick's route is about 2500m ascending, fred whitton is 3900m with a couple of 30%ers in there. I think there are a few u tube clips of it, and a few with people just laughing at the sight of some of the climbs. I think possibly a tad steeper than the likes of patricks hill. Difficult to know for sure, anyway plain mad

seve65

seve65 wrote: »

carrick's route is about 2500m ascending, fred whitton is 3900m with a couple of 30%ers in there. I think there are a few u tube clips of it, and a few with people just laughing at the sight of some of the climbs. I think possibly a tad steeper than the likes of patricks hill. Difficult to know for sure, anyway plain mad

dont know whether its still going but there was a david lloyd challenge ain North wale s well of 150 miles and 5500m of climbing. And a few steepies there too.

michael196

michael196 wrote: »

hi Marco,

great to see pics up for such a route.

given that a lot of the routes would not be that well known , especially the tullahought sections,


anyone care to video a live ascent of Tickencor, I certainly hope to see that on video with garmin evidence that it was not filmed from a car !!

serioulsy, should the rider be watching where he was going ?


but fair dues, great video,


can we expect to see more sections video' ed ????

this is interesting
, the thread asked for a videod ascent of Tickencor : /worldwide ( clonmel) posted a descent of Tickencor, including Powers the Pot ............


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sACUU6LgOqw

half marks for trying guys .............. Now go ascend............



thank god I have Visa to return to Irishtown Clonmel..........otherwise I could be stopped at the border !!!


Noonan: Walls place,

Muckers

marcofan wrote: »

there is 54 signed up through the website at the moment but we have a good few postal enteries that are not reflected on the website yet. The closing date for enteries is the 22nd of May. We wont be doing enteries on the day. The reason for the closing date being two weeks before the event is we want to ensure that everyone can get the correct size t-shirt and not end up with a guy who is 5ft 2 getting an XXXL shirt that is no good to him.

The t-shirts have a cool design with a pic of Coppi on the front riding over some strada biancha

I dont have any pics of the strada bianca i am afraid as i have never been on the road as its normally closed on the weekends but there is a small pic on the carrick wheelers website giving you an idea of the surface

@marcofan. Regarding t-shirt sizes. There was no option on the entry form to register a size, so what's the story regarding getting proper sizes right on the day.

michael196

just looked on there myself, there is an option for T shirt size

michael196

what do you think ?,

should it be caught on cam ?

and post the links back on here as well as Carrick website if they want the link ?


what do u think Muckers ?