Ironjack does a Century
Finally after several seasons of bike riding I finally get the nerve to go after my first century ride. For the non-riders that are reading, this means I went and rode 100 miles. Let me tell you this is no small feat if you considered how we went about doing it. We "decided" 2 months prior that we could do 100 miles, this is like deciding 2 months before a marathon that you should go for it and start training. Even then our training was a little laxed, we could have done better. The one thing we trained for was NOT CRAMPING! You wouldn't believe the mini-pharmacy we carried (electrolyte tabs, magnesium,calcium,etc) as well as food.
So the day of the ride comes, Perfect weather we couldn't ask for better (low wind, cool yet sunny). Then the problems set in: my speedometer stoped working. Ok well I have a GPS/heartrate monitor I got that covered. Next my heartrate monitor fails incrementally thru the ride. Ok, not a big deal, disappointing but no big. Then 30 mins into the ride, Tori gets a flat. Ok 1 flat no big, then she rides 100 yards and gets *another* flat. We're 30 mins behind the entire group. We skip stops to make up time. Then those action ride shots you see below? Right after I get on my bike and fall (clipped in) bending my derailer. Ok now we've lost 45 total mins. We get the fix in and we're riding, mile 65 hits and Tori gets *another* flat. this time the tire doesn't recover so well we're out our very last spare. we're forced to ride slower because her tire is underpressured to keep it from exploding. All in all we rode in and beat the sweep of the course (notbade considering we were 1.5 hrs down) but we were on the bikes for about 9 hrs.
I'm glad I did it, I don't want to see a bike for a little while tho...
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