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| (IMAGE SOUCE) |
Sunday I completed my second 100 mile century cycling ride. It was the Champions Ride for Charity. It was a great ride!! It was hosted by the Rotary Club of Lake Mary - Florida. Being a Rotarian I always like to support their events.
The ride had several distances to choose from (10, 33, 66, 100 miles). Overall about 160 riders showed up for the rides. Maybe forty riders did the century distance.
There were about nine SAG stops for the century. Each SAG had plenty of oranges, bagels, peanut butter, Gatorade, water, bananas, ice, etc. They were staffed by warm and friendly Rotarians and Boy Scouts.
The route was pretty and safe. We started from Lake Mary, FL and went through Deland, Deltona, Lake Helen, Cassadaga ( "Psychic Capital of the World") and then back to Lake Mary.
The first half the ride was at a monstrous pace. The century group was so small that you didn't want to get dropped so you hung on for as long as you could. There were several 66 mile riders in the century group also so they did not need to ride at an endurance pace. The average pace for the first half of the ride was about 22-24 with several sprints up to 28 mph. I hung onto this pace for the first 50 miles. Then after that I got dropped from the group when some riders did not call out that a car was coming and a few riders almost got hit by a car. I had to stop and never caught back onto the main group. This meant that the next 55 miles would be spent pretty much riding alone at about an 18-19 mph pace. This was good practice for next year's (2014) Ironman that I plan on completing(more on that in a later blog).
The total race distance was 105 miles. At mile 100.00 I blow a rear tire on what looked like a piece of wire the size of a record needle (for those of you old enough to know what a record needle is). It took me 10 minutes to get it out of my tire because it was so small. From that experience I learned to take some tweezers on my future rides to save time.
Overall it was a great race and I had a great ride. My legs the following day felt great. No soreness or stiffness at all!! Adding so much extra miles to my cycling training has benefited me greatly!!
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| This weekend I can add a second century tally mark to the bike!! Two Centuries and ten 70.3s. (Note they tallies look crooked in the photo because of the curve of the bike) |
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