First Century Ride

I hadn't done a bike ride over 80 miles and I was feeling anxious to do one. When I first wrote out my training plan for this Ironman I looked up Century Rides I could do and found one local that would fit in perfectly between the California Half Ironman and Wildflower Triathlon. The only thing was this century ride said it had 12,000 feet of climbing and 112 miles. At the time I thought, that will be great training and I put it on my plan.

Last week I was looking over my plan for the week and there it was on Saturday- Mulhullond Century Ride. Should I do it? Why not? I just did a half Ironman, I have done up to 80 miles on my bike and I have done quite a bit of climbing and after all it is on my plan! So I signed up and could not get any of my friends to join me- they were scared off by the 12,000 feet of climbing.

I got started at 7:30am thinking it ws going to take me about 7 hours, maybe 8 with all of the climbing. Afterall, I just did a Half Ironman and did 56 miles in 2:52 and it had some good climbs on it. This shouldn't take me more than 7 hours really.

I was so naive...no idea what I had gotten myself in to. Starting off was fine, we headed down Malibu Canyon which was a narrow downhill but not bad and then it dropped us off on PCH which we rode on for a few miles. So far, no problem! Then we turned left into the canyon and started the climbing. First climb was about 1500 feet, second through fourth climb were all 2000 feet and then the final climb which was 4 miles long was 2500 feet. Yes, 5 climbs all at about 2000 feet of elevation. It was completely insane!!!! I had no idea what was coming either because they just give you a map of where to turn but there is no mention of elevation so you think you must be on the hardest last climb every time and then another climb would appear.

The ride took me 9 hours!!!! I was on my bike for 9 hours!!! This was the hardest thing I have ever done. I can't believe I did it. It was an extremely tough ride for my first century ride.

I did it and overall I felt pretty good considering what I did. I actually got up Sunday and went and did a sprint distance triathlon and had a PR.

I'll tell you more about that tomorrow!