Normally I don’t like to post my rides, but I’ll post the big nasty ones that I’m proud and thankful to have finished…
I just did an exactly 100.00 mile ride yesterday, from my house in Irvine to where I grew up in San Diego, and it was my first Century on my geared hub. I was quite scared of my legs bonking early from pushing the bigger 54" gear, so I didn’t go all out by any means, but I think that if I had, I’d have run out of gas a lot earlier than I did. There was around 800-1,000 meters of climbing over the whole ride, and most of it was toward the end, so during my last 14 miles I saw an entire mile per hour get shaved off my beautiful average. sheds a tear!
Anyway, my average rolling speed was 15.7 mph, for a rolling time of 6 hours, 22 minutes. The whole endeavor took about 35 or 40 minutes longer than that (from my Irvine front door to my San Diego front door).
For the first 50 miles, I didn’t dismount, and my average was 16.9 mph, which I was really happy about because there were some pretty damaging rolling hills in Laguna Beach, and because I was trying to hold myself back a bit to not die during the second half. The last half of the ride had only a 14.5 mph average, mostly due to the climbing, but also to the bonk that got me at 86 miles, which took good 2 mph chunk out of my flat cruising speed. There was also some good headwind action for a good 40 miles mixed in there, which generally turned an 18.6 mph cruise into an 16.8 mph hammerfest and made the going pretty tough. (And you can’t draft bikes, because they’re so small! :-P)
Whiiiiiich… brings me to my stops; I stopped once at 50 miles, and spent about 15 minutes there eating a couple of tacos and refilling my bottles. I also stopped at mile 75 and laid down on some cool shaded concrete at UCSD for about five minutes. And I also stopped for about 15 minutes at mile 86 when I bonked and had to get food.
Food-ification happened like this:
Pre-ride: 2 bowls of cereal
Mile 25: GU while riding
Mile 50: GU and two chicken tacos from Del Taco
Mile 65: Two GUs while riding
Mile 75: GU while riding
Mile 86: GU and two egg sandwich things from Starbuck’s
Post-ride: YUM YUM YUM YUM!!! (this would mean fish burritos!)
Yeah, at 86 miles, my legs just gave out and felt really weak, so I ended up stopping at a Starbucks and eating two of their little re-heated excuses for an egg sandwich. Calories are calories; I was able to finish the ride after eating 'em! I think that I’d have performed much better if I had eaten both A) more food all around throughout the whole ride and B) distributed more of that intake among the first 50 miles, during which I pretty much didn’t eat anything at all. (1 GU isn’t really much food.) Looking at the distances where I ate, it’s pretty clear that I ate like four times as much from mile 50 to 100 as from mile 0 to 49. Live and ride and learn.
I also went through about 10 bike bottles worth of water and lemonade. Luckily, I can carry four bottles on my unicycle now, so I never had to stop specifically to refill my bottles. I just filled them at 50 miles and 86 miles. (damn, that’s 1.7 gallons!)
So, that brings the whole endeavor to right around 7 hours from start to finish… so, not really too close to the record, which is 6:44, but it’s a start. 15 minutes is a really long time, and an extra 2/3 of a mile per hour over the whole ride… :-/
I was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY tired when I got home. I had about 5 minutes of lucidity and hugged my parents (it was my dad’s birthday), and then my energy just left, and I became really lethargic. I’d get told to do something (like, take a shower, put your unicycle out back, etc) and wouldn’t be able to do it because I couldn’t figure out what the tasks asked of me entailed… I would just stand around going “fooood…” I haven’t felt that exhausted in a couple of years, at least… maybe never. After I ate some food and laid down for 10 minutes I was feeling like myself again. I think my brainlessness immediately after my ride was because I ran out of calories from not eating enough, and from riding too hard for what food I did take in; I think that’s the case because this morning (the day after) on my ride to school, my legs didn’t really feel any less able than if I’d stayed up really late at night or something and missed out on a bunch of sleep. Human bodies are so cool! A machine that pushes itself as hard as we do would just wear out and break, whereas our bodies rise to the occasion and then heal right up with some food and rest.
All in all, a superly, crazily, awesomely fun day full of tons of great 36ing!