I did my local Audax club's 100k Permanent last weekend. Since it was only a 100, I didn't prepare much other than what I would usually bring on a typical weekend morning group ride. Most of the people I usually ride with didn't attend, so I was planning on doing the whole thing solo, but instead ended up riding in a small group of 5. Funny thing is, I wasn't actually planning to ride together... I was just doing my own thing for a while with them behind me, later on they thanked me for pulling for over 30+km and I just sort of ended up riding with them afterwards.
Anyways, the starting of the route wasn't very nice. With a 6am start, it was dark and plenty of road works at the beginning, so it was bumpy and I had to watch out for hazards. Nearly hit a divider in the dark; lucky the people behind me were fast enough to react as well. Some parts were also a bit confusing, but I was somewhat familiar with some sections of that area so I managed to pick the right junctions.
After around 10+km we finally got into nicer countryside roads. Weather was very nice the entire time; the previous week was full of heavy rains and thunderstorms, but the weather report mentioned no rain today so I was doubtful. Fortunately the report was accurate - mostly cloudy and cooling temperatures from all the rain the previous day.
Was making pretty good progress up until around the 80km mark. Since this was just a short 100k, I was going pretty hard and planned to try and complete in 4 hours. Was doing pretty well too, but the last 20km had some steep and tall rolling hills that nearly killed my legs. Nearly cramped in the last 5km, so had to take it easy and start spinning on lighter gears and higher cadence until I reached the finishing point.
Finished 10:03am, 3 minutes off my target. Cramps came after, lol... but I'm not too concerned about them. For this ride I was testing a more forward-positioned saddle which feels like it improves on power transfer but at the risk of muscle cramps, guess I should move the thing back to the previous position before any upcoming brevets.