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.

Countdown Week 12 - Addiction setting in

Week 12 and counting down....Well, I never would have expected this, BUT I think I/we are getting ADDICTED to riding the bike.  This week we rode 4 days in a row and had to talk ourselves into taking a day off!  We woke up day 5 and had to really convince ourselves that it would be better not to ride that day.  Otherwise our mileage would've increased too much for the week.  We have to be careful not to get up to the target mileage too soon.  This is crazy - I never would've expected this.  But it's okay because I am more certain everyday that we will do this ride and the way we're going now, we'll do it fairly strong.  Rick is starting to talk about throwing in a time trial in early September, just to add to the fun of it all (????!!!!!).  We'll see....

Guest riders this week:  Mark Garko from Plumosa Road/Quartzsite road with us one day.  He spends the summer up here at Flagstaff.  Also Dennis and Lindsey Morris stopped by on their way to San Diego and road with us 2 days.  One of these days was July 4/Rick's birthday and we did 59 miles for his age.  Everybody called to wish him Happy Birthday while the phone was in the bike bag.

Dennis says he thinks we're peaking too early.  He's pretty smart about these things since he's done so many long rides.  Rick says he'd rather be over trained physically so all we have to worry about is failure from a mental standpoint.

Bicycle maintenance this week:  Rick replaced the bearings in both rear wheels we carry; cleaned the chains, chain ring, cog sets.  He found some tires he didn't know he had.  We also fixed a flat for a nice lady stranded on our road (Diane Goodyear from Tucson; she wants to do El Tour de Tucson this year; we advised her she should carry a patch kit and learn how to change a flat!)

Total mileage for this week:  311.23, 18.15 hours riding time; 17.15 mph avg. speed
Longest ride:  61.5 miles
Fastest ride:  40 miles in 2:08, 18.75 mph avg.  (Our 40 mile ride has about 1400' of climbing in it.)


We're still working on our weight loss; however, as I write this we are contemplating going out in search of beer....gotta carbo-load for tomorrow!!

COUNTDOWN WEEK 13

Well, we've just finished up Week 13 of training weeks to go before "D-Day" on September 22.   Summary of this weeks training:

261.85 miles ridden in 16.07 hours; 16.3 mph average overall; best avg 18.18 mph; worst 13.58.

We have moved to Flagstaff AZ and are camped out in the Coconino National Forest.  Very nice here, and COOLER!!  We have been riding Lake Mary Road which has a wide smooth shoulder and some decent but not killer hills.  There are several other good rides in the area which we will explore as well.

View from our windows

Our Forest Camp

Today is a day off.  We rode hard yesterday (that was a 40 mile,  18.18 mph avg day).  We still have 12 weeks more of this to go and need to get that weekly mileage count up to 360 consistently.  I can see where this is going....life is all about riding, eating, sleeping for the next 12 weeks and then another (at least) 10 beyond that.  It's a sobering thought.  This ride really sounded like a good idea at the time we came up with it, but the stark reality of it is that it's not going to be all fun and games.  Sometimes it's just going to be boring, some days exhausting.  I just hope I can keep "keeping on" for the next 22 weeks!!!  It's a lot harder than imagined....

4 days, 170 miles

Well we've just completed a four-day training run which totaled 170 miles for those four days.  We are feeling pretty good, not too tired or sore now and actually have some energy left for doing the routine things around the home the rest of the day.

But today is a day off for doctor appointments and eating out - yum!!  Tomorrow we'll resume the training and start trying to build up the mileage.  Depending on how this doctor appointment goes and how soon I can get back in for an annual physical, we will either stay a little longer in Havasu or head out to higher country near Flagstaff.  I've got to admit, the higher cooler country sounds good, especially for longer rides.  Here we've been finishing up at 9 am or so with 91 degrees.  Can't imagine how nice it would be to ride with just a high in the middle of the day of 85!!

One Week, 214 miles

We have completed our first full week here in Hot Havasu.  Today it's only 113 degrees.  When we finished up our ride this morning just after 8 am, it was 91.  We're getting used to it.

This past week we rode 6 out of 7 days, which is what we need to be able to do for the cross country ride.  But our total mileage for the week is just 214 miles, which is only 60% of the mileage we need to do (360 per week) in order to do the ride in two months.  But we have 3 months still to get there.

I am feeling better about this now.  Rick has been figuring out the first 5 days of the ride from San Diego to Quartzsite and has planned some good places to stay over so we can enjoy ourselves after riding each day.

If we could just have catered meals, a swimming pool or jacuzzi, hot shower and a massage each day after riding, this COULD be really fun....

Dream on!!

It's so HOT here we wish we were naked!!

Today's training ride commenced circa 5:30 am.  A "cool" 80 degrees starting temp.  We rode north on highway 95 for 15 miles, had breakfast at the truck stop Carl's Jr., then proceeded to ride another 11 miles out east on I-40 before turning around and heading home.  Total mileage was 52 today.  We didn't finish up until 9:30 am when it was "only" 91 degrees.  Later today the temp soared to 115.  It's supposed to get hotter the next few days.  The pool here is a welcome relief.

Can't wait to see how hot it is tomorrow morning at 5:30 am!  Did I mention I don't like extreme temperatures?????

Today we reflected on the gravity of this undertaking.  Are we nuts?  Whose idea was this anyway?  We just did 52 today, and in order to finish this ride up within two months, we need to be able to consistently ride an average of 60 miles per day, 6 days a week.  I can't get my head quite around that yet.

And what will we do for the rest of the day if we get up at the crack of dawn, do our daily ride in 4-5 hours and get back to the RV by noon?  Out in the middle of nowhere?  (I just hope it's not 105 degrees and we aren't someplace where we can't run AC.)

Serious questions to ponder....

Did somebody think this was going to be FUN?????

Back to the Mother Ship, starting to train....

We got back to the Mother Ship on Tuesday (Mother Ship is the Teton 5th wheel, shuttle craft being the Xterra towing sailboat).  Rode 35 miles, 2000' of climbing through the neighbohoods of Lake Havasu.  Felt good, but lots of glycogen left stored in our legs (from two weeks of gorging on fish and chips in Ireland/Scotland).  The next day wasn't as pleasant....25 miles on FLATS, felt like shit.  Thought about not getting up today, but did anyway and put in another 35 miles, 1800' climbing.  Probably need to take a rest day tomorrow, but probably won't.  No rested for the wicked, and that we are!  We need to be riding over 300 miles a week pretty soon (next few weeks) or else we'll be toast.  (Hmmm....toast sounds good, to eat that is).

Talked to Dennis and Lindsay tonight.  They may hang around San Diego to see us off on Sept. 21.  They were tempted to join us....

We really pigged out in I/S.  I gained 12 pounds and am now sporting heaviest weight ever, spent too much time at the "chippie" (take out fish n' chips)

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Should've just drank beer but it wasn't as good as the fish!

  

Hello fellow Amigos!