Long distance - how old is too old?

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OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
I took advice on a thread I started earlier in the year which I can't find so maybe it was on YACF. It was something like "Coach me onto a 200 and beyond"

For my 1st 200, The only thing extra I took was my battery and some extra food which was lucky because one of the controls ran out of grub. I have lights on my bike permanently in case I'm going to arrive after dark. And earlier or later in the season I might pack another layer. Maybe an extra tube? My caveat is that I'm not very experienced and consequently I overthink everything as a result.

Which 200 are you doing btw?
OK, thank you, I've found it, so I will take a look. If anybody wants a link then I have it. Bit rude to post it on here. Here's my 200. Thanks for all your help and advice.
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
OK, thank you, I've found it, so I will take a look. If anybody wants a link then I have it. Bit rude to post it on here. Here's my 200. Thanks for all your help and advice.


That looks an awesome ride. Have done many of those roads many a time. The roads around Stock and Hanningfield make for superb riding. Finchingfield is a fantastic village. The Picture Pot Tea Rooms on the green is well worth a visit for refreshments.
You'll enjoy the ride no doubt. Quite jealous.
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
That looks an awesome ride. Have done many of those roads many a time. The roads around Stock and Hanningfield make for superb riding. Finchingfield is a fantastic village. The Picture Pot Tea Rooms on the green is well worth a visit for refreshments.
You'll enjoy the ride no doubt. Quite jealous.
Thank you, Ian. I'll check that place out then. The ride will certainly get me some more explorer tiles on Veloviewer! I'm actually getting quite excited!
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
OK, so I have entered via the PayPal link and this message appears in my calendar page:
AudaxUK said:
Enter a ride from the web site. When you get to the point you open the prefilled entry form, or click to go to online payment an entry is added to your calendar. You still have to complete the entry process. Please don't think of the entries in the your calendar as being proof of entry.
Am I in?
EDIT: Ah, I think I get it. I think it just means that calendar rides haven't been entered.
 
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Don't save or discard just press the play button again. It treated it like I had paused for a cafe stop.

^^^ This
I was also confused by the discard/save screen. When all you have to do to carry on a ride is press start again and continues where it left off.
Thank you!! I lost big chunks of the first two days of this year's Fridays Tour, for not knowing this. Thanks @Dogtrousers for articulating the problem, as I hadn't figured out how to ask somebody what I was doing wrong. :rolleyes:
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
OK, so I lashed the power bank to the bike with cable ties, etc last night to test out the questions below:
20170817_163337.jpg 20170817_163342.jpg

Also test out how your Garmin behaves:

Is there space to plug in the connector while it is mounted? Yes!
Will it still navigate while charging? Yes!
What happens when you unplug the charging cable? Does it warn you and then shut down? Yes, it counts down, so I just cancel it.

And if it has powered off can it resume navigating the course or does it point you in utterly random directions?* Or does it maybe decide that the previous course is now 0km long?* Does it allow you to continue with previous ride distance/stats or does it insist on resetting and starting again?* I didn't test this as I was in too much of a hurry to get home as I had left work late. That said, I'm not expecting it to shut down since the charging method above seems to work - hopefully all will be fine!

Getting very excited! Thanks to all of you for helping to get me here from the start of this thread. I am on the road to long distance!
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
One of these,
View attachment 368525

May be a more 'elegant' solution.

I use one to carry my 'baccy tin' and lighter
Ha! Yes, I have a similar one on order, promised for today. The mess I made last night was just to test it as I'm not cycling today.

Been a few years now since I've been on the baccy, but that would have done a treat :smile:
 

frank9755

Cyclist
Location
West London
Thinking about this garmin/route sheet thing further, I suppose part of the difference might lie between those people who like to have a sense of place as they cycle about, and those who just do the distances for the distances and are only interested in racking up the miles. That's what ultra-long distance cycling seems to me to be about, and it's probably why it doesn't interest me at all.

If anything, I'd say it's the other way round! A GPS gives a much better helicopter view of the countryside you are going through. Before / after the ride, you can upload your track to something like RidewithGPS and it shows you it on a map. And when you are on the go, you can scroll out and get a big-picture view of where you are. Before using a GPS I rode some audaxes from a route sheet and had little idea where I had been but I don't get that when using a GPS.
Best to have both as they give different information. For a UK audax I only have the route sheet in my pocket as a back-up but for rides in other countries where I don't know the geography so well, I've made my own route sheets with place names, distances and key things in each town.
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
Thinking about this garmin/route sheet thing further, I suppose part of the difference might lie between those people who like to have a sense of place as they cycle about, and those who just do the distances for the distances and are only interested in racking up the miles. That's what ultra-long distance cycling seems to me to be about, and it's probably why it doesn't interest me at all.
I think that ultra-distance cycling is about a whole lot more than racking up the miles (for me, anyway). Its something I'd love to do just for the huge adventure of it all. Take the TCR, think of the places you'd see, the people you'd meet, the long days in the saddle, the heat, the cold, the wet, the hunger, sleeping at the side of a road, dogs chasing you, bears and wolves to worry about!

Those (and a hundred others) are the reasons that I would take on the TCR or something similar (if I could). The miles would be an awesome achievement, but certainly not the main reason for doing ultra-distance.

My dream would be for this thread to document me going all the way to ultra-distance, but let's get tomorrows's 200k out of the way first, eh? Small steps.
 
OP
OP
r04DiE

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
Another thing: Do you think I'll need a lock on the Audax? Ta.
 
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