Okay kids, I’m thinking about doing this. https://regonline.activeglobal.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?EventID=1449540
Probably the shorter version because of family and time constraints.
There’s a link to a writeup of last year’s ride. Sounds like pretty hard going with the majority of the climbing in the last 50kms. The rest of the ride is probably pretty nice, we did the sackville to st albans/wisemans bit last year and it was great, nice rolling roads, mix of dirt and gravel. The organiser was telling me it’s really quite a hard ride, and this is a guy who does 400 and 1200km audax rides… Looks like the 200 took about 12 hours last year…
Also, fastest guy was on a 29er, but there was also a fat-tyred 650b and a guy on 27/1.25s, and last year Lizanne rode a bunch of those roads on 23s. I’d probs do it on 28s or 32s on the primate.
I’m gonna guess that the 116 could be done in about 5 hours.
I had plans for this mate, and have been doing sneaky dirt sessions on the karate monkey, but I have a wedding in tweed heads that weekend. So, i’m out.
Would anyone be keen on a group for the short one, and with a not-so-fast pace? I could probably fit 28s on the chinacarbon, but might also take the nature boy as the first 100 looks not-so-hilly.
Then again as normal theres my normal 95% flaking out risk.
While I totally support organised rides like this we could still do something like this or similar on our own. Maybe even as an overnighter as long as the temperatures hold up. Dont have any experience riding in the Blue Mountains but I guess we could come up with something.
As far as “organised” goes, this ride is very loosely so. It’s part of Audax, so if you complete it and get your card stamped it counts towards a brevet series or some such. I think, I don’t really know how it works.
Seeing as a bunch of people are gonna be away for this, maybe we should aim to re-do Carlin’s Wiseman’s gravel ride from last year at some point when we can get a group together. 100-odd kms, lots of dirt, lots of climbing, ferries etc. Could do a bit of a variant and head to St Alban’s for lunch maybe. Skipping the convict road this time maybe
To be honest, a 6am start in Bilpin is probably pushing it anyway unless a friendly person picked me up on the way through. It’s an hour or so from mine so would be a good 1.5 hours for you city folk.
‘Audax’, ‘sportive’, ‘sportif’, ‘cyclo’, ‘challenge’… the terminology is quite arcane to me, so I put them in the same basket. The Audax Australia website lists Fitz’s Challenge (which I consider an Audax, with comparable distances to the Bilpin ride), for $75 (early bird).
Given that nearly every audax ride is at or under $10 for members, they’re pretty good deals. If you get a jersey/rider pack/etc it’s probably in the bucket with sportif/challenge/charity.
Fitz’s may be listed, but like the Alpine Classic, it’s a charity ride where the 200k + rides are recognized as official brevets. The charity component is why it’s not $6.
