Completed another 400k over the weekend. For a completely different change of pace, we had a relatively low turnout of 64 registered participants. On the other hand, it was a nice scenic route through low traffic countryside roads (except for the a few main roads connecting towns). Hot weather as usual, and always at the worst time (i.e. during the big climb), but at least the scenery was great. Due to the low participation count, I found myself riding all alone for a large portion of the ride; there were entire sections where I never saw anyone else, just me and passing traffic (and after the second checkpoint, just me and the darkness). My
ride video here is a little bit shorter than usual, because there was a lot of night riding where there would be nothing interesting to capture on camera anyway.
Highlight of the ride, reward for making the climb under the afternoon sun (screen grab from the 4K video of my GoPro, with some retouching):
Also, I guess I'm different from @
antimonysarah in the sense that I prefer the flatter roads over rollers when I am tired. I find that I can drop down to very light gears like 36/14 and keep spinning at 85-95rpm, whereas hilly roads just get annoying grinding 8km/h and below, and then to find out that there's a whole lot more of those after the crest. My only issue with the flat roads is that they can be mentally taxing. Counting down the KMs on a long, 30km stretch of road to the next turn, and then after that turn it's another long flat stretch to the next turn, and so on... but I guess it's a "pick your poison" kind of torture? Either suffer multiple hills or suffer multiple long stretches of flats...
At the start of next month is a very flat 300k... haven't decided if I want to join that one yet. It's a 3-hour long drive to the starting point so... ugh...