Week 4 of 13: 100 miles in 6:30

So I obviously didn't run 100 miles this week in 6.5 hours.  I instead decided to do a century bike ride (and also my first organized bike event).  Why not go for the century the first time?!

I ran once this week and did 10x100's, did yoga once, and got my strength workouts in twice.  The rest of the week, I rested.  I also hydrated a lot prior to the bike ride.

Friday after work I went and stayed at a friends house because she lived in the same town as the ride.  We really carbed up the night before with pizza, cheese fries, and bread.  If I was going to burn 4,000+ calories, I'd need some fuel.  :)  It also doesn't hurt that I LOVE food.

We were up at 5:30 to begin the adventure.  And, I conveniently remembered to document this adventure in pictures.

We arrived close to 7, and looked a little sleepy:

Here we are.  Either biking the century or 62 mile ride.  This was right after the local paper took our picture and names, as we were looking at the map.  Since the official start of this ride was 8, and we started at 7 there weren't tons of people around.

The first rest stop was 24 miles in, I think.  It's pretty bad when I don't remember what happened yesterday.  This rest stop had cookies, tons of PB&J and gatorade and water to refill our bottles.  Oh, and most importantly, lots of potties.  We all looked pretty good at this point.  And the ride to this stop was pretty fast, we were averaging 18-20 miles per hour.  A group of men were in front of us, so we decided to try and keep pace.  Around the later miles we regretted that decision.

We then came up on rest stop 2, somewhere around 44ish miles, again I think.  This stop is known for it's pie offerings.  Peach, apple, pumpkin, and shoefly pie were all options.  I opted for a big piece of peach--it was delish.  And for the record, I don't typically like pie.  We still were feeling pretty good at this point, and there were still a decent number of riders around.

Rest stop 3.  Oh, where to begin.  At this point we had separated from the larger group of people we had been riding with who were all doing 62.  At the turn we contemplated turning to complete 62.  At this point I would've been totally fine having biked 62 miles.  But, for some reason at that point we decided to forge ahead.  We met up with two others doing the century.  We managed to keep pace with them until about this stop, but we were slowing to a 17ish pace, and couldn't maintain a 19-20 pace even drafting off of them.  My riding buddy was in pain and it sounded like her IT band.  I don't mess with IT band pain.  After my full last year was almost derailed from an inflamed IT band, I fear them.   She called her husband and we decided we'd stop at their house (conveniently located on the route).  From our poor map reading skills we thought it would be about 75 miles.  We mentally only had 13 more to ride.  The plan was to complete the ride there, not take a rest.

These smiles were forced.  We needed some yoga at this point.  I refueled my gatorade and joked with another cyclist that our gatorade bottles had too many mixed flavors, but that we could care less.  I also got a super soft oatmeal cookie, it was like heaven.  Oh, and another PB&J. :)

Something happened in between these two stops.  We thought we were headed to complete 75 at their house, but the route had other ideas.  We weren't going to be anywhere near there at 75 miles.  Around 72 miles we hit another rest stop, which we obviously stopped at.

And, these are the smiles of death.  I equate this stop to mile 20-21 in a marathon.  Digging deep into yourself to complete the final stretch.

We felt rough, more so just super stiff.  I was getting some low back pain, and my buddy had IT pain.  But it seemed to relieve itself a bit after her seat was adjusted.  This stop they reinforced that we only have 28ish miles to go.  Now, thinking of this today means a few more hours.  Yesterday, this meant we beasted 72 miles and were roughly 3/4 of the way there.

So we were off, and decided to take our time and enjoy the last 28 miles.  Since this ride was in the country it was beautiful.  This was a pretty view, and I conveniently got really good at biking and taking pictures.  So here's my biking buddy while we road.

We then passed a local state park and pretty pond.  Again, here we are.  We did stop for this photo and left our bikes on the other side of the road.

 At some point during the ride I thought it would be amazing if we got wet from a farm sprinkler.  We road by fields all day long, and I know a lot of sprinklers at some point spray the road.  If you look far down the road, there was a sprinkler!!  I was super excited.

This photo was supposed to show my water covered sunglasses from the sprinkler, instead it just appears to be an awkward selfie.

We then passed a large pumpkin patch.  Those orange dots are the pumpkins, it looked better in person.

We then finally stopped at their house at mile 85, refueled and hit the road again.

And, WE DID IT!  100 miles biked in 6.5 hours, not including stops.  It was then time for a BBQ and it was delicious.

So the moral of this story is that anything is possible, and the reward is so much greater with struggles!