Century

I completed my first century on Saturday. This particular century had virtually no hills. Basically, I wanted to pace myself and find out how I could handle the miles and time in the saddle.

When riding on the road, I spend a lot of time thinking. When I spend hours and hours riding on the road, I think a lot. I thought of a lot of things I saw, learned and felt while riding. When I got back, I was tired, thirsty and hungry. Now that a few days have passed, I find that many of those thoughts have faded. Let that be a lesson: My memory is terrible, write things down.

The day started out cold and wet. Really wet. Although it wasn't raining much, the streets were flooded with water and worms.

Yes, more worms. I'll spare you the details of yet another account of my worm slaughtering but will add this one statement to my past ramblings on the subject: Dead, dried worms stuck to my leg hairs is grosser than gross.

By about the half-way point, the sun was out in full force, and we dried up pretty quickly. Of course, at that point, I paid the price for no sunscreen.

This century was unsupported, so I carried a lot of energy gel and bars. I also brought several extra servings of Cytomax for when I stopped to fill up. By the end of the day, about the only thing I could stand was my homemade energy gel and the Cytomax. I don't know if I'll ever stop hating Vanilla Crisp PowerBars. I've got to think of something else to bring with me on my next unsupported century.

Here's something I learned: I'm no where near prepared for the LOTOJA. I mean, the century was long and it wore me out, but it didn't kill me. However, there were exactly zero serious climbs. I've already been planning out my next long ride. I think it'll top out at over 8,000 ft, so that's closer to what I need.

Another thing I learned: There is no glory in dropping two 18 yr olds that haven't ridden since the fall and are riding on (literally) 20+ year old 2nd-hand store bikes. One bike featured zip ties holding the water bottle cages on. (Incidentally, one of the cages didn't last past the first corner. Which meant he made it the whole way stopping no more often than me, with only one small water bottle.)