Metric Century Chat

The Col du Pre and the descent off the Cormet de Roselend were worth the trip on their own. The Iseran was amazing, and the very sketchy descent from the Cime de la Bonette in a freezing hail storm will all stay with me for quite a while.

Yesterday was cool - an hour or so at the BMX track getting faster and faster, despite the heat. I need to work on my skills more - I've got the power now but not the skill to keep the front wheel up (manual in BMX lingo) over the jumps. I get a hit out of being airborne and being at 90 degrees as I crank it round a berm. It's a little different from road riding or normal banked track riding for that matter - think about a 400m sprint over jumps. I got home and drank a litre of water.

I did some laps this evening after work but couldn't match yesterday's pace.

So did you manage a 100km round the BMX track OldRidgeback?

The most I ever managed round the velodrome was about 75km and that took me the best part of 2 hours...

Wish I'd been young enough to get into BMX when it first hit - must be good for your bike handling skills and for learning to cope with hurting yourself on a bike

Was Obree still riding that 62 front he had at Bike Radar or something more sensible? Mind you there were some 1 in 4's near Ashbourne he negotiated.

He rides a 67 x 13 on his new hour record bike, but he was on a more gentlemanly arrangement on his Trek for the Alps.

He still rides with a very different pedaling style, with loads of seat layback. I learned a lot from him regarding pedal technique, and have incorporated it into my own style already, you might as well seize amazing opportunities like this to learn from such a natural and innovative rider as GO.

A nice, if not quite tough, South Wales 100 miles today.

I managed to climb the Black Mountain, through the Beacons National Park, and then up the evil and aptly named Devils Elbow, onto Glyn Neath Bank and over Rhigos, finally climbing the Bwlch. This amounted to not far off 3000m of ascent.

I managed to top up my already ludicrous tan, eat a very tasty bacon roll at the top of Rhigos, and get back to the in-laws for a waiting table full of food...a good day.

Fao : Dave and Fringe, just re-did our tintern ride, beautiful weather...managed it 37 minutes quicker too...must be the bike!

nice..me and a mate did pretty much the same ride the other day but went up the B4228 and crossed over at St. Brivals towards Tintern/Raglan. slightly longer still as good, but with a few more uphill sections.

must do another friday afternoon Road.cc ride soon.

indeed, hopefully this friday!!! I start work monday so could be tricky. Im sure I can book a day off if its arranged in advance though.

Ive got my comedy tan lines back, my girlfriend will be happy...

My last 2 metric centuries were done in Majorca, so were very warm, windy and beautiful.

Majorca really is a great place to ride a bike. My first ride took me out from Palma (an insanely busy city with so many roads and one ways!), then out over the Coll de Soller with its never ending switchbacks, straight into the climb of the Puig Major (the highest peak on Majorca), the temperature was in the mid-thirties, and I pretty much had the roads to myself once out of Palma. I then came back via Lluc - with it's stunning monastry - and Inca, before heading back toward Palma.

The second ride, I followed the coast road out of Palma, past the airport, then up to Llucmajor. This was all done into an insane headwind, but for the first time in a long while, I had a headwind on the way out, but instead of my usual UK rides, I got a tailwind on the way back rather than a headwind in both directions.
Llucmajor was beautiful, with another striking monastry; at that point I turned toward Randa to climb the Puig Randa, to reach the Cura monastry that I have riden to so many times on my Tacx Fortius RLV of the tour of Majorca. It was funny to know what gear to take a particular bend in, or be ready for a steep section when on a ride you have never done in real life before. It was surprising quite how accurate the RLV of this ride was!
After an espresso in the monastry, I descended back toward Montiuri, then Algaida, followed by a wide loop to drop me bvack into rush hour Palma for a bit of sprint training, I out paced a few scooters through the centre, which ammused me but annoyed the riders, oh well.

I hired a nice Massi carbon bike with full Dura Ace and Fulcrum Racing 1's from Pro Bike Hire on the island, who delivered it to my hotel and collected it at the end. This was a joy, no fretting over my beloved Litespeed on the plane etc, and no struggling with it through the airport etc.

I can whole heartedly recommend Majorca as a riding destination, as well as a great place to holiday, I managed to fit in a couple of good rides without encroaching on my supposed non-cycling break with my wife too much.

Managed 5 scoring rides in the last week but it should have been 6.

A mate and I caught a ferry to Dublin and had a night on the town - me watching the WC qualifier against Cyprus. Hit a couple of literary pubs, one regular haunt of Brendan Behan and another mentioned in Ulysses.

Day 1 we rode to Athlone a nice town on the river Shannon. The next day I put on my green with red band cycling jersey for a return to Mayo which is the County GAA colours. We rode to Tuam, Cong and in to Co Mayo round Lough Mask to Partry to a b&b run by a former good level cyclist. Day 3 we raced, and beat, the rain through Castlebar, Pontoon, Ballina and round the coast to Sligo and past Ben Bulben and Yeats resting place.

Day 4 was a big day for me as I entered the North at Belleek for the first time. I had lived in Mayo as a young lad so entering the North felt strange. I knew it would be just regular people going about there lives and of course this is how it was. From Belleek we followed the North West passage route to Starbane and avoiding Derry we headed over towards Limavady finishing in the dark.

Day 5 we rode the beautiful NI coast to the Giant's Causeway and south to Magherafelt. This was only a 78 mile day as my bottom was suffering big time and I could not sit in the saddle and pedal - I was out of the saddle to pedal - and the pace was slowing. I bought some Sudacreme but another problem with my achilles was getting worse.

As it was a short day it meant the last day was going to be about 125 miles and I could not be sure of being able to do it so I abandoned and rode to Antrim and got the train to Dublin. My mate completed the ride and was well impressed with his first visit to Ireland. The weather was good, quite a bit of rain on the first day into Athlone and some in the Cong / Clonbur area but excellent after that. People friendly and helpful both sides of the border. But 10 euro for 2 pints of Guinness!

The hardest point!

The point scored last weekend took me 12.5 hours to achieve. I was ding the Cambrian Way off road cycle route. Two of us left Knighton into a gale with rain off and on. Progress was slow trying to make sure there was no navigation problems and hills steep. On one tarmac section I was struggling to achieve 8km an hour into the wind.

We had two unforced stops. My chain snapped causung a short delay and we saved a sheep from certain death. A sheep had run headlong into a fence and could not back out and was stuck. She had been there a while judging by the bare patch in front of her and the droppings behind. The Park tool had a serrated edge which we used to cut the fence and release her.

We got to Rhaydar about 16:30 which I was thinking would be a bit late to travel through the Elan valley. I called for accommodation and all was full and was resigned to a stay in Rhaydar and a 3 day trip. My mate said abiut trying anither place in Cwmystwyth a bit further along the route, We got a bed but it was a long ride to Cwmystwyth but at last we were moving quickly. Got to the accommodation at 21:40 and had a quick look at my trip computer; 99.85k! I was having that extra 150 meters so to the amazement of my mate and a shout from the b&b owner I popped down the road to a sign and turned back. 100.19k.

Next day was shorter with better weather. Some lovely scenery, dryish trails and solitude. Going back again next year.

I got a nice warm metric in today, and all at zone 2. Bloody zone 2 is the bane of my life at the moment!

Just managed to sneak in my century for April - my last one was 1st March and I certainly felt it!

Dragged myself out of bed early and got out with the local club, was hanging on at times but enjoyed the ride. Started in Bath and went to somewhere called Urchfont in Wiltshire - I know nothing about it other than there is a quality farmshop & cafe with fantastic cake.

Just got home after my latest metric. Bristol via Clevedon to Cheddar, along lanes and back roads to Radstock then back to Bristol via Bath. 131.6km, cold at first but lovely and sunny now!

I just googled an Imperial piercing - I could make a pretty good guess, but never heard of one before - I decided not to play the video of the guy proudly boasting of getting his imperial done, especially as it was by a guy calling himself Dark Porn Star!

I assume some manner of Prince Albert, but my fear is greater than my curiosity, so blissful ignorance is my preferred option...

When I saw that you'd 'Managed an imperial' in the comments box on the homepage my first thought was that you'd had some sort of piercing…

Managed to get an imperial century in today, the joy of the spring weather!

A spin down the Test valley, across into Winchester and backup into Whitchurch past the silk mill and home.

I took some rather up-market energy food today too, a bagel with humous and smoked salmon and a bag full of fig rolls. The best food yet, the salty salmon was lovely, and satisfied that desire to not keep eating sweet stuff.

Last weekend my metric century was the Ronde van Vlaanderen, 140km route.

Started off a little cold but warmed up to a nice riding temperature. Sun came out for the Muur-Kaplemuur climb and into the finish. 19,000 riders all told, of which 3,500 did the full 269km route. It was reported that 700 travelled from the UK. The roads were full of riders and my mate and I ended up walking the Molenberg (climb 1) and Koppenberg (climb 5) due to the narrowness and mass of riders. The cobbles were incredibly hard, much harder than I anticipated, and going down was worse than climbing. Many bottles and a few pumps littered the road, our only minor problem was some bottle cages working loose.

Finished in 6hr 10 minutes somewhat slower than I hoped but there was a number of slower sections held up with other riders. A wonderful experience and the opportunity too see the pro's the following day. We saw the womens start (including the Road.cc rider of the year) the Molenberg and Ten Bosse and the women approaching the Koppenberg.

A fantastic weekend and easily done from the UK.

I tried that Dave, it appears to take the first x number of characters, as I put my name at the top of the post once I noticed the change but it put my name plus the first few characters of the next line. I then put a few blank lines in after my name but it ignored them and still picked up the first line too.

This looked weird so I went back to just letting it do it's thing. What is the best way?

Great day for a ride today, I was feeling really good and had loads in reserve despite going pretty hard on the climbs.

To be honest this is the first ride I've felt like this for a long time, I've had to push through feeling rough on all my bigger rides, and even some of my shorter ones. I hope this feeling is here to stay...

The Lambourn Downs were windy, as ever, and of course the wind was against me. The scenery around there is nice and the roads quiet, so all in all a nice spin out.

First of the year, though neve done more than two.

My mate is training for an Ironman so was going, sounded a good idea. Set off in sunny conditions but up on the moors South of Buxton became very misty. The view from the Peak Cafe at the top of the Cat & Fiddle was to the end of the car park!

Approaching Earl Sterndale weather improved again for ride home. 101.5 miles, Flanders will be a breeze....

Went out on singlespeed mtb today and threw in 6 hill reps. Felt surprisingly well recovered.

...what a great day for a ride Saturday was. I did one of my favourite loops in the Brecon Beacons. just under 70 miles with a couple of thousand metres of climbing (why do I always have to express distance as imperial and altitude gain as metric?).

The grueling climb up to the Storey Arms was even quite enjoyable for once (it's not that steep, just long and arduous). The descent down the Devils Elbow near Heol Senni was insane, I nearly overcooked one of the hairpins in my excitement, but just about kept to the tarmac.

It is one of the most picturesque rides I know, and the Malt loaf is working a treat too...