Well, I suppose I'm just old and out of shape, but a 7 hour century takes training for me.

I was just looking at my training log from last year and I see that after doing a flat metric century at the end of April, I didn't do any more rides longer than 40 miles before doing a very hilly regular century at the beginning of June. That one took me 7 hours and 25 minutes.

On the "performance" side of things (to the extent that I can even apply that term to my riding), I just did that same end-of-April metric century (Monster Cookie) and cut 20 minutes off my time from last year (3:35 this year) and I can tell you that it wore me out.