Sunday 24 April 2011

Century ride - dont try this at home kids!

7 weeks till we get the train to Penzance!
Please donate on our just giving website for this charity ride!

We rode a century today, 100 miles! hell yeah! This is the furthest we have ever ridden!
First century ride, as i write this i am not itching to do a second one.
It hurt a lot, we probably shouldnt have included a 1000ft hill towards the end either!

Heres the actual route on bikemap - http://www.bikemap.net/route/927343

We have ridden part of this route before when we did an 86 mile ride just to see if we could go that far. Months later and after much training it seemed a good idea to knock off a century, so Steve modified our route slightly and off we went.

We set off at 7am and were out for 11hours!
5543ft overall ascent, max elevation 1139ft.

Pictures are below

Two hours ride up the A6 to Lancaster, a 4x4 with a horsetrailer came ridiculously close to me as it passed, i jumped out of my skin, Steve - 'you coulda got in that horsebox mate!' then over to Bentham. The A65 past Settle was bad to ride due to so much traffic, we went fairly quickly to get off that road. Such a big difference between riding quite country lanes with the birds for company to a hectic dual carriageway on easter sunday. We stopped for lunch in Long Preston on a random bench on the village green. 5 hours riding 55miles on the clock.
Steve - 'Were halfway there", Me - "I am knackered!".

After lunch it got hillier, culminating in Easington Fell, we sat at the top on the floor, cackling slightly as we still had 30 miles or 3 hours riding to go at that point.
This was all soon forgotten as we dropped down 700ft in about 3 miles, flipping unbelievable! Like being on a rollercoaster, our new personal best top speed achieved, 41mph, thats pretty quick on a laden touring bike, dont fall off at that speed!
We then churned through Clitheroe, creaked through Longridge towards home, worked out we werent going to hit 100 miles and had to ride round the block for a couple of miles to toggle over into being centurions. ha ha ha brilliant!

A6 on the way to Lancaster

spot the Farnan, can you see him?















Ingleborough and the bikes




lunch in Long Preston, 55 miles ridden





stocks reservoir

 


view from easington fell, halfway up!
 


This was the hardest ride weve ever done, parts of it were unbelievable, the yorkshire dales are fantastic. Parts of it were very hard, its a bloody lot of miles, i am not going to discuss chaffing, and why you need chamois cream on long rides...
and I never got my f###### icecream either!

Cheers
DB
:)

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