Audax rides

When is it? It would be an easy BRM 300 qualifier thingie for me as I've ridden it solo a couple of times already.

Last weekend in March I think

Could be maybe yeah possibly I think about it definitely uh huh perhaps

I know they can't predict the weather more than 30 minutes in advance but come on weather! All nice while I'm in the office but as soon as there's a ride on..
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/gcpn7mhjk#?fcTime=1412377200

Nicely showered after the start and then you go. What is not to like?

Oh yeah, I saw you riding down Grays Inn Road ages ago but forgot to mention it in Spotted. So, err, spotted.

I forgot to say that I saw Ludwig riding down Highgate Hill last week when I was on my way up to Norths.

I guess I should give it a pop at some point.

Right I'll be signing up this weekend I think. I reckon the end of march is a reasonable schedule to build up to a first 300 and I'll have a couple more 200s behind me by then.

I started late 2010, thinking a 300 in the following summer was a good target.

Got in with the wrong crowd and ended up in Paris the following August.

The excitement is infectious in a PBP year.

Yeah the planning forward is pretty exciting in itself. Now I know I can get round a 200 at least, there are so many possibilities in the calendar...

My brain dump from today's AAAnfractuous 200.

Nice write up. That was a tough old day. I am on the train back to London after packing in Marlow had knee pain from about 110k pushed on until Marlow but was crawling up every lump by that point and decided enough was enough those lanes were horrible in the dark! Marlow station is closed for the weekend so had to get to Maidenhead took the wrong exit on a roundabout and ended up turning onto the M4! FML my first dnf but learnt a lot more from it than others similar to the review above take suitable clothing but also better lights and train more! I did a similarly hilly 200k last Sunday and my knee is clearly not up to it yet.

Bugger. Knees are not something to mess with. Rest it up properly.

hippy, sort out an RSS feed for your blog, willya? You almost never mention it here so I forget you have one and miss out on reading your updates.

Not a nice day for even considering hilly suffering in the Chilterns, good work both.

I rarely post to it these days and like the plumber who never gets around to fixing their own place up, I can't be arsed working on that clunky thing. I didn't think people still did RSS? Isn't everyone tweeting everything these days?

What's wrong with this: http://thehippy.net/nucleus/xml-rss.php

Ah, that works, ta. Digg reader didn't pick it up automatically because it's an unusual format.

Lots of people still use RSS, just as lots of people still have Carradice bags and dynamo front lights or bikes with only one gear. In about 8 years time everybody will be wanting an RSS feed again, you heard it here first.

I used to have a site with loads of feeds but they changed it and then people seemed to give up blogging anyway. 140 chars is so much easier.

I didn't think people still did RSS?

I still love it (although I came to this thread due to your tweet, so go figure), but then I also still find utility in UseNet. Such retrogrouchery should be right at home in the Audax thread, but the 12 year olds who run the world now have never even heard of nntp.

I used to love newsgroups but don't have much use for them now. Binaries maybe. Same goes for IRC and standalone email clients.

standalone email clients

Still use those, still use pop/smtp on them too :-)

Weirdo.

Actually I was using Thunderbird just to backup my email but that stopped when I went to 2FA and I've not bothered to configure it to work. Yet another IT task in my todo list that's been there for ages untouched.

I think my arms are worse than my legs today - that's what happens when you swap TT bike for over-geared road bike and A roads for lumpy lanes.

The 'Upper Thames' ride was mentioned. Anyone doing this? Bit further away for me - it'd be 75k each way to/from the start, making it ~360k day.
http://www.aukweb.net/events/detail/14-602/

212km cycling event starting from Cholsey, E of Didcot. Controls at Waterperry and Chipping Norton, plus 4 information controls.

A gently rolling ride through the Chilterns, Cotswolds and the flatter West Oxfordshire plain. Controls are at commercial cafes, and plenty of hot food (included in the entry) at the end. PLEASE ENTER ON-LINE
There is a surcharge for postal entry. If you must use postal entry, no SAE required unless you need hard copy routesheet. Route is broadly to outskirts of Henley, over Chilterns to Waterperry (cafe), past Bicester into Cotswolds to Chipping Norton (cafe), via Brize Norton to Stanford-in-the-Vale, back to Cholsey. Given the time of year some of the roads are likely to be mucky, hence my request (not demand) that mudguards be fitted in order to avoid problems with the controls. Cholsey has a station on the London Paddington-Reading-Oxford line.

I might be depending on when we complete on a flat purchase.

Speaking as a slower rider I like the sound of this from the Upper Thames website:

As it is always on the Saturday closest to November 5th, the slower riders have traditionally been entertained to firework displays in the latter stages.

Long range forecast is currently for a dry early November. I'm tempted

Yup, Upper Thames was the second 200 I ever did. Certainly saw lots of fireworks as I finished with ~5 minutes to spare. A few hours faster the second time round!

Both times I've done it it started/finished in Sonning Common. I hear the Cholsey start/finish is an improvement on an already good ride.