2025 done! Another silver star for my collection.
A beautiful, if nippy day. 3° to start and 9° to finish. Blue skies. No ice. Unfortunately as my route was predominantly South I had bad sun glare in my eyes for a lot of the time, but apart from that ideal conditions.
Unfortunately I didn't have ideal legs. I had 1,600m of ascent in my 100km so lumpy but not a total killer. I'd front-loaded the route so the last 30km was relatively easy. Good not to have to deal with hard climbs at the end? Nice theory but in practice I was so wrecked that it was a real struggle even on the final gentle gradients.
Looking back on my imperial century days, 80km was when I texted home that I was half way. Generally still feeling good at that point, and it was normally after that point that I ran into trouble. This time at 80km I was already deep in survival mode and playing mental games to convince myself to keep moving. Mind you I typically finished my 100 milers in a state of misery and agony, so all that has changed is my rides have got shorter. And slower. Much, much slower. Audax OTL slow. Today wasn't my quite my slowest ever. I have done one 100k more slowly. Just one, and I had an excuse that day (2,100m of ascent).