Sunday 20 January 2008

A metric century

A metric century on the road, on an unsuitable bike. I found an 85km route on Bikely and added a little to it to get it up to a round 100km. Darlington - Shildon - Sadberge - Neasham - Girsby - North Cowton - Darlington.

Hard going on 32:16 with big tyres.

Distance: 62 miles (100 km)
Climbing: 2889 ft (see here)
Surface: On-road (plus a couple of off-road detours)
Time: 5 hours 50 minutes
Weather: Cold and wet under-tyre
Bike: Inbred Singlespeed (32:16, with 2.1″ tyres)

Update: Height gain added (23/01/08)

5 comments:

Raoul said...

Sounds ace Mike like quite a lot of the Border bike ride but backwards if you see what I mean with the North Yorks extension. I really need to get out and do some riding....

Mike said...

It was a surprising nice route, considering it went through Shildon :)

I never got around to doing the full Border bike ride, just tagged onto the end once after marshalling a check point, and it doesn't run anymore. It's been replaced by a set of four rides on the first Sundays of June, Jult, August and September, finishing with the Hell O' The North. I've done the Hell O' The North twice now, and should be able to do all four of the rides in the series this year.

I've ridden a surprising amount this month. Nowhere near the 14 miles a day, but that was never going to happen. On track for 204 miles, which is my fourth best month and almost 80 miles more than last January. I'm still not sure how that happenned, I must have missed a week commuting last January.

Raoul said...

There's an ace Italian cafe in Shildon but that's about all it really has to offer, I reckon. I keep meaning to have a go at the Hell of the North it's just always been when I've had other stuff on and living in Lunun kind of makes it hard now.

Mike said...

The route of the HOTN is pretty easy to follow if you can't make it on the day. I've linked to a map from by blog post about it.

mactually » Blog Archive » January Riding said...

[...] 200 miles for the month! January Riding Proper rides: 62 miles (metric century ride) Commuting: 91 miles (16 days riding to work and back) Business: 39 miles (3 trips to work via [...]