ditto
did a relatively flat (for western PA) metric century one time that was brutal - hot humid sunny day and a pace above my comfort level ... I was toast
at the time - I could not stand flat rides - but now for the most part that is what I do ...
I do have lower gearing now for the occasional climbing: 34/30 ... 31/34 on another bike ... and a bike with a 22/32 on a triple for those nasty short climbs
His math is absurd. No matter how you slice it, all he did was climb 800 feet. I ride in New England, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a century route, metric or imperial that didn't have climbs of several times higher than that, sections of which will be at a relatively high grade (not 15%, but his math indicates there can't be much of that on his ride either since 1 mile at 15% would account for all of the 800 feet, and he's describing a 2 mile climb) . If he's really claiming that 800 feet of climb doesn't count because it's scattered over a 100 mile route, he's going to have to show some math here.