Awesome!
I decided to ride this months' populaire with the group. I knew I wanted to hammer it out and try for a very good time. I switched out cassettes last night from my 13-30 to an 11-26, so I had some gears to hammer on, instead of spinning my high gear like I tend to do on flattish rides. I've only used the 11-26 cassette on a few other rides, where I knew there were no major climbs. And this was just such a ride, never requiring me to drop to the small ring, or to cross chain (meaning I never used a gear lower than 46x23)
I had a goal of 4:00 hours on the bike. I didn't make it, with a rolling time of 4:08:27. I was 4 minutes faster on the return, despite there being a good bit of rain on that leg. The middle section of roads were a bit rough, and knowing this going in I dropped the pressure on the tires by 5psi front and rear. The CX geometry and 28s were made for this, and the bike acted awesome, floating over all the choppy pavement and really encouraging me to just go for it. Averaging 16.7 over 69 miles is pretty damn fast for me. I've done faster rides, but never over such a distance. Honest Abe, which I consider my "TT Century", has never had me average better than 15.96.
The route wasn't exactly flat, but rolled pretty much the whole way with no significant climbs, but still even the one guy who came on a SS with rack and panniers managed to get in within the time limit. My gps shows 2562ft of climbing, making it the "flatest" ride I've ever created, and less than 200 ft more than the July Populaire Steve created.
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