The Annual Lunacy (aka "I Don't Do Winter") Challenge Chatzone

[ColinJ]

Yikes - I hadn't actually sat down and worked it out but yes, you are right!

I was thinking in terms of trying to do a long forum ride every second Saturday and squeezing in a few mid-week non-forum rides either with Littgull or solo.

 

[steverob]

I still have to get out of the habit of thinking of this as one of the regular challenges. About 8 miles from home, I passed the 100km mark and said to myself "well that's May's crossed off", forgetting that I'm not in the Metric Century challenge this year and even if I was, I didn't do January or February anyway!

Anyway, it was an eventful ride - the 65 mile route that I'd initially planned for Saturday but was too lazy to do then, deferred to Sunday but circumstances prevented me from doing it, so eventually done on Monday instead. Rode up past Silverstone (of the F1 circuit fame) into Northamptonshire, but as I reached what should have been my turn around point, I found Road Closed signs up on the approach to the next village on my list. In retrospect, what I should have done was turned back round to the previous crossroads and tried to pick the second half of the route back up from there (probably would have added about a mile tops), but I carried on trying to head north and west in order to loop round the closure, not realising how much further that would take me out of my way.

It didn't help that my phone crashed at this point and when I finally got it back, it only had 10% battery left (swear it was over 80% when I left the house), so I had to keep my Google Maps browsing to a bare minimum and hope that I could remember where I was trying to go. After about eight miles of incredibly undulating countryside (huge elevation gains despite never going up any hills of any great length) I finally made it back on to my planned route. Was now quite tired, but knew I had a cross-tail wind for much of the way home, plus I did have a little trick up my sleeve.

My original route I picked to avoid one particular road that is a real boneshaker - I would describe it as the worst paved two-lane road in Buckinghamshire (and there's a lot of competition there) and all the Strava segments for it are named for things like "Wheel Breaker" and "Mind the Potholes", so clearly I'm not the only one to think this. However I was now willing to take a chance on it as it would mean cutting out 3-4 miles of my route, bringing me down to about 70 miles total; plus you never know, maybe they had re-paved it since the last time I was on it (quick answer - no, they hadn't). Still, I toughed it out anyway and the cruised the remaining 15 home, hitting the 70 mark just as I entered my home road.

Oh. and my Eddington is now up to 60! Four more challenge rides gets me to 62, but after that I need 12 further rides to go just to 63. Did someone say something about a cliff edge?

 

[aferris2]

4th qualifying ride done. That just leaves 9 more to do in 7 1/2 months. This challenge is starting to become a real ... challenge! I thought that it would be much easier to get the rides done now that I have retired, but I'm starting to get really picky about what kind of weather I venture out into. Time to make the most of the summer months!

 

[lane]

Managed to make a start on this challenge with a three day tour with a couple of friends. All 3 days over my 80km target. Day one started in Derby and finished in Sandy the other side of Bedford and 155km covered. Day two cycled to Bourne in Lincs a 101km ride and day three back home for 94km. I hadn't done many long rides this year so found this tour a bit tough, especially with hills and two days of headwind, but very enjoyable all the same. Now the aim is to cover two rides a month (including this month) and finish in September.

I have also included these rides in my 50km a month challenge hope that is acceptable.

 

[ColinJ]

I have also included these rides in my 50km a month challenge hope that is acceptable.

That's fine.

I am going to try to keep most of my 161 km rides ('metric imperial' centuries!) separate from my metric century Challenge rides but I know that I will probably have to share at least some of them!

 

[bluenotebob]

I completed my fourth qualifying ride yesterday. My plan is to try and do three a month in May, June and July. And then choose something special for the 13th ride. I set the bar quite low at 70km and my only real concern is extreme heat in July and August (2018 was a killer).

I was about 10km from home yesterday when my derailleur snapped/broke/stopped working - so it was a case of finding the flattest route home. I'm off to the LBS this morning - I've no idea when I'll get my back bike, but I'm still hoping to do two more qualifying rides this month.

 

[ColinJ]

I am going to try to keep most of my 161 km rides ('metric imperial' centuries!) separate from my metric century Challenge rides but I know that I will probably have to share at least some of them!

I've been thinking about it ... The thing I don't want to do is to do only one long ride in a month and count that multiple times. If I get a rush of blood to the head and do (say) 3 or 4 imperial centuries in a month then there is no way that I'd want to have to go out and do a metric century as well! (If I chose to, that's another matter...)

I'll need to do 2 or more imperial centuries a month until the winter. I'll try to do a separate metric century as well, but if I 'only' do imperials, then I will double count one as a metric.

I got my second lunatic qualifier done yesterday. I felt the lack of riding that cost me 2 others earlier in the year, but at least I got round in one piece. All being well, my third one will be nickyboy's Llandudno ride this coming Saturday,

 

[Sea of vapours]

I rationalised this somewhat similarly.

I also don't want to just do one ride and count it for both Lunacy and Metric Century. Given the September/October time constraints of the Lunacy, however - for me that is - it makes sense to prioritise doing those, so I'm viewing my rides as the first one in a month being a Metric Century, since that *has* to be done within the month, and the rest being Lunacy. If the first ride happens to be long enough to count as a Lunacy too then that's handy, but not a requirement.

 

[ColinJ]

I suppose that I am doing that too in the sense that if I did just one long ride in the month, there is no way that I would not also count it for the metric challenge. The difference is that I would not make that call until the end of the month in question when I could see that a separate ride was not going to happen.

One thing I have noticed is that I am tending to plan metric century rides that don't go much over 100 km. If there is a route that I fancy that comes in at (say) 130 km, then I would try to add extra somewhere to bring it to my target of 161 km and not 'waste' 30 km.

 

[Sea of vapours]

... If there is a route that I fancy that comes in at (say) 130 km, then I would try to add extra somewhere to bring it to my target of 161 km and not 'waste' 30 km.

Much the same here, now you point that out My planning tends to go:
- That would be a good 100km loop.
- And it would be better with that extra climb in.
- But then it's more than 10km over 100km, though that's fine as there's plenty of daylight at this time of year.
- And if it's way over 100 it might as well be 150.
Which is why I've not actually done any 100s since the 2nd April :-)

 

[ColinJ]

I had noticed!

I am actually hoping to take advantage of the good weather and get my May metric century in on Wednesday but I don't think I am fit enough to be comfortable doing 3 imperial centuries in 8 days so I will make it as close to 100 km as I can.

 

[lane]

I was looking at this slightly differently. For a start I am only involved in the 50km challenge which has two components for me - first make sure I get at least one ride in every month and secondly build up my points total by doing more rides in most months. However left at that I think I would be content to go out and ride lots of 50km rides but perhaps not bother very often with anything longer. The purpose of this challenge is to give me the incentive to do longer rides of at least 80km 13 times in the year. However I like to count all the rides in my 50km challenge for the points total. Since one challenge is each month and one is anytime I don't think it matters. There isn't really the same cross over there is between say the 50km and 100km challenge.

 

[bluenotebob]

The purpose of this challenge is to give me the incentive to do longer rides of at least 80km 13 times in the year.

I'm in the same boat, except that I set my bar a bit lower at 13 x 70+km rides a year. My points total reflects how well I'm performing this year, compared to 2017 & 2018 (this is only my third year of 'serious' cycling) .. it has no other significance, so I don't see any merit in accumulating points separately across challenges.

My real challenge as far as HMCAM and this Lunacy Challenge are concerned is knowing in advance the distance of the route I'm following. Until January this year, I was simply content to log a ride at 49.6km (or whatever). My focus was on reaching pre-set monthly and annual targets, rather than exceeding a Challenge minimum limit. Some of the rides that I've undertaken across these two challenges have been almost as long in the planning as they have been in their execution.

I've done a few rides recently that fell just short of my 70+km Lunacy limit - I could have cycled around the village 25 times to take me over the limit, but there's a feeling of artificiality to that which seems against the spirit of these challenges. I just have to build up a decent knowledge of local distances to avoid falling foul of that dilemma.

I'm getting my bike back tomorrow evening, with two new derailleur cables fitted. Hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of this great weather before it breaks, and I'll get at least a couple more long rides in.

 

[ColinJ]

I miscalculated on one of my rides and ended up aiming to do several laps of the local park to make up the shortfall. I only managed a few laps before I got bored and headed back onto the busy main road to finish the ride off there.

 

[Fiona R]

Why isn't this getting any easier when it should be as it's generally better weather and an awful lot more daylight?! Bonkers.

Anyway, May is done, even though this isn't a monthly challenge my lunacy is backing up my RRtY and Imperial challenge, I count the same ride for both and then ride a 100km and a 50 km separately for 100km and 50km challenges. Then I count everything in the points totaliser for the 50km challenge to see what it comes to by the end of the year. I'm also counting all 100km+ rides for points in the 100km totaliser. Sort of think that's OK as I have done a separate ride for each challenge except lunacy. IYSWIM.

So this month I did my first Extended Calendar Event or ECE. I rode from home in the wrong direction for 15km to Clevedon to loop 50km around (and over Avonmouth Bridge next to M5 eyeballing lorry and coach drivers) to the start of the South Glos 100km audax from Alveston north of Bristol. Lovely weather if a little chillier than it looked. Sociable middle 100km round Tetbury and the Cotswolds. I thought this was going to be the ideal way to do my 200km as a good chunk done early, I started at 6.30am as audax was a very civilised 9.30am start and reversed the same 50km to finish. Controls were very slow as one of our group had a very early puncture so we were nearly an hour at Tetbury! I didn't start back until after 5 and when everyone else is enjoying a pint at the arrivée pub and getting into cars to drive home, that I could have got into and been done. I just kept saying I'd have to do it all over again from the start next weekend so I did my last 2 1/2 hours without stopping and managed to eat a bar from my pocket going along and not falling off. I have a huge problem eating safely on the move, fine drinking, but I need to crack it to make elapsed time less! My husband had driven up (with a couple of club mates) who rode the 100km audax bit with me, and he was home and had ordered the Indian for 8, I was in 7.30ish. So glad I didn't give up, given all the trauma of the others so far this year that should also have been benign. Saturday night "never again"

So I was wide awake at 5am yesterday, sun streaming in, husband due to play golf most of the day so I did go out for the club ride, another 107km blast to Burnham, Weston and the coast, and today I've sort of planned in my head June's lunatic expedition.
Send help. Whose stupid idea was this?