T102 - Santa Fe Century Ride - Bike

Gainesville

I am not a fan of group rides. But this weekend the Gainesville Cycling Club offers a couple of Century Rides that fit in perfectly with my training schedule. I chose this one because it had pizza afterward and was formerly sponsored by a Saturn dealer, and I felt like the challenge was the same as the next day’s Horse Farm 100. If that doesn’t sound North Florida enough for you.

Bike – 100 miles

2 Lipodrene
2 Advil
1 Endurolyte

The race started out a bit slow for my taste, with the pack of probably 300-400 riders all mobbed together. And since I don’t stop and start well, or really ride slow very well either, this was a bit frustrating. I found myself weaving in and out of people for the first 5 miles, not unlike the Komen Race for the Cure in New York. Except we were on bikes this time. By about mile 8 or 9 it has spread out enough that my only issue with crowds was the occasional large group going by me, and knowing when it was safe top re-enter the middle of the road. I tried to avoid drafting as much as possible, but didn’t mind at all if people did it off me. I’m really unfamiliar with the ethics and guidelines of group riding, so I just kind of went with the flow. I just didn’t want to make it too easy on myself either.

About mile 18 or so I had to piss like crazy. But knew it was at least 20 minutes to the next Rest Stop. It was raining lightly and I thought to myself “You know, Trevor has told me how a lot of people just piss while they’re on the bike and let it fly behind them There’s nobody behind me, and it’s raining anyway. Fuck it.” And so I found a downhill where I could just relax everything and let it rip. Rather disgusting, and my shoes and socks started feeling a little warm and wet, but within ten minutes I’d completely forgotten about it, and was like “Awesome. I just pissed myself on the bike.” It’s like an endurance athlete initiation, I think.

The first 25 miles felt really good, as I pulled into the first aid station at about 1:18 averaging about 19. The Rest Stops on this ride were incredible. Like they had M&Ms and whole packs of Oreos and Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. It was like an elementary school lunch spread with water coolers at every 25-mile stop. I put my bike down, filled my Zephyrhills bottles (I am practicing with these as I’m planning on exchanging both bottles during the Ironman) and had about 4 Oreos and an Orange before heading back out.

1 Lipodrene
1 Advil
1 Endurolyte

Miles 25-50 were not as impressive. I once again found myself struggling to get up past 19, even though the wind was negligible on this gloomy Saturday afternoon. There was a lot of elevation gain, I think, over this 25 miles, and I got passed by a couple of groups I had no prayer of catching. And I wasn’t trying to draft, so I just had to let them go. It was at about the 2 hour mark that I felt that burst of speed and energy start to slip, and I realized I am a good cyclist for the first 2 hours of a long ride, then seem to fall off. “That’s the last I’ll see of 20,” I thought to myself, and resigned myself to a 6 hour ride. I hit the second rest stop at about 2:48, my average speed slowing to close to about 17.8. I had kinda hoped to break 18 today, but whatever. I had to finish the race.

1 Lipodrene
1 Endurolyte

My back wasn’t hurting so I skipped the Advil. Well’ once again I wasn’t feeling incredible coming out of the rest stop, but I noticed about a mile into this third leg that this was pretty flat and straight. SO I got back down into aero and a funny thing happened: I started going a solid 21-22. For a while. I mean I kept the speed up pretty much through the whole 25 miles of this section, save for one part where I went up to 25 to pass a guy. He drafted behind me, then offered to pull adding “I can pull if you want, but I can’t pull that fast.” Awesome. That was all I needed.

At that point I got back in aero, kicked it up a gear, and did a solid 25-27 for about 10 minutes. I still have no idea how I did that, and was wondering to myself at the time “”How are you doing this?” but then I realized that I’ve probably been able to do this all along. I just need something with no wind and no elevation to slow my momentum. For the first time, I raised the average speed of my ride a good .5 mps over the third 25 miles of a Century, and felt strong doing it. Yeah, that 4th Lipodrene may have had something to do with it. But who cares. I’ll do a pill every 25 miles on the Ironman if that’s what it takes. I got to Rest Stop 3 at the 77 mile marker at just over 4 hours, averaging about 18.6 Go hard enough and I’d be done in an hour and change.

1 Lipodrene,
1 Advil
1 Endurolyte

I will add here I was not using slat tabs but rather the Endurolytes sample I got with my race packet. Anyway, I was all jazzed up to crush the final 25 miles, when I strangely found myself once again unable to go over 15 consistently. I spent about the first 3-4 miles thinking “Fuck, this sucks. I guess I nuked my village going 27 up those hills.” Then I tried something: I shifted into a harder gear and used only a smaller amount of energy, and immediately found myself going 18. I got into Aero and was back over 20 for a good part of the ride.

When I got to the 441 crossing I had to unclip and stop, which was fine except for the fact that my left cleat came off save for one screw. As in the fucking cleat was hanging off the shoe so not only could I not clip in, but the fucking thing was scraping against the bike frame for the entire last 8 miles. Impressive, I was still able to go about 18-20 the last 8 miles and ended up averaging 18.4 for the ride. Funny how I haven’t averaged over 17 on any short rides in a while, but was able to turn in a pretty decent ride today.

Maybe I just have a better mentality on these longer rides. Like I know they mean something so I put in stronger effort. Either way, my 2 best workouts of the week were the 4000 meter swim and this 100 mile bike. And while ideally they’d all be good workouts, if you have to have 2 that stand out, those are the ones you want. I definitely got my bike confidence back today. My back barely hurt on this ride. My saddle sores didn’t bother me. And I had my fastest average speed on a ride over 50 miles. Can’t complain too much. And couldn’t ask for a better final Century ride before the Ironman. Except maybe for my shoe breaking.