First century EVER

Zoom Zoom 

Today I had the unique experience of doing my first century ride!

Given how much I've been bonking at the end of long rides, I was a little nervous. Yesterday, doing 60, I pushed it quite a bit. I was one of the first few people in and my quads were on fire. Thankfully, I had the BEST 15-min massage ever by a guy who worked at a chiropractor's office in the area and often worked on hockey players. Still, yesterday I was cranky, tired, dehydrated and my head hurt like crazy.

Despite my 8-hours of sleep, I still felt very tired this morning. I knew I had two groups of guys I had talked to about riding with me and that I wanted to ease off a bit today so I wasn't very concerned about going hard.

I grabbed my bike and saw the first group (from Baxter...otherwise known as "the Baxter Boys" or "Wild Hogs") taking off. Worried the other group might've left as well, I jumped on my bike and started  riding after them. I caught up to them within the first few miles and we were going a nice hard pace. They had some pretty strong guys with some fresh legs pulling us along. Despite the hills, we managed to hold a little over 16 mph. Not too bad for a century.

We cranked along through the next couple stops. Unlike yesterday, these stops were pretty close together because of some gnarly hills we were traversing. I made sure to eat and spray up with some extra sunscreen and finally we hit lunch. For the first half of today, I was a domestique, which means I was designated to help riders in need and identified by a yellow vest. OH MAN. That vest was SO hot. I was drenched in this humidity after just a few dozen miles. I couldn't have been happier to take that damn thing off when we got to lunch at 45 miles.

It was an early lunch, but I was very hungry and excited about eating the food they had for us. I stopped with the Baxter Boys for a nice long stop and we soon met up with Jim, whom we were planning on riding with in the first place! His group had been too aggressive, then his new one was too slow, so he jumped on with us for the second half.

The next stop wasn't until 65 miles and man did I need it. When we arrived I promptly sat on the ground and drank tons of water. When we left that stop I lost the Baxter Boys and set out on my own for a while. As I approached the 71-mile mark, the turn off if you chose to do the century, I was very excited to see some volunteers (red shirts) cheering wildly for me. I kept pedaling, passing a few more riders, until I caught up with Carissa - a dietitian from Irvine. We chatted about nutrition and exercise, rolling in together to the 81-mile stop. WOO!!

At this point, I had officially achieved my longest ride ever and this stop was awesome. Ran by "Eighty-mile Ed" (whom one of the riders nicknamed), there was tons of ice and my FAVORITE part - a pink tiara! While drinking some water, I found it in a bin. One of the guys running the stop explained this belonged to the "snack princess," to which I responded "oh, I guess I can't have it then." But then he said "well, I don't see why not" and encouraged me to take it. I felt it fitting, being my first century and all. So I stuck it in my helmet and rode in with a tiara. :)

The last 20 were sort of a mixed bag. First 10 or so miles felt great but as we approached 90 and I was exhausted. I pushed through the last few, and was so relieved to see the white tents indicating I was done. When I arrived, they handed me a century pin and I received a number of compliments for my tiara helmet. Despite being burnt out for those last few miles, I feel even better than I did yesterday. My quads don't feel sore at all (though they did when the masseuse got to them). I'm definitely ready to crank out 65 tomorrow and push myself to keep a nice quick pace to end the tour!