Fourth Century

Picture I took of myself before I left on my 112 mile bike ride.

I went on my fourth century bike ride yesterday. This was the first century I would be doing on my new road bike which is considerably lighter and better in every way than my old bike, so I was hoping to shave a lot of time off my last century.

I decided to ride 112 miles this time, instead of 100, because that is the distance that you do in an Ironman competition. The extra 12 miles definitely made it significantly harder. I think anything you do after 100 miles is going to be quite difficult.

My time at the 100 mile mark was 5 hours 39 minutes. This is an improvement from last time, alhtough not as much as I would have liked to have seen. Just to give you an idea of how hard those extra 12 miles were, I didn't get to the 112 mile marker until 6 hours 28 minutes. That means I did 12 miles in 49 minutes - not impressive at all, except for the fact that I had already gone 100 miles.

There are several reasons why I think I didn't shave off as much time as I would have liked. First, I got caught in a nasty rainstorm at about 50 miles. This slowed me down no doubt. I was sopping wet and a little distracted because of the heavy rain. Second, the trail I go on ended at 50 miles (where I would normally turn around and travel 50 miles back) so I had to ride on surface streets and other less than desirable roads to get the extra distance in. I wasn't able to keep my pace and rhythm on these types of roads. I will choose a slightly different route the next time I try to do over 100 miles so as to not lose time. Also, it would be nice if it wasn't raining.

Regardless though, I have two things to be happy about: I did beat my 100 mile time record by 6 minutes and I biked 112 miles, the farthest to date that I have ever ridden.