The Results Are In

I rode 106.5 miles in about 5 and a half hours. About 45 minutes of that was accounted for by 3 rest stops at miles 25, 53, and 82. That gave me a moving average of 21.5 miles per hour. That's awesome! I usually ride to work at about 22 MPH, but I really didn't think that I could keep that up for a full 100 miles. It really helps to ride in the group and to take turns fighting the air at the front of the group.

I had tentatively planned on riding with some guys from Novell, but I pulled away from them in the first couple of miles (they were having technical difficulties) and ended up riding with a couple of random guys from Salt Lake that were going about the same pace as me. I felt a little funny about just latching on to a couple of riders like that, but for the most part they didn't seem to mind. One of the two guys was a little uptight at first, but he lightened up when he saw that I was capable of "pulling" the group behind me.

The highlight of the ride for me happened just as we passed Novell and actually got onto a street that I ride to work everyday. We were in a huge group of people. From what I could tell, we were the leading riders of the ride. Somehow I managed to work my way up to the front of the group and in a moment of bravado, I pulled out in front hammerred down, got up to about 28 miles per hour and pulled a couple of hundred yards out in front of the leader. Of course I couldn't keep that speed and eventually I had to drop back down into the pack to get back in the draft. But damn it felt good to be out in front if only for a little while. It proved that I'm capable of riding with the big boys.

The course was really poorly marked and there were several times that I took a wrong turn and had to correct. Of course, I don't like to lose ground, so correcting meant catching back up to the group that I was riding with. I nearly killed myself a couple of times trying to catch back up to the group.

The worst of these occasions was as I was just rounding West mountain from the North. There were arrows on the road indicating that we should take the right fork in the road. Unfortunately, the arrows didn't indicate that was the direction to the rest stop which no one in that group actually intended on stopping at. The other half of the group kept riding straight and left us behind. Thankfully, there were a couple of really strong riders in the group that turned off and we were actually able to catch up to the other group over the course of the next 5 to 7 miles. Actually I should make it clear that I had very little to do with the catching up, I just got behind these guys and rode their draft all the way back up to the front group. It was awesome.

I was riding really strong all day long and didn't really feel the affects of fatigue until about mile 100. In fact, I'm not sure that it was really fatigue or just a general lack of motivation and energy due to the fact that I felt like my ass was going to explode :) I knew that I should have used the bathroom at that last rest stop. It was so bad that I thought a couple of times about just pulling over to the side of the road, ripping my bike shorts off, squatting and relieving myself right in the ditch. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. I was able to squeeze out those last couple of miles and made it back to the porta-potty at the high school parking lot where the ride started.