Yes to the seventy miler. As far as tapering is concerned, usually the advice is that in the week preceding the ride, reduce your mileage but keep the same intensity. Personally I take two days off - or at most, do one slow recovery ride - before a century because I'm getting old and I go best when fresh.

From your recent descriptions you may well be ready to do the 100-miler in a couple of weeks. But it's a good deal further than you have ridden so far, it includes a fair amount of climbing and it needs treating with respect. You will not make it - or, at least, you'll be in bits before the end - if you go off too hard. A century isn't a problem as long as you keep repeating to yourself that in order to finish fast, you have to start slow.

Whenever I say this to people, they nod knowingly as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. But as you get fit, you feel great on the bike. In the early stages of the ride you are full of the sheer joy of it, you could go faster, you can't believe how slowly everyone is going around you, you want to press on. But if you do, at about seventy miles the guys you left behind will begin to pass you. By the time you get to eighty five miles you'll be seriously doubting whether you can finish. And when you do finish, you'll have covered the second fifty miles more than an hour slower than the first fifty. Be one of the few who is intelligent enough to learn from other people's experience, and ride within yourself for the first seventy-five miles. If you still feel strong then, go like hell.

And drink every fifteen minutes, and eat every half hour. Without fail.