Have you ever tried to organize a group of human beings? Fathers, spouses, shift-workers, and on and on... (we at this time only have one woman that rides with us). We finally chose a date, of August 29th, with no rain date as I was the organizer and I want to race cross and it's coming up on the 12th of September!
Back to the Century. Our group has developed quite the spectrum of riders who are in shape and fast to those who are not, so we have been riding to Roberts Rules of Riding... Robert is one of the riders who has been cycling as long as I have been but been constantly racing, he lives by the bike almost. RRR states that the first forty-five to hour is to stay together and then "fast guys" can take off. We have discovered Map my Ride and now people are mapping rides with a longer and often more challenging ride, and a shorter version which often cuts off at around the hour mark, for the Saturday and Sunday rides. Everyone's been happy. So I mapped two rides out one was the almost Metric Century which in reality had some pretty good hills on it, oops. and the Imperial Century or for the pure Canadians in my group a plain ol' 162 km ride.
Day before the ride, Thunderstorms! all night long, that morning at 8:00 gray and questionable... what the hell, it's taken all summer to plan this and darn if I'm letting the opportunity slide and if does rain, we can bail. Everyone showed up... but only four w/ bikes and a ready to ride, one of them was on his cross w/road wheels and going to cut off a the shorter version... So out we went in the rain with possibility of thunderstorms, what were we thinking? On the hills we went strong and Robert (of RRR fame) spoke to all that not to get near your LT! around in the wet we went all feeling great, it was nice and cool and little wind, with light rain, no real sign of thunderstorms. We dropped off Andrew on the"almost metric" and the sun just creeped out, Jacques phones and says he is going to meet us on the road, which after more than a few phone calls and Jacques zig zagging trying to get us we connected in a town called Harley (we always end up there for some reason), I missed a turn and we ended up riding this route instead. By then the sun was out and it turned out to be a FANTASTIC day.
The only thing of this ride is of the three of us who did the full century, Robert bonked or got sick and was one sad kitten and had to be pulled in... Now he's had been out for the last two years with a major break in his leg with an on going saga of infections etc. So for the fact he is able to ride and is back racing all is good. Despite this we hit kilometer 162 (which is 100 miles) at 4:58, and that was one of the desires was to do this in 5 hours. We could have done it in about 4:35/4:40 if all had gone well. I ended up with 180kms. under my belt and felt I could have kept going, as could have Randy the other one of the three, last night Jacques was kicking himself because for his 110km jaunt around he felt fantastic and wished he had just faced the rain and rode.
What did I do for fuel? Well, last year I had a couple bottles of Hammer Heed and a 6 hour bottle of Perpetuem, but for some reason Hammer Nutrition is not being that well distributed up here and I was not going to make a special trip to the one bike shop I knew had the product. So I took and mixed 1-1/2 scoop of whey protein, six E-Load electrolyte "portions" (Just and aside E-Load is now a sponsor of my friend who is a very fast and good marathoner), and about a teaspoonish of Glutamine (Graeme suggested it for winter training to keep the mind clear in the 1hr spin classes)... It did not taste too good but I felt great and I felt like I was well fueled. I also had my Hammer Gel as needed.
It turned out to be a great day and it is always great to get a goal accomplished!
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