This weekend we’re planning to ride our ‘Local-TwistyButt 1600K’ – a SaddleSore 1600K on local, twisty roads..

This is a little insane, but, I’m planning on doing a 1000 mile ride, using our local road: West Coast Rd:

From the SH16 and West Coast Rd junction on the left, to the Yellow Flag along Woodcocks Road (before the new motorway roadworks), is 22.3km. When I have to refuel, then the BP is a further 4km along the road into Warkworth.

Google Map link of the main part of the loop.

Disclaimer: Video was made before any COVID-19 restrictions.
‘A full tank’ will consist of:
BP Warkworth -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> SH16 -> Woodcocks -> BP Warkworth
(6 loops, 276km and approximately 3 hours)

I’ll be required to do 5 full tanks, and on the 6th tank I’ll do a shorter series of 5 loops, before filling up.

When I start, I’ll leave home and travel to the BP to grab a start receipt, and I’ll finish at the BP too before heading home:
BP –x6-> BP –x6-> BP –x6-> BP –x6-> BP –x5-> BP : is 1,612km

When you add on the distance from and to home:
Home -> BP -x6-> BP -x6-> BP -x6-> BP -x6-> BP -x5-> BP -> Home : is 1,656km

I have created a sample TRACK from a segment of this route: SH16-Woodcocks Rd – The majority of this ride will be this circuit slightly short of the speed restricted area within Warkworth. This has allowed me to analyse the majority of this ride: 112 corners over 22.3km, 5.022422 corners per km during this portion of the ride.

There will be 35 of these loops, 35 x 2 x 22.3km = 1,561km of our 1,612km will be on this exact piece of road, totalling 7840 corners within that distance. The journey from the turning point into Warkworth and back to refuel is ~8km round trip and has 48 corners, 6 corners / km over 48km = +288 corners = 8,128 total over 1,612km.

This is an average of 5.0422 corners / km over 1,612km.

This would make it a Local, Twisty Buttand I think it ought to be an Insanity level ride. 🙂

 

Update (17th May):

A date has been set, and Luke has agreed to attempt his crazy ride with me. We’re planning on doing this on the 30th May, 2020, just two weeks from now.

We have setup our fundraising page, aiming to raise as much as we can for Aran Animal Rescue again – through Give-A-Little: https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/twistybutt-saddlesore1600k-for-aran-animal-rescue

Update (26th May):

The weather may not be looking up to riding this challenging ride this weekend, we’ll be keeping an eye on things over the next few days. As it stands, we’re just three days away from our last little sleep, then into it at 3:30am.

We have some SpotWalla Tracks setup for each of us:

Chris: https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=2285a5ecce650e5bda&hoursPast=0&showAll=yes
Luke – https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=2285b5ecce6dc240b6&hoursPast=0&showAll=yes

Update (29th May):

The weather seems to be clearing somewhat, we might get some early morning fog along the valley floor, and perhaps some drizzle during the day, but the originally forecast horrible all day rain appears to have cleared out a little. 🙂 – This makes us happy. We’re planning to give it a crack and see how we go.

Here’s our planning sheet, it needs a little bit of explanation. – The stops are shown with a white background. They are essentially limited to Home, and the fuel station. The column headers only apply to the rows with a white background. The coloured cells shows the times expected at each of the turning points throughout the right. I’ve borrowed off a little bit of nautical theming to help to show which turning-point it refers to, with the reddish colour being ‘Port’ (Westerly), and the green colour indicating ‘Starboard’ (Easterly) ends of the route.

You can see the ‘Dist’ column progressing through each major set, and the section count incrementing, this is 5 lots of 6 repetitions, followed by a 6th set of only 4, then one more to get us home again. All up we intend to cover 1,625km. We don’t know what pace we’ll be able to hold until we start, but this is based on 17 minutes each way throughout the entire ride. It’s 22.3km for a normal leg.

So, the bike is ready, windshield and lights have been cleaned and polished, tyre pressures checked, bags packed, timing sheets printed… – I’m going to go and laminate them now.

Luke and TK will arrive here shortly, we’ll have some food, maybe a single beer, then off to bed for an early night… Up and at, leaving here at 03:30am.

Tracking links are shown above. 🙂 Feel free to stalk us, hopefully we’ll be a in line with the timings above, or perhaps even a little ahead of them! 🙂

Cheers. – Thank you very much to everyone who has supported us by donating to Aran through the Give-A-Little page: https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/twistybutt-saddlesore1600k-for-aran-animal-rescue – it means a lot.