Originally Posted by big john

I remember when people started subtracting their breaks from the total ride time. WTF? Someone who I knew was slower would claim a time much faster than I had. It took a minute before I found out what they were doing. I always thought if you started @ 8:00 and finished @ 3:00 the ride took 7 hours. You don't get to say you did the ride in 6 hours just because you took 1 hour in breaks.

A local ride called The Solvang Century was my second century, organized or not. It has between 4 and 5k feet of climbing, depending on route variations. The fastest I ever did it was just over 6 hours, including stopping at all the sag stops. I've never been a fast climber so I was happy with that. I don't think I ever tried for a fast time on a century, usually just try to stay with my friends or struggle to the finish alone.

My friend, pizza guy, who I ride with on Tuesdays, used to do a lot of the local double centuries. There is a small group of guys who "race" the doubles. Friend "won" some of them until they started working against him. They figured out he had the best kick at the end so they would work with him until late then they would try and get rid of him for the finish. One time they took off from the last rest while he was in the restroom. He was able to chase most of them down.

He finished a moderately hilly double in 8 hours 53 minutes!.