Gulp - Gone and done it now!

[MightyMitre]

We also have "C" roads, but no-one ever talks about them!

Yeh - what's a C road when it's at home? I must have been on one at some point. Maybe it's a road that's only one car wide?

Great to hear I'm not the only one who has a confusing mix of metric and imperial. My understanding is as follows:

weight : stones and lbs. It's much easier to loose 2 lbs than a kilogram
distance: miles, unless in Europe when I use kms - 6kms to go is so much more welcome than 6 miles to go.
Inches and feet I get, but couldn't give you an estimate the length of a yard, where as I could easily estimate 100m.
Cooking - easy to roughly guess how much 4 oz of butter is, but have no idea how much 200g looks like.

Eeek - that's seriously confussed.

Anyway, have a great time on you imperial centuary ride. It should be excellent. I agree with the others, if you let them all know you're new to chaingains then they'll all help, but.... hoping not to offend any of the triathletes out there..... there's a bit of an unofficial consensus of oppinion amongst some of the club riders down here that generally triathletes bike handling skills are not all that great, compared to pure cycling roadies. ( Me thinks there could be a bit of snobbery in there. )

But on saying that , most bike legs of a tri are out and back along a straight coned off routes. A lot of triathletes also often put cycling as the discipline they'd most like to improve on. ( BTW - my brother does tri and agrees with me on a lot of this stuff

So, you never know, you might even be able to teach them a thing or two.

TOP TIP for riding in a pace line - keep an ear out for the freewheel clicking on the bike in front of you, as the rider in front eases off. If you do the same it means you won't need to grab for your brakes to slow yourself down.

Best of luck!

[MightyMitre]

Ok - so after being so critical of triathletes bike skills, I think I should mention that my swimming style could be described as 'individual ' and any triathletes out there could swim circles round me any day of the week.

My brother would also agree with me on this too

[SnappyPix]

MM

Thanks for the advice - the event is being organised by a traditional cycling road club, and the bloke in charge has been very disparaging about the group of triathletes, so much so that he keeps trying to persuade me to ride with a different group.
As you say, I think it's pure snobbery on the bike club's part.
No road skills, no team ethos, no idea how to collectively fix a puncture fast, etc. etc. However I did point out to him that a collective group of women will instinctively look out for one another, pull together and work as a team, which is apparently what the leader of the triathletes said to him too!
I'll bear in mind the top tip about the freewheel.

[nuthatch]

Well, I think I've solved the mystery of the C-Road, MM. I watched the Tour of Flanders yesterday (replay with Phil Liggett/Bob Sherwin on OLN here in the US) and those roads the boys were riding HAD to be C-Roads!! They looked no more than 6 feet across in some sections!! Those Belgians had too many bricks on their hands, too - cobblestone everywhere!!

[Adventure Girl]

I thought you couldn't draft in triathlons. Maybe you can in some and can't in others... If drafting is not allowed, then I wouldn't expect the triathletes to train in pace lines much. I agree with what a few others have said here, talk it over with the others before the ride. Find out what their plans are and what they expect from you. And find out what to expect from them!

I have one more tip that I didn't see mentioned before. Don't overlap wheels with the bike in front of you. SadieKate said, "don't touch the tire in front of you." But actually keeping your wheel behind the the one in front is important. If you are overlapped and they move laterally, they may take you down. And if you go down in a pace line, EVERYONE is going to go down!

Good luck!

[MightyMitre]

Hi Nuthatch - wasn't Flanders great, and my fave Tom Boonen won! I was on the edge of my seat as he tore off down the road.

As far as C roads go - you've got it! Perfect example. Thing is, they're not as rare as you might think. My parents live down a lane one car wide and even the larger B road is so narrow in places you have to slow down to pass each other. Not much room on this little island of ours but sure is pretty in the spring when all the hedges start to turn green.

Snappypix - you should have a great day. It's good fun riding in a bunch and you'll be amazed at how much easier it is with a whole load of you for shelter. Enjoy.

Adventure Girl - I believe drafting is allowed in officially recognised triathlons, which I think is a bit daft. It means you might as well do away with the swim as it gives you no advantage, if someone last out of the water is just going to sit on your wheel the whole way round, resting, then beat you in the run.

At the end of the day I s'pose it's all people-on-bikes which has got to be good.

[slinkedog]

My friend who does tons of tri's every year says that drafting is MOST DEFINITELY NOT allowed on the bike. You can't really avoid it on the swim portion, but apparently most events are pretty closely patrolled for drafting violations on the bike. She told me one time what the allowable distance is on the bike, but I can't remember what it was. Blaine (my husband) did a tri with her just two years ago (the Wildflower in central CA) and she did the swim and the run and he did the bike. He said everyone was very good and no one tried to draft off of anyone.

However, that said, a couple of weeks ago Beth (my tri friend) and I were out riding together and we went past (going the opposite direction) her tri team that were out for a training ride, and they were in a huge paceline. There were like 30 of them, I think. So, I guess the rules don't apply for training!!