First Century! 💯
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Sunday, February 19, 2012 was the big day. I set off at the ungodly hour of 4:45 am. I knew I needed an early start, and was hoping to finish by about 5 pm. And then go out for a victory dinner!
There was some drizzle here and there, besides. It was good to have a poncho then! That headwind was brutal, and a huge drain on my energy. I was cold, too; and after about four hours of struggling, I called a halt at a café for a Belgian waffle and a much-needed rest. It let me have a chance to warm up, too, which I very much needed. Afterwards, I gritted my teeth😬 and started pedaling again.
I made a pit-stop at home at about 12:50 pm. Stopping at home felt like cheating; but I was aching to get out of that wind for a few minutes.
I needed another layer, too. I’d been working like mad all day; but I simply could not get warm. Of course, after that stop it was harder than ever to get out there and continue.
Like a boomerang, I kept returning to the local park for more endless circling on a 1.8-mile long path. It was driving me crazy and ruining the sense of adventure. And even in the park, I didn’t get much of a break from the wind.
At 7:54 pm I FINALLY MADE IT!! 100 miles!! It was a good thing that home was only a half-mile or so away.
My headlight had gone dim; and my legs had just about had it. I was cold; more relieved/exhausted than jubilant; and more than ready for a hot shower and bed. But why wasn’t I hungry? I had expected to roll up to 100 miles voracious enough to eat everything in sight — including the tricycle!
Roll time for that ride was over 13 hours; total time 15 hours plus. It was a VERY long day, fighting a wind that I later learned had averaged 13 mph. It pushed my average speed down to about 7.4 mph; and more than once I was tempted to call it quits.
My stubborn streak came to my rescue, I guess.😉 So did the three-speed hub. As a nice bonus, I calculated that I had burned over 4000 calories during the ride. Although I wasn’t hungry at the end of the century, the following day I was a bottomless pit!
It was only much later that I learned that a century is considered to be 100 miles within twelve hours; but that’s on a lightweight road bike, isn’t it? Oh, please, do I still get bragging rights?
About sixteen months after that epic ride, I took the trike in for a tune-up at the bike shop. The fellows warned me that the poor old thing was on its last legs. They said they had never known anybody to wear out an adult tricycle. Or to do a century on one, either.
I had graduated to two wheels about a year earlier; and by then used the trike mainly to go grocery shopping. And now I have come full circle – from wondering how anyone could ride 100 miles in one day; to wondering how I managed to ride 100 miles in one day on a tricycle!