No Pain, No Gain (First Century in Years)

Normally I've just been posting just once a week now that we're into the training so as not to bore everyone with all the minute details.  BUT yesterday's training ride demands some recognition.  For the first time in 27 years for me, and 6 or 7 years for Rick, we have ridden a Century (100 miles).  Wahoo!!

We started out early in the day so as to complete our ride before the monsoons hit around 1 or 2 pm.   This was our "Lake Mary Road Century" - up and down Lake Mary Road, up and down Lake Mary Road, up and down....

First up and back was 50 miles at a 17.4 mph pace.  Felt strong.  Stopped at the car and had lunch, then headed out for another ???? miles (I was hoping for another 40, then do the last 10 going the other direction from the car).  However, for some reason (heat or fatigue?) my stupid neck started bothering me again so we had to cut the second up and back to just 31 miles, plus I had to stop twice to massage and stretch my aching neck.

So we got back to the car and decided to drive down to the Chevron station and get some beer and chips.  Rick figured that was it for the day - 81 miles, although I know he really wanted 100 (so did I!).  When we got back to our parking place before we turn down our forest road, I suggested we sit in the car and drink a beer or two, eat the chips and see how we felt; maybe we could get that additional 19 miles after.

Yay, beer!!  What a great painkiller and muscle relaxer.  After that, I felt like I could do the remaining miles. So we rode out to the county park and back and still needed 7 miles, so back up Lake Mary Road we go, stopping for ice cream at the Country Store.  That ice cream got me back the final 3.5 miles to the car and there we had it, 100.3 miles, ride time 5:45.

For those of you wondering about this Lake Mary Road, it's a wonderful smooth road with "rollers" and a few climbs, great shoulder and nice views of the lake, trees, mountains, meadows.  Here are some photos.