I've always wanted to do a metric century or century but with races and training during this and last summer, it never worked out. Thanks to May TAGP, I found this one as she was doing it, I talked Patty into doing it as well...since it was my off season my goal was to have fun and enjoy the ride. I had originally planned to do the 85 mile version but Patty thought 62 was good for her so we agreed to do the metric together..stick together and have a grand time. Beautiful scenery & nice fall leaves, and a nice long ride....we were a bit surprised what lay ahead of us.

It seemed so disorganized compared to a triathlon....one little table to check in, give us a cue sheet and we just left on our own. Coming into town we saw cyclists and a few missed the first left turn...right away a nice hill to climb. Patty had me lead...my bike computer wasn't working so we had to trust hers and the paint markings to get us to the right place. The first rest stop was 22 miles away and we had 2 hours to get there before it closed...no problem, right?

We struggled a bit with what to wear as it was a bit cold, but knew it would warm up and going up hills would make us warm. I went with short sleeve jersey, arm warmers, vest, bike shorts with light weight running tights over.

It was beautiful but a bit nippy at the start but I felt good. Our plan was to stop and regroup if we got seperated.

As we headed out of town we didn’t see very many folks. At first Patty & I were able to ride next to each other and chat. We came to our first hill, not bad not to long…but steadily the hills became steeper and longer until they seemed to be never ending. I was riding mostly in my small gear upfront and various gears in back but usually on the long hills my easiest gear and wished I had a couple even easier. We hit a great downhill that I was able to go aero as the roads were smooth and turned some…it truly was exhilarating. We passed a farm selling pigs of any size, I thought we should stop and have a look, and this started all the giggling for the day. After about 5 miles we were in the real country…only saw one bar no stores or gas stations just farms and houses. The scenery was beautiful with the trees in their fall colors.

As we kept climbing and climbing our average speed was a dismal 10 mph, the math didn’t work in our favor to make it to the first stop in time. What do we do if we get there and the rest area is gone? How will we get more water or hydration there are not any stores anywhere? The difficulty of the hills and how long they were caught me by surprise and Patty too….for me when I feel uncomfortable I tend to laugh a lot.

We came to a place where I just stopped going up hill, unclipped my left foot like usual keeping my right foot clipped in. I laid on my aerobars and just laughed as this fun ride we were doing was very difficult and bam I lost my balance and fell over…I just laughed more and was able to get up as my foot came up clipped. I yelled at Patty who stopped on the hill lost her balance a bit and almost fell and cut the back of her leg on her chain. A car stopped put on his flasher to check on us. I felt like an idiot but didn’t get hurt other than my pride.

We hadn’t seen anyone else in a long while and thought we were last. One thing weird about this ride is the markings on the road were very small and often right when you had to make a turn which was okay while going uphill but harder if you were flying downhill.

I tend to stop for 20 seconds regroup and go off again. Learned a new skill of starting going uphill and mastered it with lots of practice. Only about 3 miles to the rest stop and we will be late by a few minutes. Patty pulls ahead of me on a hill, she can really climb well and just keeps going and going. A downhill….very exciting, ah I have a flat. I yell to Patty not sure if she heard me.

I take my front tire off and get my saddlebag, and start working on changing my flat…of course as a numbers geek I time myself. This was my second flat of the season and I was happy that it occurred on a fun ride, but this delay would cause us to be arrive check stop much later than when it was open. The lessons Max gave me last winter and the practice I did were paying off, knew what to do pulled the 2 thumb tacks out of my tire and was getting it done. Very proud of myself when I fill the tire up using my CO2 cartridge after blasting my leg with some CO2…oops hope I didn’t get a cold burn….only 12 minutes…then loud noise and a hiss….my value froze, and blew off. Okay glad I had a second tube, trying to stay positive and laughed a bunch as how absurd is this…get it changed again this time faster only 8 minutes, was very careful with the stem, but I moved my CO2 thing in the wrong way and broke off the value…crude now what to do. Patty arrives back as she wondered where I was and the hill was tough so who wants to go up and down it an extra time.

She has a spare tire, I ask her how old it is…and I get to work changing it. I tired like normal to blow a little air into it so it is easier to get in the tire, but no air would go in. Patty was concerned, I just laughed what more could go wrong as we were on our last tube and CO2. Get the tube changed and tire back on, only 4 minutes this time…getting faster! Try to use Patty’s CO2 pump but it doesn’t have a trigger like mine which means it needs to be on my value when I pop it….not very skilled at that…couldn’t get it to pop…we struggle to figure out what to do…I’m waving it around discussing option and it pops, get it on my value quickly only get about 30PSI in my tire. Laugh some more as we are out of luck maybe this means our great adventure is over?

A short time later a couple decked out in TnT bike jerseys comes up who has a frame pump! First he asks in a very kind way if I checked my tire to make sure nothing was still in it, I hadn’t checked, but wasn’t about to admit it, I answer oh I checked. He pumps my tire up to 100PSI asks if that is enough they will tell the rest stop to wait for us, and they are super sweet. The kindness of other gets us so we can continue without any spares tubes which makes both of us a little nervous as we know now we are last.

I pack everything up but am unsure what to do with the three tubes; try stuffing them in my jersey pockets then my vest pockets and they don’t fit. So I wrap them around my neck and then my arm much like the guys in old Westerns…with ammo belts. I didn’t want to litter….it all added to the absurdness of the day…who gets three wrecked tubes to change one tube? Everything seemed to be going wrong, but we were laughing and having fun in a strange way….if I didn’t laugh I’d either quit, cry or be very pissed, so glad it wasn’t a race…it would have sucked big time if it was.

Off again, more hills and Patty had already climbed some of them once. Finally we pull into the rest area as the truck is about to leave and see about 10 riders there. The first thing he says, is what time did you start…not in a friendly voice. He hands us a couple cookies and bananas, and reluctantly fills one of each of our water bottles…big mistake for me here as my aerobottle was down as well. Everyone leaves, we regroup, visit the port a potty and off we go. Here is when we mentally struggle as we are only 1/3 of the way done, now an hour behind, no spare tubes/CO2 and in the middle of nowhere with no stores of any kind.

We did hit some amazingly long downhills that in aero were awesome…I’m sure I hit over 50 mph as I’d wait a couple minutes at the bottom for Patty and she hit 44.6. Then came the hills again…Patty’s comment…the honeymoon is over. The grinding always up really sucked! My legs were tired of this as was my mind. I doubted our ability to finish and felt like I was a pathetic rider and only fooling myself as to my cycling ability. Why was I considering doing longer tris when I can only manage averaging 10.1 mph on this course? I even felt like I hated my bike and that I didn’t want to do this any more. At times we were climbing for 30-45 minutes without any downhills.

The good side to this is that the descents were incredible and long...I was able to ride in aero for the most part, and went over 50....they almost made up for the pain of the climbing. Some guy was behind me in the longest descent and tried very hard to catch me Patty told later told me, finally did and drafted off me a long time. We met up with him at the next checkpoint and he found me and commented you are an awesome descender....made my day...now just to get the comment you are an awesome climber..that would be sweet!

The last climb to the 2nd check was the most brutal…we had been riding already 4 hours, on the road close to 5.5, out of hydration, we weren’t sure we were on the right road as the mileage meant we should be there already. The hill was straight and long you couldn’t see the top from the bottom even though it was straight. Patty was amazing with a cadence of maybe 30-40 going about 3.4 mph, she went up the whole hill without stopping. Many folks Patty included worry about stopping and starting again on a very steep hill, I have that starting thing nailed. I tried to think of anything I could to distract me from the pain of it…nothing worked so I started counting pedal strokes. I’d do 25, 50 or 60 and stop for 20”…it was indescribably how bad it was. Patty saw someone ahead of her who actually was walking up the hill and was at a faster pace then we were riding.

Conquering that hill and getting up it was amazingly in that we bloody well did it…we are tough biker chicks. We finish the way to the last stop with a short steep nasty hill that I feel like I’m walking on my pedals as my cadence is so low…but we see people…we have caught up with others. It was a beautiful New England scene with white old fashioned church across the road was a stone fence and cemetery behind it….out of a postcard but riders were sprawled all over like they were refugees. Patty & I arrive laughing and glad to be there…we had improved our average speed by 1 mph our cumulative speed is now 11.2 mph. We head to the food table and talk with the kind woman who says it really is easier from here with only a couple of hills and some great descents. Relief and now we have the belief we can finish. Patty is hungry and has a couple of sandwiches, I had a banana and a couple of cookies. I had been taking in gels along the way and wasn’t really hungry but was craving Gatorade. They had orange, I made up two bottles. I did some leg drains and then we were off again.

First descent didn’t disappoint as the road was fast and newly paved…we just wanted to be done…so we flew. Patty caught up to me after a couple minutes as I stopped after the turn…she hit a PB for speed. We just pushed on…there were a couple hills but like 5-10 minute hills not longer and we were heading down back into the town so mostly downhill. We met more riders now as different distances were all funneling into the same route back. I honestly and surprisingly felt awesome…not sore anywhere and when we hit the more typical terrain felt like I could have ridden for a couple of more hours. The feeling of overcoming a huge thing was motivating and we were going 17-19 mph on the last 10 miles back to town. I thought we were lost but we would see riders here and and there….I have never been so happy to see my car when we finished…66 miles…almost 7 hours later…we did it! We ended up with an average over 12.5 mph so the last 20 miles were faster and really brought our average up.

For Patty this was the longest ride she has ever done by 24 miles and with 9140 feet of climbing….she did awesome. The day was made fun by being with her…if I had been alone, I couldn’t have dealt with the difficulty of this. My coach Will told me only to do it if I was doing it with a friend and with the attitude to have fun which was the right way to do this.

I wish I had known that where the difficult parts were so I would have been mentally stronger. I know I should have paid attention to the description that said it was the most difficult century ride in NE, but didn’t.

This ride was definitely a changer…something that changes you to the core….it was absurdly difficult but we did it and that will go along way in the future when I try something hard again and will give me confidence going forward as to cycling and what really is difficult.

They sick part I can’t wait to do it again…not the metric century next time I’m doing the full which this year was 113 miles.

I spoke to a bunch of guys who can do a regular century in under 5 hours or just over 20 mph and they took 9 hours which included 30 minutes helping someone fix their bike…so I guess it was difficult even for those awesome strong rider.

Not sign up for this ride...no seriously...it was extremely challenging, but priceless to finish. I wish I knew what was in store and planned better. It was very difficult and I was short of hydration just before stop #2. I had underestimated the time I'd be riding so ran out of endurolytes, hydration, should have brought more gatorade, and of course needed another spare tube & CO2.

I was surprised at how very hard this ride was and if I had known, may have been in better spirts in the middle of the ride...knowing first 40 was the hardest with first 20 the most difficult would have helped me mentally as well

I haven't laughed so much and hard in one day in years...I laughed because it was so absurdly difficult. My thought was why the heck were we doing this...I told Patty I felt like we were clowns of the day.. I laughed so hard I fell over and after blowing through three tubes what else was there to do but laugh..otherwise I might have cried with frustation. Reality is we had a blast and many folks said something like wow we should have done the metric century cause you had so much fun. No one else was laughing, but we made up for it.

Cool things about the GRR...
1. I was able to ride 5:15 and was totally comfortable and not sore...out on the road for almost 7 hours.The last 10 miles were mostly flat and slightly downhill and we did 17-19 mph and I felt great; like I could ride another couple hours on similar terrain (w/o hills).

2. As difficult as it was, and at times we wanted to quit we pushed through and did it...the agony of the day made finishing that much sweeter. I think it will go far as a good experience of persevering.

3. The following day I wasn't sore at all....tired/fatigued but nothing hurts. I see that my training this year build up my endurance and my bike fits really well.

4. I learned how to start from a dead stop going up a steep grade...practiced it a lot... I'd just do one legged pedaling until I could get the other foot onto pedal....clip in if I could otherwise just keep pressure on the pedal unclipped to keep going.

5. Glad all this bad stuff occurred on a fun ride and not a tri....otherwise I wouldn't have been laughing so much.

6. I didn't want to drink Gatorade any more..did it all summer training..had all these gels I hadn't used...so brought one bottle of Gatorade, lots of gels, some shot bloks and water with Nuuns. Ended up craving Gatorade, which they had more of at the last stop more than 5 hours into the ride....hammer gel worked well, but hard to remember to take it on time even with my watch set to beep..had 2 bottles of Gatorade, 4.5 water bottles, 6 gels, 8 endurolytes (ran out felt like was going to cramp but didn't), some shot bloks, at the stops had 2 bananas, 5 cookies. I ate bigger breakfast at 7, 1/2 Cliff bar about an hour before we left, and we returned for the dinner at 5pm...felt hydrated well...used port a potty both stops, but comfortable maybe a little light on fluids as I ran out, and not to hungry...think hydration/nutrition worked well for me which was a good learning experience. But after about 5 or 6 hours the idea of more gels wasn't appealing...interesting learning for longer rides/races next year when I do my first HIM.

Things to work on:
1. Once my cadence fell below a certain level it was very difficult for me to keep going further into the ride...if it was a short distance to the top of the hill, I could do it felt like I was walking slowly up on on my pedals. But with the hills that took so long to climb...my mind wasn't dealing with the pain in my legs well...so I'd stop.I'm not sure what I take away from this....needed easier gears..this is the easy answer but need to improve my leg strength.

2. Mentally in the middle of the ride, I really struggled and doubted if we could finish, but didn't have an option to bail on it. Patty was struggling a bit. I love riding, and at this time in the ride I really felt like I hated my bike and my legs and I didn't want to ride again for a long long time. Wondered what was I thinking believing I could do longer tris...crap I could only go average of 10 mph on a hilly bike ride. Thankfully by pushing through, I was able to overcome the negative thoughts and finishing feeling good and victorious plus I like my bike again.

3. Need to be better prepared...ran out of drinks between 1st and 2nd stop..as I didn't think the ride would take so long. Didn't see one store other than first and last 5 miles. Ran out of tubes, CO2, endurolytes....the much slower pace than expected and strange events meant being out there longer...need to figure out how to carry more. I did start wtih 100 oz of hydration...and stops were ever 20-22 miles.

Off our bikes, loaded them on the car rack, pulled into the parking lot, headed to the banquet afterwards as we hadn't had a real meal in 11 hours.

Photos from our adventure:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/photos/photo-thumbnail...


Needed a few more easier gears, leg strength, lack of carbs the week before, lack of ability to climb for 4 hours, extra weight...lots of factors...it was very difficult.


Very challenging ride, with great folks participating, a bit unorganized or maybe I just didn't know how century rides normally go. Next time I do this ride, I'm doing the full to prove to myself I can do it.