Notes
My first century ride. Wow was it tough.
Nate and I head out at 7am, the weather was awesome, in the upper 50s no wind. We took the midtown greenway across Minneapolis and the Lake St. bridge across the Misissippi. It was down hill from there to St. Paul where we began our first acsent up Warner Rd. We made that and head back down to dt. St. Paul and took the Bruce Vento trail north, acsent #2. From there it was a steady climb all the way out to Big Marine Lake. Nate and I were feeling great through the first 50 miles, and was really making awesome time. Once we hit Scandia, part of the course, the road took a turn for the worse, and 95, which we were expecting to be some of the easiest parts of the whole ride were very rough, it was 17 miles of just beating the shit out of us. I am not looking forward to looping through here twice on the race. That pretty much took it all out of us and we made the big climb back up to the gateway trail. Things from that point just got progressively harder, culminating in a short but killer climb on Arlington in No. St. Paul. Nonetheless, we did it!
100 miles... and six more just for fun, yeah right...
This was very hard in a very different way that the marathon or a long run. It really physically was more brusing and crampy. My neck and lower back were so tight and painful, I kept switching through positions on the bike. I felt really pretty good about the fueling strategy which consisted of four water bottles of noon, took 4 of six gus and ate 2 trail mix bars.