Sunday, August 5, 2012

Summer Sizzler Super Metric Century


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.