Ireland’s Wicklow 200 cycling sportive route review
Wicklow 200 facts
The Wicklow 200 2023 is one of (if not the) toughest cycling sportives Ireland has to offer. This year it was held on June 11th
The route is a little over 200km, and you will have to cover 3445m of vertical altitude gain, the 3 main climbs are Sally Gap, Slieve Mann, and Shay Elliot.
On this occasion, I didn’t enter the official event, because I was traveling that day, but instead did the route with a mate the day prior. That meant no benefit of drafting in group or feed zones, but since it is “only” 200km, you can just about carry enough fuel on you to get you through the (long) day.
The experience
The route starts in Bray, just South of Dublin and the route gets you climbing pretty much straight away, not much of an easy warm-up on this one. After 32km of cycling, you will arrive at the highest point of the event: Sally Gap. The climb has sections that go well into the double digits so unless you’re a featherweight, you won’t be able to pace this very well, brute force will be needed.
For the next 100 or so km you won’t face any major climbs, but don’t be fooled, you’ll constantly be either going up or down. You’ll have little opportunity to settle into a nice comfortable rhythm.
We stopped at km 110 to have lunch and coffee, this proved to be a mistake I would not recover from. Sitting still for about an hour as we waited for our food caused my left gastrocnemius muscles to tighten up and they didn’t loosen back up for the rest of the ride anymore, my stomach didn’t really agree with the solid food either. The next 90km were a slog…
140km in, you find Shay Elliot in your path, possibly the toughest climb of the route with an average gradient of 7.5% over 3km, but with significant parts in the double digits range, it’s a tough one, and the fact it comes after 140km of cycling doesn’t help.
I must assume the creator of the route is a sadist, because as if Shay Elliot after 140km wasn’t enough, right after its descent you encounter Slieve Mann, 4km at 6.8% average, but again with significant parts in the double digits. This is really hurting now. The good thing is that you know here that the worst is over. Most of the distance and vertical meters are conquered at this point.
Relentless
Even though you’ve gone through the worst after these 2 climbs, you’re not out of the woods yet. From here until the finish it is much like the rest of the route a relentless chain of short snappy climbs and descents. After 150+km’s, I guarantee you will feel every % of gradient thrown at you.
At 200km the route isn’t very long relative to some other sportives, but the relentless nature of the route makes this one particularly tough.
Tougher than the Mallorca 312?
The Mallorca 312 enjoys a somewhat mythical status among cyclists, and while I can only compare the 225 route, for me the Wicklow 200 was definitely the tougher event.
In Mallorca, with the exception of the Sa Calobra climb (which does not feature in any of the 312 routes), most climbs will average around 5-6 % and they will be pretty constant in their gradient, allowing you to settle into a comfortable rhythm where you don’t have to redline for a single moment on any of the climbs. Most of the climbing is also completely done after 150km with it pretty much being a flat 75km to the finish, where you can settle into a group to enjoy the drafting benefits and just cruise home.
In the Wicklow 200 however, the climbs are fickle with sections in double digits and other sections relatively flat. Meaning you’ll often have to hit the redline (especially if you’re a bigger guy) and you can’t find a good pace you can maintain throughout. The road surface is also a lot worse than what you find in Mallorca which starts to take its toll after a while and the fact the climbing never stops until the end means that also mentally you never reach that moment where you go “ooff, just cruising home from here now”. Nope, even when your body is screaming to stop, the little climbs just keep coming…
How to prepare
So you’ve read this and you still want to do the Wicklow 200? Good on you!
In terms of preparation, I would recommend keeping it simple, make sure you get at least one long ride ( 4 -5 hours) per week. These can be flat early on in the year, or 2-3 hr turbo sessions when the weather is bad, but when you get closer to the event, say 6-8 weeks out, I would recommend including at least a few climbs in your long rides.
Other than that I would add 1 threshold (zone 4) and 1 vo2max (zone 5) session per week.
In saying that, I myself did not stick to a super regimented training structure. Most of my training came from my commutes to work during the week and long rides on the weekend and it worked quite well for me both on the Mallorca 225 and the Wicklow 200. I’m sure that if I hadn’t stopped for as long as we did for lunch the ride would have been much better for me and despite the lack of “structure” I’m pushing the highest wattages I’ve ever done. Perhaps it could have been slightly higher if I’d done my Vo2max intervals religiously (I often do ride home on threshold intervals in the evenings) I could have been a touch stronger on the toughest climbs.
