Wish Me Luck and a Fair Wind

UndercoverElephant

Excellent effort, MRS.

meanredspider

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Excellent effort, MRS.

Double thanks, Mr E!!!

meanredspider

Feeling a bit tired today - most surprising bit is my hands - no strength in my fingers. Finished 32nd of the soloists (ex 166) and about 40th overall of the 4-dayers (including pairs - totalling about 300 I think).

Got visited by the Fairy twice (probably the price of using 4000Ss - quick but not very robust).
Volagi was otherwise faultless and drew lots of positive comments.

Of course today is a sunny windless day up here but there's always something better about achieving something in less-than-perfect conditions

Blacktemplar

Well done MRS - quite an achievement considering you'd not done century rides before now. Chapeau sir.

Know what you mean about the hands - we did LEJOG over 9 days a couple of years ago, and by day 4 we were really noticing the lack of strength & tingling ulnar nerves.

Sign up for the 2-dayer next year.....

Wrath Rob

Hey MRS, I somehow missed this last week. Cracking result doing the ton back to back for 4 days. I know how knackered I felt the day after doing just one so big chapeau for 4 of them. Now that the weather's turning I need to dig my TCT jersey out too. Good luck for the Cambridge ride.

cyclingprop

Chapeau indeed!

tetm

Congratulations MRS!

I got to York and had a little scope for your bike, but was totally knackered and just wanted to get to bed! Completed the 2 day ride with a moving average of 16.5mph, the weather was fairly kind until Scotland when the wind got brutal at times. We were down to five of us working together to hold 9mph on the flat with 60 miles to go.

Strava log here - it's rather a long way.

confused@BR

Well done, the TCT jersey had a run out in Oz in March but has returned to 'pride of place' here now Winter has given up.

Ooooh! What have I said?

Wrath Rob

tetm wrote:

Congratulations MRS!

I got to York and had a little scope for your bike, but was totally knackered and just wanted to get to bed! Completed the 2 day ride with a moving average of 16.5mph, the weather was fairly kind until Scotland when the wind got brutal at times. We were down to five of us working together to hold 9mph on the flat with 60 miles to go.

Strava log here - it's rather a long way.

Chapeau to TETM too, that's pretty impressive.

junglist_matty

Good luck mate! ....I've done a Cambridge to London night ride, it's a nice route (by day)!!!

meanredspider

tetm wrote:

Congratulations MRS!

I got to York and had a little scope for your bike, but was totally knackered and just wanted to get to bed! Completed the 2 day ride with a moving average of 16.5mph, the weather was fairly kind until Scotland when the wind got brutal at times. We were down to five of us working together to hold 9mph on the flat with 60 miles to go.

Strava log here - it's rather a long way.

Yup Chapeau

I thought about the 2-dayers at the end of each day I rode - absolutely awesome.

meanredspider

Last bit of luck & fair winds needed:

London to Cambridge tonight (Moonriders). My start time is 11.30 and it's an entirely different type of event (last person is expected in Cambridge at 11am! :shock:) First people are only expected at 3.30am which, despite my latest-possible start time, is roughly when I hope to roll in.

Thanks again to everyone that's supported me in this venture with good wishes and donations. 5 rides & 500 miles.

Kieran_Burns

meanredspider wrote:

Last bit of luck & fair winds needed:

London to Cambridge tonight (Moonriders). My start time is 11.30 and it's an entirely different type of event (last person is expected in Cambridge at 11am! :shock:) First people are only expected at 3.30am which, despite my latest-possible start time, is roughly when I hope to roll in.

Thanks again to everyone that's supported me in this venture with good wishes and donations. 5 rides & 500 miles.

Would this be a good time to point out that you're mental?

cjcp

Bloody hell. Well done, chaps.

meanredspider

Kieran_Burns wrote:

Would this be a good time to point out that you're mental?

Possibly. The weather was foul last night - the forecast was TOTALLY out and it rained non-stop for the 3 hours and 30 minutes it took me to do the 63 miles. I was a drowned rat by the end (in fact, I was a drowned rat quite near the beginning). Riding unfamiliar back roads in the dark and pi$$ing rain after midnight isn't so much fun. It was nice as I got near Cambridge because the roads opened up and I knew them from 7-8 years ago when I lived there. They took us on a loop through Cambridge at the end which I wasn't expecting (night club kicking out time with women puking in the street). I started in the last group to start (11.30) and was one of the first 10 or so to finish (it was, after all, a charity-type cycle so no kudos there) - but they weren't really ready for us at the finish. 63 miles did seem absurdly simple after L2E and would have been really fun if it had been a balmy summer evening (fat chance)

veronese68

Well, you wouldn't have wanted it too easy would you? Once again, well done and I doff my cap to you.
I'm doing the Thames Bridges charity ride with my son and some of his friends tomorrow. I had to shut the curtains earlier as the horizontal rain didn't look too good. Hopefully it'll be alright tomorrow, it will certainly be a slow ride anway.

meanredspider

Ha - just found out I have the fastest time on the L2C ride with a margin of 51 minutes over 2nd place! All this Highland commuting is obviously great experience for a dark, cold, wet, windy ride down narrow country lanes!

bigmonka

Legend! Well done mate.
You say you hadn't done a 100mile ride before - how did you train for this then? (I've agreed to do 220miles over 2 days later in the year and I've never done anywhere near that distance).

meanredspider

BigMonka wrote:

Legend! Well done mate.
You say you hadn't done a 100mile ride before - how did you train for this then? (I've agreed to do 220miles over 2 days later in the year and I've never done anywhere near that distance).

Thanks. I didn't really train much. I commute 35-miles RT so I did as many of those as I could manage and threw in a few detours on the way home to bring the daily mileage up to around 60 miles 2 or 3 times before the start. I think the commute gives me a good level of base fitness (there's 2000ft of climbing involved - not to mention plenty of wind and the first 1000 miles this year done on an MTB with Ice Spikers). After that, it's just pacing yourself on the ride (my target was to keep my HR below 140bpm) and getting the eating and drinking right (I was burning 5-6000kcals per day). If I had a criticism of the Rat Race event, they could have used one additional stop per day. On the 4th stage the stops were at 25 miles and 76 miles - 51 miles is a long way to go being self-sufficient and, straight after the 76 mile stop, things got steep - food was still in your stomach and hadn't had a chance to reach your legs.

Ian.B

Congratulations! An epic effort.