Anyways, to commemorate his 50th birthday George decided he wanted to ride a century. My immediate response was "I'm in!"... A 100 mile bike ride is one of those things that most people will never do. When you tell most people you're going to ride your bike 100 miles the usual response is a mixture of shock, awe, and horror. A 100 mile ride is a great test of the body and mind. The challenge to the body is obvious. Riding 100 miles is a hell of a long way. I don't like being in a car for 100 miles never mind on a bicycle seat (as anatomically forgiving as the latest, greatest saddles are, 100 miles on them is still a literal pain in the ass). The challenge to the mind is great as well. It's tough to be 2 hours into a ride and realize you're not even halfway there. With legs burning and lower back whimpering at 70 miles you know there's another 90 minutes, give or take, until you're done. Your brain gets really pissed off at you over the course of the ride. The last 15 miles or so are pretty euphoric though because you know how far you've come and you know how little you have left to go. For most people, their first century is an epic experience that they will never forget. I used to go on group centuries years ago and you could always tell the first timers. They would have 16 energy gels taped to their top tube and pockets bulging with peanut butter sandwiches and bags of trail mix. They'd be carrying about 10,000 calories with them. The only thing missing would be the backpacking stove and the dehydrated meals. George asked me what to bring.. I told him a few energy gels and about $20 :)
George picked a route that went from Newburyport to Ogunquit, the whole route was right up the coast. We headed out at about 7:30. There was nobody on the roads or on the beaches. The sun had just risen about an hour ago and the ocean was absolutely gorgeous. We were cranking along at an average pace of about 20mph which I wasn't sure was too wise considering it was George's first ever century and I didn't want him to blow up early, but he was riding really strong and we just kept it going. We stopped in Portsmouth about 30 miles into the ride and refueled with double espressos. What a cool town Portsmouth is. The first thing that pops out at me is how badly they need a functional conditioning gym :) Hmmmm...... Sufficiently wired we headed back to the ocean and continued up the coast.. Through Rye, Kittery, York, and Ogunquit, each town kind of similar to the last. You get to the beach district of each town and there are art galleries, fried clam shops, Life is Good stores (someday to be replaced by Tragically Fit stores) and lots of people who are really out of shape that throw dissaproving looks at me because my efforts at staying in shape are blocking their path to the ice cream shop. I've found that there are two kinds of people in the world.. People that like to see stuff and people that like to do stuff.. Those of us who do stuff are almost always looked down upon by those who would rather see things. We're a constant reminder to them of how badly they need to get off their asses and do stuff instead of treating life like it's a spectator event.
So George and I pedaled another 40 miles in between our first stop in Portsmouth and our second stop in Portsmouth on the way back.. 70 miles in and it was time for lunch.. Actually, it was time for lunch about 10 or 15 miles ago but we continued on through the hunger, on the verge of a bonk, just getting by on energy gel and water.. We were both kind of suffering between 60 and 70 miles because we really could have used real calories, having burned over 3000 calories at this point in the ride. My HRM said I had burned about 4500 at this point but I don't believe it.. I think it was more reasonable that I was burning less than 800 an hour and we were about 4 hours into the ride, which I have to say, was a much quicker pace than I had originally expected us to be able to keep on such a long ride. George was really kicking ass!
Properly refueled we headed back to Newburyport with the "heavy legs" you get after 70 miles followed by a 30 minute break where you ate a sandwich the size of a baby cow and some really good potato salad.. (Note to self... Never, EVER, eat potato salad again during a break in a long bike ride!).. At about mile 90 we had our first run in with a redneck. Amazing it took this long really.. We were coming through the Hampton area where it's two lanes in one direction.. There was nobody in the second lane and George and I were riding side by side. There was plenty of room to get around us considering there were two lanes to get by, and I was barely even into the first lane. So the angry beeping starts, followed by a pick up truck (why is it always a pick up truck?) that went by me about 12 inches off my handlebars, followed by an exchange of angry fingers, followed by me gesticulating wildly for the dickhead to pullover so I could kick his ass while wearing spandex (it's a dream of mine to kick the shit out of a redneck trucker while wearing spandex.. don't ask me why, it must be the napolean complex most of us short guys are born with).. So the guy keeps going and George and I go back into our conversation as if nothing ever happened. The last 10 miles George started cramping up a little but we were still maintaining a really good pace. Just keep the pedals turning, turning, turning, at this point. We're almost there. We got back to Riverside Cycles in Newburyport with 101 miles completed in about 5hrs 20 mins.. If you consider the times that we were tooling along the beach areas and downtown Portsmouth looking for a food stop, our average riding pace for the 101 miles was close to 19MPH! George didn't just complete his first century, he crushed it. And it showed when we got back to the bike shop. The guy was glowing, walking on a cloud. It was a major achievement at any age, never mind just having turned 50...
And that's why we do what we do at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, so we can get the looks of shock, awe, and horror when we tell them we just rode our bikes 100 miles. So we can go out on any given day and run for an hour in the woods. So we can pick up a football and throw it 25 yards across the backyard without our arm still being attached to it. I could have rode my bike 200 miles that day, not kidding. In just the past week, we've had a couple gym members hike Mt Washington in less than 2.5 hours, we had three others compete in triathlons, we have 4 members running their first 10k this Sunday. Michele is running a 50mile ultramarathon in Vt next weekend. Marc is top 4 in the country in his drag racing series. Steve is a New England Champion track cyclist. Several of our members are active in adult soccer leagues. We have pro MMA fighters and martial artists. I have about 16 cyclocross races planned over the next 3 months. We have a woman playing rugby at the highest level for women in the country. About 6 members have picked up mountain biking in the last couple months. One of our trainers is planning a 100 mile ultramarathon next year, another is going for a PR at Boston in April. George has his sights set on PRs at both the Allen Clark Hillclimb (a TT up the App Gap in Vt) and the General Stark Mt run. The list is endless. This is the major difference between us and the legion of the chrome and fern. Probably less than 20% of them have any real world activities. They run on hamster wheels, strap into machines, and lift weights. They walk around the real world and see things. They don't have real world activities because their training isn't conducive to real world activities. We train as a means of making our activities in the real world more enjoyable. We want to live life to the fullest and that requires true functional strength and conditioning. Close to 100% of the people at Dynamic are active in the real world, they're picking up new activities, creating new goals, setting new PRs, and enjoying every damn minute of it!
All the best,
kevin
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