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Knowing what spares to pack is an interesting exercise I reckon.
- I /did/ have magic links with me last weekend for the first time ever
- I did not have a spare tyre, though I did stop for a guy in the middle of nowhere who had had a blowout that removed the bead from his tyre, so he was looking for a spare.
- When cleaning my bike the next day I discovered that my crank was coming loose. I had not been carrying an allen key sufficiently large to sort that if it had worsended.
I also really need to sort out lights if I decide to enter PBP
- I /did/ have magic links with me last weekend for the first time ever
graunch
@fizzy.bleach
I'm not massively experienced at longer distances; I've only done 3 rides ever of 200km or more, but just some observations from Sunday's Hop Garden 200.
Since I've recently been riding with my club and pushed my way into pace group 2 of 4. I've been able to ride much faster over shorter distances (c.85-100km) than ever before. I reckon I could comfortably do a flattish 100k audax in four hours now, with no significant stops, so I was looking at doing 200 on Sunday in 10 hours.
Anyway for a number of reasons me and my mate found ourselves at the cutoff limit everywhere in the fist half on Sunday, which was probably due to us stopping a fair bit and a couple of mechanicals*. Plus we got stuck behind a horsebox for ages at 7mph.
We left the lunch control 5 minutes after the cutoff time and I was getting a little bit worried to be honest.
Anyway, by the three-quarter-ish control point, we'd managed to claw back 1h10m somehow, and lots of that was into a headwind.
We did the whole thing in about 12h dead, with 1h30m to spare. If it was up to me we would have gone faster with fewer stops but I'd rather have the company and get round in one piece.
Well, this is slightly rambling and boring.
Signing off now.
/* for the first time ever I snapped a chain. Magic link just failed spectacularly and neither of us had a spare. I was about to pop a link out and join the chain with my chaintool when a non-audaxer bloke rides past.
"Are you alright lads?"
"Erm, you haven't got a magic link have you?"
"Let me see...will this do you?"
Saved me a lot of bother! Lesson learnt there.
I'm not sure why the link failed. I reckon it's had less than 1000km on it.