My Third Century of the Year...

OK. OK. So I had two legitimate centuries this year of over 100 miles and today I rode my first metric century of the year, or my third... Depends on how you look at it.

Yes, I'm a good old American boy and I measure my distance with miles, but today was a special day. In honor of the 100th running of the Giro d'Italia, I decided to all go metric on your ass. *snap* "Oh, no he didn't", "Oh... yes, I did!"

It was a hell of a ride. It wasn't enough to do a metric century; I had to add a few challenges. For instance, I wanted to come as close as I could to a 20 mph average. Plus, to top it off I threw in a severe sinus infection, just for grins. Yes, It wasn't pleasant to see what I was farmer blowing out of my nose today.

So, the first twenty miles went like clockwork. I wanted to have a solid 20 mph average when I reached the 20 mile mark. I did a short warm up as I cruised out of my neighborhood and then I applied some pressure to the pedals. At mile 19.75 I was at what must have been 19.9999999 mph for an average with 3 minutes before the hour. I was sure I was going to reach my goal. As I cruised along congratulating myself prematurely, I saw a gaggle of geese crossing the bike path about 100 meters ahead.

As I reached them I contemplated bunny hopping over them to keep my pace, but I noticed their were some babies in the mix, and with Mother's Day tomorrow, I did the humane thing (as I always do) and stopped to let them trot across the path. I watched the 20 mph average slip, but it was worth seeing the babies. After they crossed, I got to the 20 mile mark 30 seconds past my wishes.

Well, I didn't let that slow me down, for the next twenty miles I tried my best to maintain my average speed. I did pretty well. at mile marker 40 I dropped a bit to a 19.5 mph average. With 22 miles still to go and an uphill slant the rest of the way I knew it would be a challenge to keep it above 19 mph.

My goal for the next 20 miles was trying to keep the speedometer above the average speed mark. I knew I had a couple of hills coming at the end of the ride, but if I could limit the amount of time below the recorded average speed I figured I was on the winning side of keeping a high average.

The miles ticked away and at the 55 mile mark I had dropped to 19.1 mph average and that is when I hit the wall. Boom! Not literally of course, but my legs did not want to go above 19 mph. In fact 15 mph was feeling pretty hard for my legs. Nursing myself back to my house I managed to keep the average speed to 18.8 mph.

Not bad, I would have really liked to keep the average above 19, but given my condition I'm not going to let it get to me. However, if I had a partner to pace with on this ride. I know I could have done faster than a 20 mph average.

Anyone interested in helping me achieve this goal?

Getting Back in the Game

A lot of stuff has been going on in life that is worthy of blogging about.  However, I've shyed away from blogging much because every time I did I would write too much and it would turn into an hour session of writing, which I don't have time for because I have a lot of stuff going on in my life worth blogging about; vicious circle.  

So I'm going back to my original blogging rule, which I posted in my very first post.  I'm not going to allow myself to write for longer than 15 minutes;  rare exceptions will be allowed.

Hopefully this will make me want to post more often.  

It has been 10 min.  I'm outta here.

P.S.  I love Twitter.com.  Talk about a site that allows you to share your thoughts with minimal effort.