Anyone riding the Manchester 100 in September?

Benny Hone wrote:

wors wrote:

Any info on the route?

Did this last year and planning on doing it this year also. Some good points and bad points about it really. Don't expect sportive-type benefits such as food and drink or a timing chip or anything like that and you won't be disappointed. Basically it's a pay-your-money-and-ride type of event. Pay for your food and drink (some long queues at the stop-offs as well!) and all they provide is an outline route. It's a good route though. From Wythenshawe Park, you go south and through Delamere forest and down through some lovely, flattish Cheshire countryside seeing very few towns and little traffic for the most part. Vale Royal is especially flat. The last bit is the hilliest and most built-up. You will also be arriving there at a time when it's at its busiest (midday onwards). This is where the only significant hill is as well and it's evil so late on! It's just past Wilmslow and wouldn't bother you normally but with 90-odd miles in the legs, it's really painful!

I'll be doing it if my lift is confirmed. I've done the M100 5 or 6 times before.

I agree with what Benny wrote about the event, and especially about that hill towards the end. The road takes a sharp left out of Wilmslow and plunges downhill. The first time, I didn't know what was coming up and flew down in the big ring only to discover to my horror that the road at the bottom turned right up the steep little climb to Styal. I desperately tried to change rings and promptly dropped my chain. I only just managed to unclip in time to avoid toppling into the road and having sorted that out I then had the humiliation of grovelling up the hill with a convoy of cars backing up behind me...

Other observations:

The main toilet block near event HQ is often still chained up before the start of the event! It wasn't until my last M100 that I discovered other toilets in the group of buildings by the car park.

The small map supplied isn't a lot of use if you get lost (which I have done a couple of times). The route is well sign-posted and there should be marshals at every junction. Unfortunately, I think it must be the marshal's job to put his/her junction's sign up because each time I got lost, both marshal and sign were missing. Following other riders doesn't necessarily help - that's how I got lost!

Cacbyname supplied a GPS log from the ride on the old C+ forum. There was a diversion at Byley that year due to a motorcyclist being involved in an RTA but I've edited that out of the route. If you have a GPS, you should find this GPX file useful.

Here is a map of the route, which goes anticlockwise from Wythenshawe park:



If you don't have a computer or GPS on your bike, you might like to know that the junctions are numbered and there are near enough 100 of them so they give you a pretty good idea of where you are on the route. They are fairly evenly spread out.

b]PS I've just looked at the aerial view in Google Earth (link in post below) and have changed my mind about the location of this incident - I remember being in trees and there aren't any at Hatchmere![/b At Great Budworth the road drops down to cross the A559 and then rises up again on the other side. On my first M100 I saw someone ahead of me ignore the marshal's instruction to stop at the junction. He was obviously trying to use his momentum to get up the other side, but he came within a whisker of being hit by a fast moving car that he obviously hadn't spotted. Don't risk it.

I've seen quite a few other stupid moves, especially in the run in to Manchester. Some people seem willing to take crazy risks just to knock a few seconds off their times. Things like sprinting across red lights through small gaps in cross-traffic.

I can't remember exactly where it is, but somewhere in the first half, perhaps about the 40 mile mark (?) there is a sharp right-hand bend just before a farm. There has been slurry on the road there a couple of times that I've done the M100. One year a fast-moving group hit that and someone fell and broke his hip or pelvis. I nearly came off myself there. Keep your eyes peeled just in case.

The lunchstop at the halfway point isn't! Halfway that is... My first year I rode myself almost to a standstill expecting a break at 50 miles and then had to grovel another 5 miles to Nantwich, which did my head in. Once you realise that Nantwich comes where it does, it is actually quite nice because you have done well over half the work when you stop.

Some of the roads after the lunch stop are really rough. I've had to lower my tyre pressures to prevent my fillings from being shaken out. With a bit of luck those roads will have been resurfaced since I last did the event in 2005.

I don't like the last 25 miles or so because of the traffic. Also, at that point you will be constantly catching riders who are doing the shorter route, and a lot of them don't seem to be very experienced cyclists so watch out for them - I've had riders suddenly stop dead in front of me for no apparent reason, pull out without signalling, wobble all over the place...

Very fit riders will tell you that the M100 is flat. These are people who probably get round in 5 hours or less. For lesser mortals, such as myself (ride time usually about 5 hrs 45 mins + 30 mins for lunch), it certainly isn't. According to my mapping software, there is a total of at least 800 metres of climbing. There certainly aren't any big hills, but a lot of the ones you will encounter are quite steep. They are fine if you go up them at your own speed, but if you are riding with much fitter riders and they sprint up them, don't make my mistake and try and stay with them - you'll pay later!

When you get back into the park - SLOW DOWN! There is always a big turn out of families and there will be young children wandering about.

If you do the event - enjoy it, and look out for me, biggish guy wearing red/black kit, blue/black peaked Met helmet and riding a red Cannondale.

nom de plum wrote:

Colinj, great write up of the M100...I agree with everything you said...How did you edit Cacbynames gpx file??
I'm doing it again this year, I am aiming to better last years 5:32

I can't remember what format it was supplied in but I'd loaded the original file into my Memory Map software to view it. If it was a tracklog, I must have used MM's track->route conversion function because when I looked at my copy of the file yesterday it was saved as a route in MM's own .MMO format. I decided that it would be more useful as a GPX file so I just used MM's SAVE AS function and specified GPX format.

It would be easy to open a GPX file in a text editor and simply take out any waypoints that weren't wanted, provided that you could work out which ones they were of course!

I've now made the route available for GOOGLE EARTH and GOOGLE MAPS via this link.

on the road wrote:

ColinJ wrote:

Other observations:

The main toilet block near event HQ is often still chained up before the start of the event!

Go behind a tree, that's what I did :oops:

Well I suppose that rather depends on what you want to do behind the tree, and whether you mind having an audience while you do it :? !!

An excerpt from my 2004 Manchester 100 ride report:

For about 20 minutes I had been suffering vicious rumblings in my innards as 3 cups of strong coffee worked their evil ways on me! We'd arrived later than usual and got stuck in traffic on the way into the park. I had a bad feeling about this... There were people everywhere. Did I risk hobbling round to the toilets only to discover a huge queue of bunged-up cyclists? After all, there were about 1,000 people ahead of me! I couldn't risk being stranded there on foot in my hour of need. I crossed my legs and started unloading my stuff from the car. My mate quickly assembled his bike, jumped on and rode off to the start line. He'd told me to slam his tailgate shut when I was ready. I spotted my bag inside at the last moment. Phew, that was close! I would have been really stuck on the ride without my food and drink...

I saddled up and rode over to the park toilet block. For once there were no queues, which was nice! Except that the reason for this was that for the 2nd year on the trot (forgive the pun!) the toilet doors were still chained up! This of course is Great Britain and the sort of thing that we have to put up with in this country. Would this happen in Germany or Japan? What pathetic organisation when many hundreds of people have turned up for an organised event. The council as usual managed to get someone to turn out to charge us for parking our cars but did anybody have the key to that padlock - no!

We'd had this problem last year too, so I'd feared the worst and mentally prepared for it. Still, I was beginning to get into panic mode, quickly mounted up and sprinted to the far end of the park. At last I espied a suitable-looking bush. I was about to dive into it when the sound of a woman's voice came from deep inside - "Sam, Sam, where on earth are you you daft mutt?" Oh big buttock-clenching, bugger-tastic, ****ing botheration! I feared the consequences of this delay but had no choice but to remount and try again elsewhere. I don't know what it is about doggie owners but why do they have to hang about in parks before 8:00 on a Sunday morning? Two more Close Encounters of the Hound-hauling Kind later I found myself enjoying the splendid isolation of a large clump of bushes (which actually turned out to be rather closer to the park railings and the main road than I'd at first thought, but beggars can't be choosers and all that - damn the pedestrians :oops:). I relaxed and...all became a burning mist!

Oh, that reminds me...

Advice for cycling event first-timers:
(1) Don't forget your bike!
(2) Don't forget your shoes!
(3) Don't forget your bottles!
...
(27) Always carry your own toilet paper - event HQ always seems to run out before you get there!
...

It depends on what kind of gear set-up you've got. There's a few small hills during the ride, easy to get up but I noticed a few mountain bikers using the wrong gear and having to get off and push.

I'm doing it again this year, done it in 5h 44m last year but I'm hoping to do it in 5h 30m or quicker this time.

wors wrote:

Thanks for all the info, It will be my first century as well, I am hoping to do it within 6 hrs i usually average around 18 miles an hour though so if i can keep that up for the distance it should be around 5 1/2 hrs.

Officially, all riders are supposed to stop for 30 minutes at Nantwich. There are usually a couple of kids to stamp a card when you arrive/ leave to enforce this. I'm not sure what the thinking is behind it - maybe it is to stop some less experienced riders over-reaching themselves and getting into difficulties? I've always found it a bit of a nuisance because I cool down, then have to warm up again after the stop. If I do the event this year, I'll just fill my bottles and carry on without a break. I don't mind if I don't get an official time. With a 30 minute stop, I'd be aiming for 6 hours, but without that I'd be trying to beat 5 hrs 30 mins too.

One thing that keeps the average speed down is the number of junctions. There are about 100 so it is easy to lose 30+ minutes on them. A lot of them you can get through easily, but some are across busy roads and you can lose minutes on them. Ditto with traffic lights, but as I mentioned in an earlier post - please don't let that tempt you to take chances. A decent time in a charity century ride is not worth dying for.

I was considering not bothering about the "compulsory" stop this year. I found it simply a nuisance and only served to make me stiffen up (......my legs!!!!)

last year at the end of the ride I was given something that said congrats on completing the M100 in under 10 hour!! So I would rely totally on your own timing