Originally Posted by
Machka
A century is miles not kilometres ... or if you speak in kilometres, it's 160 km.
A 7 hour century is a fairly brisk century.
My centuries have ranged between 6 hours and 15 hours depending on a number of different factors.
For someone who hasn't ridden that sort of distance in a while, on a nice day, relatively flat route, not much wind ... 8 hours is a reasonable estimate.
Add hills, wind and cold, and you might be looking at 9+.
It's a good point, I think the ones I did last year both had tailwinds on the way back, on nice rollers. You can get into a nice rhythm and fly to the finish.