Richard Cranium

Who has info an Florida 600k route? Anyone know if the north part is hilly? Is it a tough ride? If you are a little fat, can you still make this ride?

Michelangelo

In the event you would want to ride PBP, I would strongly advise you to avoid carefully fishing for flat 600K. PBP is hilly, hilly and, well, hilly again. It is always better to know in advance what you will be facing. This year, ACP started its 600K of Noisiel at 5:00 am, to facilitate preparation of those who intend to take the 5:00 start (84 hours target) and reach Loudéac earlier than, say, 2:00 am tuesday morning.

The 400K is intended to force riders into a full night ride (with starts at 14:00 or 17:00)

The 600K is done non-stop by those who want to test their ability to ride to Brest in one shot

The 600K is done with a stop for sleep at about the PK 360 km (or later if they wish) for those who want to sleep, which permits, if you start at 5:00, to nearly avoid night riding

The Octopus 

Haven't done the route, but FWIW, I know the area and it's flat-to-rolling with no real climbing at all. (I grew up not too far from there.) We have a contingent of folks here who yearly do their series down in NW Fla. to get the benefit of considerably flatter rides and better weather. Unfortunately, those folks don't tend to do so well on brevets in other parts of the country with more challenging conditions.

That said, I understand from previous posts that you're in excellent shape so I wouldn't worry about this issue at all. It's a beautiful area of the country; lots of almond trees, live oak, and more interesting road-kill than we get in the mid-west. Do give us a ride report on your return!

Richard Cranium

Yeah, forget Florida, what about the Ohio 600k?

stevelon

check out this site. https://www.bike4one.com/brevets/2007/brevet2007.php

The Octopus 

I'll be riding it this weekend. Check out https://www.ohiorand.org/ for lots of information, including cue sheets, route maps, and an elevation profile.

I've seen all of the route this year. It's roughly a combination of our 400K and our 200K. The first 300K will be extremely hilly; no big climbs, but unrelenting hills, some of which are quite steep. The roads are good. The scenery is beautiful. Note that the first 300K is really out there; there are some very long stretches of the ride with no services.

The second 300K will be hilly-to-rolling at the start (and again at the end of it; it's an out-and-back), but then will be dead flat at its far reaches.

This is a tough 600K. Check the finish times for folks who rode the 400K two weeks ago; there's a lot of experienced ultra-racers, PBP anciens, and generally fit folks who turned in times of over 20 hours on that route, on a good weather day. It's hilly. A lot of the DNFs were from folks who rode too fast at the start and then couldn't pay the piper later in the ride.

Another note about the 600K this year: you'll come back to the start/finish (and hence, your stuff/hotel room) at the 300K-mark. Not ideal. Plan on riding it straight-through or being fast enough to buy yourself some sleep after only 300K. You could grab a room in Xenia (roughly 400K), which is a big town, but you wouldn't have anything with ya -- no drop bag there. There's a fair number of us planning on riding straight-through who will do the ride in the low- to mid-30-hour timeframe, so if you come out and that's your plan, you'll have lots of comapny.

Holler/PM with any questions. Hope to see you out there.

Richard Cranium

Thanks Octo guy, but I'm workin' for the man, trying to get some people to Paris.

The Octopus 

[Best John Wayne voice]Aw, heck. And here I thought I was going to get to finally meet the great Richard Cranium.[/Best John Wayne Voice]

Seriously, send your peeps our way. We're a friendly bunch, we'll have folks finishing across the spectrum from 29 to 39 hours, the weather here looks to be good, and if your folks ride conservatively and don't freak out over some climbing, then they'll have a good time and get some solid preparation for Paris.