100 miles

Long run Saturday and Honolulu Century Ride on Sunday, you think I'd be tired and sore come Monday morning, but no dice. I feel great!! I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I'm finally understanding and figuring out my nutrition  and my liberal use of e21 (2 every hour)! e21 really is magic!

Sunday, was my first real long ride. I finally made it 100 miles!!! I'm sure there's many more of them in my near future, well maybe not until after the marathon in December, but that would qualify as near future to me.  I was a bit anxious going in to the ride as my longest ride before this had only been 70 miles (my fault not Craig's!) and piling on 30 extra miles might be a little difficult.

But I had great company....at least for the first 25 miles. The plan was to ride with the group for about 25 miles, then I was going to meet up with Aaron and he and I were gonna ride to the turn around and back to about 75 miles in and then I'd book it home alone.  Well, of course that didn't happen.  We made it to the 25 mile point and met up with Aaron and his bike broke, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but he had to go home and get a new wheel and that was going to take quite a while, so I decided to go it alone....couldn't convince anyone to tag along with me.  No biggie, good practice for racing 112 alone, right? I thought this was going to be torture riding by myself, with no music and no one to talk to, but riding along the Windward side of Oahu is really beautiful and the miles just fly by. Good time to focus on nutrition and hydration as well, no distractions. Especially when your bike computer malfunctions and all you have to look at is cadence, no miles, no MPH, no nothing, just cadence, but that's also good practice right? Especially since I tend to pedal much to slowly. Before I knew it, I was at the turn around, what? 50 miles done already? I feel great! Took a little break to get some more fuel and I was heading back to town.

Guess who I ran into on my way back? Aaron! He went home, changed his tire and came out to meet me.  We rode together for about 10 miles and then he was off to go find some other people. Nice little distraction around mile 60. I was still feeling great, not tired, not sore, not wanting to get off the bike probably until around mile 90.  10 miles from home and I just wanted to be done already.  I popped some more e21 and I had all sorts of new energy and the last 5 miles were a breeze.  I finished in abour 5:34 (actual riding time, not including the few breaks I took at aid stations), not to shabby for my first century ride, I was very happy. T-shirt collected, finisher certificate in hand, I headed home. The drive home (which was only about 30 minutes) felt much longer than the 5+ hours I just spent on my bike.

Now what you ask? Well, Claire gets here on Friday is staying the night with Dave and I and leaves for Kona on Saturday! Leslie D (also going to Kona!) gets here on Saturday, I have a 25k race on Sunday then, Les, Mrs. D and I are leaving for Kona on Monday!!



Heading out...you can't tell in this picture, but the sunrise was gorgeous



Support Crew Kim!



I must be going super fast!