Century Strategy

[luvmyguys]

For your first point: don't go out too hard, too fast, do you have an easy, high cadence developed with a disciplined speed and pedal stroke? So keep it even, and at a pace you can maintain without sprinting followed by crawling because you are exhausted.

I try to spend as much time as possible in my small front ring, if that helps, when I do go to the large, it's temporary, and I can definitely feel ease of tension when I go back to the small front ring.

A lot of newer riders in my area, and some not so new, spend a lot of time in the large ring. Our roads are almost completely flat, I live at sea-level. And yet, they are mashing gears to keep up, whereas the racers (and those who copy them, like me), are in the small rings in front, somewhere in the middle in the back, and not stressing because they could ride like that all day long. (I've read big gears contribute to lactic acid build-up, and they are certainly not good for the knees, not compared to the small).

This is interesting. I started out like that - only using the big gear for downhills (and there weren't many of those - I live in flatsville). With the group I was riding with, it was the opposite - the coaches and more experienced folk were advocating - downright harping - on using the big gear on flats. NOW - I know there are some pretty similar gear ratios between the two chainrings - maybe that has something to do with it? The reasoning given was that you could go the other way, and wear yourself out aerobically too soon (as opposed to wearing your muscles out too soon by mashing in the big gear).

I do know that the advice was "most amount of power for the least amount of effort", which factored in cadence. I was trying to go for feeling like there was barely any grab on the gears, and maybe "almost too easy" would go just a little bit further?

The first century I tried - the timing and conditions were such that I was having to push harder, earlier - I needed to average higher than I was averaging in training, and in very windy, somewhat hilly conditions at that, just to make it back before cars were going to be towed from the starting point. That and I was a ball of nerves to begin with, partly because I had my doubts as to being able to maintain that speed for that distance.

This one I'm going to ride on my terms.