Had an excellent ride on Saturday. I did the Summer Sizzler Super Metric Century in New Hope, Alabama. There were three routes, 75, 45, and 25 miles. I did the 45 mile route. It was my longest ride so far.
The first section was about 12 miles. It was mostly flat and pretty fast. A friend of mine that I ride with during the week war riding with me. When we hit the first rest stop, I was feeling pretty good. I filled up my water bottles, got come nanners and a oatmeal pie. The volunteers were great. I stretched a bit, and hit the road again.
The second section was a little hilly. Actually, it was A LOT hilly. Aside from not being physically ready, as most of my training has been done on mostly flat roads, I was not mentally ready. I had not driven the course ahead of time, so I didn't know what to expect. The hills were not especially steep or that long, there were just so many of them. Everytime I turned a corner, I was at the bottom of another hill! I was able to climb all of them, but there were draining me and I was getting frustrated that they were slowing me down. It wasn't a race, but I did want to try to maintain 16-17 mph.
I guess my friend got tired of waiting on me to climb the hills because he took off and left me about half way through the second section. When I fianlly hit the second rest stop, my friend was there waiting on me. I filled up and grabbed another banana, and then we took off again. There was a pretty good hill leaving the rest stop. I managed to climb the hill pretty well, but then we hit all the small hills again and my friend took off. It kind of sucked because I had waited for him on the first section, but whatever, I just kept plugging along. I was getting a little tired of riding by myself so I stopped on the top of one of the hills and waited for some of my TRI101 peeps to catch up. I waited for about five minutes, and was starting to get stiff, so I started decided to start going again slowly and let them catch up.
About 40 miles into it, I started feeling a little tightness in my quads. Within a mile, I had full on cramps in both quads. For a second, I thought I could push though it, but I was soooo wrong. I finally had to stop, get of my bike, and lay down and try to relieve my cramps. I thought I had put some Endurolytes on my bike, but I was wrong. I tried to drink some Gatorade, but it didn't do anything. Someone drove by and gave me a couple Endurolytes. Two minutes later, the cramps were gone and I was back on the road. Amazing things. I will not forget them again!
After my little "break", a couple of the TRI101 people passed me, so I caught up to them and finished the ride with them. When I got about 1/2 a mile from the finish, I saw one of the TRI101 coaches RUNNING the other way. I thought, you've got to be kidding me. My legs were still cramping there was NO WAY I was going to be running. Turned out I was wrong!
When I crossed the finish line, my friend was there eating pizza. I got some pizza, water, Gatorade, and a couple more Endurolytes. My legs still had the post-cramp soreness, but over all I was doing pretty good. I ran into another TRI101 coach, Edd. He said he just got back from a mile and a half run. I could see where this was going. Then I was talking to a couple more coaches about the ride and they said "did you bring your running shoes?" I said yeah, but I couldn't run right then. Of course they shammed me into running with them, so I put my shoes on and we started running. I made it about a mile and I was done. My legs were cramping and I was about to throw up the pizza I just ate. I had to walk the last 1/4 mile, BUT I was able to run a little. I was kind of impressed with myself.
After the run, I decided it was time to go before someone found a pool and wanted to swim laps! Of course, as it turned out, I ended up swimming about 400 yards in a lake a couple hours later!
It was a great day! Needless to say, I slept VERY well Saturday night.
