Originally Posted by
Dudelsack
The thing about this brevet is that it has 7500' climbing. That's way more than I've ever done. And the past two years it's been done in freezing temps.
I'm confident I can do the century with 4500' climbing. I'd really like to get a brevet under my belt, though.
Freezing is not good. I've ridden in 33° sleet on a 200, which was not fun, but I was way under-dressed. If you're going off ride reports, 7500' is what it is, but if it's off a RidewithGPS map, multiply by ~.8. Ours is only 6600', meaning more like 5500'. Of course, I'm an optimist. I did a 200 a few years ago with 7000' which wasn't too bad because most of the climbs were relatively shallow. 8 hours ET. It's those steep suckers that rob my cadence that kill me.
I figure you can do in a day what you can do in a week. So if you're conservative and figure 9.5 saddle hours for the 200, and you're doing 9.5 hours for say 3 weeks before and then an easy week the week of, you should be able to do it fine. If you haven't been, you might try to catch a later one. Or you might be fine. It seems you've been very consistent. We've had a few 13 hour weeks, so I'm not too concerned about March 15, though my wife is.