| A question that has been nagging at me for a while and which I feel kinda
daft asking....
What is a `century' ?
Sounds daft I know.
I tend to get up on a sunday morning, swallow some muesli, phone up
Alan and then we go out cycling. Some days we do 60 miles, some days
we do 100 miles (and some days - too often of late - we decide that we
don't want to go out in the sleat and snow), pretty soon we'll be doing
`double metrics' - 200km or about 125 miles. Occassionaly we (well Alan
does, I will) do what are known as Audaxes in the UK (not unrelated to
cyclo-sportifs in France).
All of these activities (except the first) consist of cycling about one
hundred miles. Are they what people would refer to as centuries or is
there something else I'm missing?
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Rod, it is either, as you guessed, 100 miles or 62.2 miles ("a metric
century"). I guess we can get pretty much off in left field (a baseball
term :-)) when assuming that all our terms are universal.
The name is said to have arisen from the subjective time it takes to
ride your first century ... "This ride feels like it's been going on
for a hundred years!" :-)
-john
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| From the LAW Almanac:
CRW Spring Century; May; SASE to CRW Spring Century, 19 Chase Ave, West
Newton, MA 02165
Fifth Annual Boston-Cape Cod Double Century; July; SASE to CRW Double
Century, 31 Pleasantdale Rd. W. Roxbury, MA 02132
Cape in a Day (125 miles); August; SASE to CRW/AYH Cape in a Day, c/o
Lindy King, 13 Pleasantdale Rd., W. Roxbury, MA 02132
The Flattest Century in the East; Sunday after Labor Day; Narragansett
Bay Wheelmen, PO Box 1317, Annex Station, Providence, RI 02901
CRW Fall Century; September. (see spring century address)
The Granite State Wheelmen offer a number of centuries.
Contact David S. Topham, 2 Townsend Ave, Salem NH 03079
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Others....
The Seven Hills Wheelmen will be having their annual Quabbin Reservoir
tour on Sat, June 13. It's about 100 miles. (Contact me if you want
more info.)
Rich
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