The Century

I rode 100 miles today. Or rather, according to my clearly underperforming bike computer, I rode 100.25 miles. Ever since I got my rebuilt wheel back from Zipp, the computer has been reporting some crazy things, which of course, is one more good reason to ignore it. It clocked the LP course as about 109 miles.

Of course, the number is so arbitrary. I mean, I could switch to kilometers and be riding a couple of centuries a week, right ?

Still, it was my second time in that numerical neighbourhood in the last ten day, and this time, I felt like I earned it. For one thing, there was no IM course to tool around on. It can be hard to come up with 100 miles off the top of your head when you're riding alone. It wasn't planned.

I was wearing a singlet and I have one water bottle cage on my bike so the plan was to just ride two hours with four cliff block packs, swing by the house and pick up another bottle and more cliff blocks and maybe hit four hours. But after climbing some hills, I decided to go out a little farther from home, then swing back down to Hammonassett for water, ride up the same hills again, and be home at three hours to grab my food.

When I didn't hit the driveway until 3:30, I thought what the heck, let's tack on 90 minutes and see where I am. I was hungry, thirsty, saddlesore, and it was starting to rain, but I could see that 100 mile, 5:15 ride in the distance and decided to go for it.

The last seventy-five minutes was the best part of the ride, the fastest part, and I did it while keeping my heart rate down where I wanted it. Then I ran 25 minutes and that felt good, too.

So what did I take away from the workout ? 100 miles- it's just a number. What my heart rate was, and how I felt on the run, those things do matter. And I was happy with them. But a century ? Just a number.....

PS: What does Newsweek know ? The new Coldplay album is pretty good....