Sunday Century

So the pressure's on. I've been reading all these other blogs about guys getting 12 - 20 hours a week of base training. FatMarc got 4 hours in on a Thursday. He's married and has a full time job. WTF?

That's cool. I can ride too see, so I planned a century (Sunday Century) for today. From my house to the Art Museum and back. Should be close enough to 100 miles and 6 hours to make any base monkey happy. The original plan was to start at 6am. Cold temperatures and black ice on the roads pushed the start time to 9. In hind sight, we shouldn't have pushed it past 8, but what's done is done.

At the start we had Ryan, Chris, Rob, Craig and Mark.

We rolled out in the direction of Valley Forge to pick up the rest of the bunch. From the start I realized the "base pace" I requested wasn't happening for the group. Soon I began to wonder if I could do 100 miles at all. Then I slowed down and let the group go. I knew where I was going and knew what pace I had to go to get the whole ride in. I started to wonder if doing a century the day after a 12 1/2 hour week was such a good idea. I realized, at the right pace, things would be fine. They rode off. After 28 miles we picked up Rick, Sean, Scott, Evan, and Kevin in Valley Forge, though I was so far off the back I didn't get to see many of them till we got to Norristown. Oddly enough, about the time we rolled through Norristown (nearly 2 hours into the ride), I started to warm up. My legs and lungs got the hang of things and I was pulling off the front. We rolled on.

At the Art Museum, we stopped for the obligatory photo op,

then rolled back to Manyunk for coffee. By this point we had lost Mark and Rick. They had to ride off to other engagements. Full of double-shot lattes and scones, we headed out. On the hill on the way out of Manyunk, we had our first and only casualty. Evan flatted.

That's ok. He's a bike mechanic. Besides loaning him a tube and pump, he got it back together fast and we were on our way. Back on the Schuykill trail it didn't take long to get the Bean's "Train of Pain" going and speed our way back to Valley Forge. The only problem was about Norristown it started to sleet. We sped on.

At Valley Forge, Kevin, Scott, Evan and Sean peeled off to head home. Craig, Chris, Rob and myself continued. It was sleeting harder now. Then it started snowing - big fat fluffy wet flakes were coming down and coating the road. It was colder now and we were getting wet. I pushed on. I wanted to set goals, reach them and re asses the situation. My first goal was Frazer. There's a nice big WaWa there. If we could just get there, we could refuel and re asses. Never made it. Probably for the better too. We pulled off in Malvern at a bar called Pogey's. Craig called his son, who had a large pickup, to come rescue us. The bar, which was closed, was nice enough to let us wait inside. In the 20 minutes we waited, my bike looked like this.

Stopping was a good idea. Craig's son showed up, we loaded our five bikes, then all climbed into the warm dry cab. It was nice. So nice I didn't even notice the traffic, salt trucks, plows, etc. poking down the highway. I was dry(er) and warm.

Chris and Ryan were warm and happy too. In the end, the ride was just short of 5 hours and 80 miles. That's not bad for this time of year I guess. Hopefully it will hold us over a few days while the snow melts and we can get back out and try it again.


-b