100 Miles and Pain In The Neck!

We did it!

After two months of training and riding and nutrition and hydration and pain and flat tires plus 8 hours and another flat, Adam and I rode a century on Sunday.  100 miles on a bike!  My first, and Adam's second.

Whew.

It was so much work, but so very much worth it.

I really need to re-paint my nails....

It took us 8 hours, and I earned 43 activity points.

43!

Here is where I would post a picture of Adam and I after we finished, but my phone died and Adam's phone erases pictures.  Fortunately, he tweeted the picture of my odometer so I could get this from the internets.

The first 25 miles were pretty good.  It was a beautiful day for a ride.  Sunny, white puffy clouds and a slight breeze that was a cross wind while we road the Rails to Trails from Reed City to Evart and into Clare County.  We stopped and ate a Clif Bar, then turned around to do the next 25 miles.  The wind changed direction at this point and was giving us a stiff head wind that made me very frustrated.  I hate  head winds.  They make things so much harder than they need to be!  We hit 50 miles when we arrived back at my parents' house for lunch.

We were there for about an hour, re-fueling, recovering and re-hydrating.  Then we set off for Big Rapids to avoid the head wind and get up to at least 75 miles before heading back to Reed City.  We rode on the White Pine Trail to Big Rapids until it ended, turned around and then just tooled around Big Rapids a little until we returned to the White Pine Trail.  We did circles on the North End Park loop (that hill going back up to the WPT is wicked!  It's almost straight up!)

We headed back to Reed City with 77 miles on our odometers.  Stopping at 2 Mile Road, we were 13.25 miles from the end.  Adam crossed 2 Mile first, and I followed.  I heard/felt a whump and then a flump flump flump flump.

I had another freaking flat.

This was like the FIFTH flat that I have had in three weeks.  And I had had enough.

I was tired, in pain and pissed beyond belief.

I may or may not have screamed at the top of my lungs a mixture of curse words and the fact that I had another flat up to Adam.

Adam couldn't believe it either and returned to me.  We started to change the flat and I called my parents to ask them to bring our bike pump so we wouldn't have to waste a CO2 tube.  My baby brother, Zack, came out in our car to bring us our pump.  He saved us.  While we were waiting for him, Adam broke one of my tire levers.  It probably broke from over use over the last few weeks.

With the flat fixed, Adam and I thanked Zack for his road side assistance (Zack thought it was cool because he got to drive "the team car" and save our butts) and hopped back on the bikes.

We rode the final three miles into Reed City, rode the spike up towards Cadillac to collect another mile or so then we set out to ride approximately a 0.8 mile loop in a criterium setting to do the final nine miles.

As we rode the criterium, darker and darker clouds rolled in.  It got to the point that even though we were working hard, we were getting chilly.  I even was wishing I had my thermal jersey and I have much more, erm, insulation than Adam does.  It spit on us a bit, but didn't truly start raining until we pulled into the driveway after our 100 miles were completed.

During our criterium, we passed a number of kids a number of times and they cheered us on every time we passed, it was so cute!

Then, as our odometers turned over 100 miles, we were holding hands and smiling like fools.  We had trained for this, we had worked  for this.  We had become masters of our own pain to ride 100 miles in a day.

We were tired.

We were cold.

We were hungry.

We were so freaking happy.

We had done it, and as the giddiness washed over us, the pain disappeared.  At least for the moment, my neck killed for the next three days!  Still hurts a bit actually...

Anyway!

After we rolled over 100 miles, I jokingly said, "Ok, mountain biking is next."

I only wonder how much I was joking....

Yeah, I'm nuts

Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about how I was thinking about running a 5K on top of my Century Training?

Yeah, well I'm pretty sure I also posted that I decided to run it. I can't find it right now.  But I wanted to tell you all that I have confirmation that I'm nuts.

Today, after doing our century training, I waited about an hour.  Ate some watermelon, drank some chocolate milk and watched some M*A*S*H while I waited. Then I got back up and went out to run TWO days worth of training.

That's right. TWO DAYS.  I ran the third day of Week 5, and the first day of Week 6 back to back.  55 minutes.

And I'm going to do it again tomorrow, and finish the last two days of Week 6.

Then I will be caught up and only running 3 days a week.

So maybe I'm only partially whacko.

But the great thing is, is that I felt great.  I rode hard, ran so long and worked my legs to the bone.  But after both, and in between, my legs felt great.  Sure now, my knees are a little swollen and sore, but my muscles feel fine.  Adam is still recovering from our long ride on Sunday, which is crazy! I'm usually the one who is still lagging a day or two after.

This is wonderful!  I hope that this continues and I keep getting stronger and stronger.

WOO!!

Wind Sucks.

While we were camping, we had two of our longer rides for our Century Training, 48 and 53 miles.

We had decided to head north on 23 toward Cheboygan for our first ride, 24 miles out, 24 back.  Sounds simple enough.  Heading up there wasn't too bad, there are some fun downhills on our way to a roadside rest area with a beautiful view of Lake Huron.  The wind was seemingly steady, but on our way back to the campground it was much, much more windy.

First 7 miles Elevation Profile

I don't know about you, but I prefer to do my 'into the wind' stints while I have fresh legs, whether I'm biking or running.

The first ride, all in all, wasn't bad.  Rough at the end of course, but there are two brutal up hill climbs in the last 10 miles back to the park.  One of which has no downhill, which is LAME.  It is the worst of the two by far, it's about three tenths of a mile long, and almost straight up. I had to use my 'sissy' (smallest) chain ring.  I have three, and I was so glad to have that.

You see the giant drop at 10.5 miles?  That is the WORST climb coming back and notice that it's completely flat at the top? Ugh.

If you just reverse the profile, it comes to the total 49 miles we did that day.

By the end of the ride I was exhausted, and a little loopy.  We got back to the camp site and were hanging out in my parents' camper with the fam.  Zack (baby brother) let me have one of his Gatorades, which was a great thing after the long ride, wonderful.  The loopy comes in when I opened the Gatorade and dropped the cap (of the bottle) on T.J. (the black lab nut job my parents have).  I stated that I had dropped the cap on the dog and immediately dissolved into a fit of giggles that quickly became full blown belly laughter that took my breath away.  Because I dropped a cap on the dog, geddit? Geddit?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!

Isn't the lake be-yoo-ti-ful?!

I get rather giggly when I'm tired.  Eventually I stop being able to breath and I am laughing so hard that I'm silently rocking back and forth with my mouth open and tears streaming down my face.  Of course, it causes me to laugh harder, it's a vicious (and fun!) circle - and a great ab work out!  Fortunately I took a nap and that saved my abs from exploding. Can you imagine the mess?!

Our second ride we went the same direction because the elevation profile between the State Park and Alpena is insane.

 Miles 6-8 here, would suck on the way there, but awesome on our way home...

This makes my legs hurt just looking at this. They're screaming "NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!" 

Although we wouldn't have gone all the way into Alpena, the first two profiles would have definitely been on our trek and since Adam isn't supposed to be taxing himself and I am not physically or mentally prepared for a climb like that, as you will see shortly.

We decided to move up our longer ride from Saturday to Wednesday because we didn't want to spend our last day at the Park on the bikes.  Which turned out to be a good decision since it rained the last two days at the Park and we wouldn't have been able to get in our ride anyway.  It also was raining when we got home and on Sunday.  It was a good decision for that reason.  Otherwise, it was a rough trip.

First, as I mentioned earlier, I prefer fresh legs for riding into the wind.  This worked great, until the final 2.5 miles before we turned around at the half way point.  It was *almost* completely open.  We had been battling a vicious, and I mean absolutely brutal, head wind steady at 17-18 mph, with gusts up to 25 mph.  BRUTAL.  Riding the 2.5 miles back to the rest area was great with that kind of tailwind.  I mean AWESOME.  We were maintaining 21-22 mph, piece of cake!

Windy, windy, windy!

Then I almost killed myself getting off my bike, my right shoe wouldn't come un-clipped (I need to tighten my cleats).  At this point, I would like to point out that it was so windy on our way up that I never actually was damp with sweat.  All I had as proof of perspiration was the dried salt on my face.  It felt really weird!

A little red in the face, but not as bad as I could have been with that wind. Yiiiiikes!  I hate how Adam looks like he hasn't done any work.  Damn my dilated face blood vessels! 

We rested for 15 minutes and hopped back on the bikes.  There was a little concern that I had pulled a muscle un-clipping my stubborn right cleat.  But in the end, my butt just hurt a lot.  We stopped so I could stretch some more and we took it a little slower to start out.  My championship husband generously pulled for much of the ride home, which is good, because I had a break down a little less than halfway back.

You see, despite having the wind at our backs, it still liked to gust around and come at us from the lake.  Having not gone on such a long ride before, this was a little demoralizing.  I had chosen to ride into the wind for 26.5 miles so I could have a kick ass ride back, and now I was fighting through pain in my butt, my left knee and anyone who rides long rides will tell you, no matter how seasoned of a rider you are, your neck/shoulders/upper back will start to try and murder you for leaning forward for so long.  The best tenth of a mile of the whole ride where I sat up and stretched out.  It was amazing.  As I have explained previously, I cry when I am over-tired, frustrated, exhausted, overwhelmed etc.  So for approximately a mile or so (or at least it felt like it)  I was crying and riding and just wanted to stop and call my parents to come get us.  The fricken wind was the worst part.  I can deal with the pain, I've pushed through worse, but the wind was taking away my joyful, fun, tail wind speed ride.  The jerk.  The stupid, jerky wind slammed me right up against the wall of my physical limits and I was defeated.

The only way I managed to push through was the support from Adam.  That man is a marvel, he's my rock and my biggest cheerleader.  The entire time I was crying and saying, "I can't, I can't" over and over, he was riding next to me, rubbing my back saying, "Stop saying that, you can do this."  If I had been riding by myself, I would have stopped and called my parents about 5 miles back to the Park, I'm almost certain.  He was pretty sure I hadn't reached the point where I was absolutely serious about quitting.  But if he had, he would have said ok, no problem, even though he could go on.  He's amazing.

Of course we pushed on and I once again used the 'sissy' chain ring to get myself up the hill at the 10 miles to go mark.  I believe I was going 6 mph when I finally got to the top of the hill.  I didn't go very fast for the remaining time either.  I was in survival mode at this point, just chugging along.  I really wish I had had my ear buds and music, but anything to distract me would have been great.

We got back and I ate and drank and napped and showered.  It was really weird with all of the dried salt on my skin.  I scratched my face and it came off under my finger nails. Bizarre!

Dad, stop reading for a minute. Other males who are squeamish about female monthly cycles also should stop here for a bit.

I must ask a question of other female distance cyclists about riding on your period.  Do you forgo a pad and undies and just wear a tampon?  I went the pad/undies route and I was very sore up front down there.  I'm worried about wearing a tampon for that long, though.  I will take any suggestions, except not riding.  That's not allowed.

Dad it's ok to start reading again.

Century training is not for the faint of heart.  But the changes I am seeing in my body are crazy.  I still have a gut, but my legs are definitely thinner.

And head winds SUCK. Or blow, whatever you prefer.

<3 Bikes!

Shut up, Legs!

We are into Week 3 of our Century Training and we have two of our longer Saturday rides behind us.  To the more seasoned cyclists 30 and 36 mile long rides are not long at all, but to me, my longest ride being just under 60 miles and that was a year ago, the work that goes into these longer rides are killer.  Our first ride was way worse because, being from Michigan, riding in 90 degree sun for 3 hours on hills my legs were not conditioned for, was a b*^&#.  Compounded by the fact that we were on roads I was not familiar with, riding with Adam, who is so much more in shape than I am (jerk) and that we ran out of water 10 miles from home made me into a whiny and very tired person who could not sustain what we wanted to be a pace of 17-20 mph.

I was miserable and it is so unbelievably frustrating to know you are gutting yourself trying to keep up with someone and they are still pulling away from you! I wanted to kill him, but I didn't have the strength.  So we spent a significant amount of time going much slower (12-14 mph, and 7-9 mph on some of those g*& d@!#$ hills).

But there was hope!

There was an MS fundraising century ride that was going on whilst we were pounding out our pitiful 30 miles and the organizers were kind enough to let us refill our water bottles so we wouldn't keel over on our way home.  If I hadn't been so sweaty and gross I would have hugged her.  Thank you so very much!

Side note: it probably would have helped if I wasn't wearing my pink and black Fat Cyclist jersey.  Black material and sun are bad choices.  But I was stylin'.

Anyway, we managed to drag my sorry carcass home and continue on with our lives and training for another week.

This past weekend we had our 36 mile ride planned for Saturday, but we weren't going to be in Lansing, we were going to be in Petoskey to go camping with the best people in the world and we weren't comfortable trying to come up with a 36 mile trek in a place neither of us were familiar with.  We felt it would be a poor life decision.  So, we did our ride on Friday riding from my in-laws house in Big Rapids to my parents' house in Reed City to Hersey and back to Big Rapids.  This one was much better.  I was about to sustain our pace much better, in part because a) it wasn't a billion degrees, b) it was cloudy, c) it was mostly flat and d) I am very familiar with the trails we were riding on.

But then! (dun dun dun!)

I rode over something bad on our way back and got a flat. Frick!  But fortunately my handy-dandy patch kit was able to save the day and we didn't have to change the whole tube!  I had never been so glad I had a patch kit in my whole life.  It was annoying to have to stop for a half hour to fix it, but all in all this ride was much more successful than the previous week's.  I only had to tell my legs to shut up 4 times instead of 20!  So glad I had Jens Voigt humor to pull me through.

Even though we have 6 more weeks before we ride our century for the Michigan Pink Tour, I am finally, for the first time, feeling like a century is something I am capable of.  During the first two weeks of training I was rather, shall we say, unsure of my ability to condition myself to do this ride.  But today, after 2 unplanned rest days because of camping and my exhaustion from Friday's ride, we went out for an at pace ride for 14 miles.  And it felt easy! 17 mph? Puh, nothing!  I felt great! I even felt great riding at 17 mph after going up a steep hill at 20 mph from base to summit.  I know that sounds like nothing, I did it.  And I am so freaking proud. I can't believe after 2 weeks of training how much my body has changed and I am really looking forward to where I will be in 6 weeks.

So if you're in Michigan and feel like riding for Breast Cancer Research, I'll be there, with my husband and wearing my 'Fight Like Susan' Fat Cyclist kit.

Come ride with us!

I have a pretty chart

Remember when you were little and maybe you had a chart where you got a star if you did your chores at home, or in your grade school classroom for when you did something good?

Well, I wanted a visual thing like that for my own progress.

So, I went to the store and bought some of that really thin poster board and stickers and made my own chart!

Isn't it preeeeetty? It hangs out on the back of our front door.  Unfortunately, I made this before I decided - after my post yesterday - to train for a 5K.  So I don't have any space to add in my 5K training.  I'm going to end up printing it out separately, I think.  It'll be equally pretty though.

As you can see, I am tracking my century training, % loss up down to my goal weight, Pounds Lost in 5 pound increments down to goal weight, making sure I walk 5K every day and then I have several rows at the bottom to track my weekly losses.  Of which I suppose I could sacrifice a few rows of to track the 5K training, but my zigzag lines make it hard to write in a new goal to track.  Upon closer inspection though, I can spare a couple lines at the bottom.  The zigzags are the only problem, but one of those new labels that block out stuff behind it would work.  Or just a regular label.  I'll post a new picture if/when I do that.  Rest Day for century training tomorrow, so I start 5K-ing tomorrow.  I'm babbling, sorry.

And these are my pretty stickers :D  And the marker I use to record stuff.

I'll need to pick a new sticker out of the ones not shown... or maybe the blue bee ones will be for my trainings, 5K and Century.

Anyway, what are your goals? How do you keep track of your progress?  How do you reward yourself?

------

Thanks to Kat at Living Like the Kings for the thought to ask you all questions at the end of a post!

What is Strong? Century Training Days 2 & 3

Yesterday was day two of century training, and we rode brisk, instead of pace like we were supposed to.  It was a good ride, hard ride, but good.  I was toast at the end of it.  Trying to sustain a brisk pace while riding on rather hilly roads is not easy.  And then I went to yoga last night which was great!  We really worked our arms.

Then, today was day three of training.  Windy day today and so our speed wasn't quite what I wanted it to be.  We were supposed to ride at a brisk pace today, but we rode brisk yesterday on accident, oops.  So we were going to ride at pace, which is how fast we want to ride the actual century.  We did alright heading out, but we hit a nasty head wind on the road we take for a significant stretch to come back in.

Slowed us waaaay down. Suck.

But on a stretch of different road I got up to 27 mph, which isn't really sustainable for me yet, but it was fun!

The best part of our ride today though was when we pulled into our complex and rode past a group of kids who attend the day care that our complex provides.  They were all excited to see two bikes, it was so cute!  They started yelling and chattering excitedly, "Bikes, look bikes!"  "Hi Bikes!"

So adorable!

I hope it helps them want to keep riding, and to wear their helmets!

"Bye Bikes!"

I am crazy. Absolutely insane.

Recently (3 days ago) I set a goal for myself to walk at least 5K (3.1 miles) every day.  And I am proud to say that I have managed to do that every day since I started.  Yay!  I also am training to ride a century and I go to yoga twice a week.  But, today a new challenge arose when a friend asked me if I was planning on running any 5K races soon.

I told her I wasn't planning on doing more running until after cycling season was over, but if she found a 5K to run together before that, I would start earlier.

This begs the question: what the hell is the matter with me?!

With everything I'm doing otherwise, how can I do 5K training too?

But I am considering it, I even have the Couch to 5K Program page open right now and my calendar to add the training in as a separate calendar so I'd have it for reference on my phone.  And, conveniently enough, the week after we do our century ride in which entrance fees go to breast cancer research and League of Michigan Bicyclists, is the Capitol City River Run Half Marathon and CCRR Cooley Law School 5K for Education.  We have to drive a bit to get to the century ride and the 5K is right here in Lansing, so, I'd like to do it, even though my friend is already signed up to do the half marathon section of the race.

I've participated in the Weight Watchers Walk-it 5K day in the past (twice, this year and last), but I'd like to do an "official" race where I get a number an everything.

Again, what is the matter with me?!  I'm actually thinking about doing a 5K, where I would have to train 3 days a week, on top of the 6 days a week I'm training for the century?  And yoga.  But it certainly would push me to the 5K every day faster.

I am nuts. Crazy. Whacko.

There is a reason professional athletes are professional athletes, training is so time consuming!

And I have a lot of thinking, deciding and planning to do... yeesh.

http://www.healthwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/running.jpg

What is Strong? Century Training Day 1

As I mentioned previously, Adam and I want to ride a century.  Adam already rode one a few months before we got married, but he wants to do longer training this time, instead of the short training he did before.  He told me the other day that he was 80% spent by the time he made the halfway point and did not want to do that again.

So, we started training today.  What better day to start training than the first rest day of the Tour? It was rather short, only 6 miles at an easy pace, but there was an element of excitement in training this morning.  We awoke to a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and the storm front was bearing down on us quickly. We ate and dressed quickly and headed out.  With what it seems 90% of Lansing under construction we had to zig zag a bit to get to the River Trail, but we rode 3 miles out and 3 back.  We rolled in about 2 seconds before the storm hit, whew!  It was a great ride.  I felt so good after.

And since I had a brand spankin' new cycling computer from Meijer it was great fun to watch how fast we were going and our distance.  I also was able to watch my heart rate closely too, since Adam found my heart rate monitor yesterday in a box (we are still not unpacked!).  That was a kick too.  If only we were able to get a cycling computer like the pros have and I would only have to look at one thing instead of three!

This weekend I also tried the iMapMyRide that they've been pushing for the Aquaphor Challenge against Levi Leipheimer.  It's an interesting app.  There are some things I don't like about it.  For example, I can't get it to stop automatically posting my rides/walks to Facebook without revoking it's publishing rights, but if I do that I can't post the rides/walks myself when there are ones I want to post.  Kind of annoying.  And when I try and log in on the website, I can't because I never got a password, I only have a username and they didn't ask for a email when I signed up, so I can't have them send me a password.  ARGH!

Other than that though, it's a pretty app!

Great ride, fun stuff to play with and I can't wait for the actual century!